Examining Carlos Ghosn and Japan's System of 'Hostage Justice'
japantimes.co.jp
japantimes.co.jp
Ghosn is credited with a stunning corporate turnaround and creating billions of dollars of value for a Japanese company and the Japanese people. I am certain foreign corporations who do business in Japan are thinking long and hard about the implications and potential risks of operating there.
To be clear - I am not saying Ghosn is innocent. He may very well have created special corporate structures to siphon off cash - and if he did, he certainly didn't do it alone. I think he regretted not taking the helm of GM where he saw US top execs easily earning $20, $30mm a year with no complaints from the public...
This should have absolutely no bearing on how the justice system handles him.
Here are the examples given in a law dictionary :
"a young man shoots his father after years of being beaten, belittled, sworn at and treated without love. "Heat of passion" or "diminished capacity" are forms of such mitigating circumstances"
mitigating circumstances are conditions that explain and partially excuse a behavior. If anything, being a very wealthy exec that does not need money but still stealing would be an aggravating circumstance.
However, if you look at prison terms, whether this person is a danger to society or not is a big factor. We could also talk a lot about imprisonment and whether it should be used as a punition or only as a way to protect society against some very limited cases of dangerous individuals.
Ghosn allegedly arranged this overt/covert payment system because allegedly he was unhappy that compared to euro and American auto execs, he was being under compensated.
This scheme if true is unlawful. Euro and American auto execs get paid above board and since there is no need for dual streams (because if you can command 200 million and you can get it, you don’t have to be shamed about it.).
In Japan it’s improper to be overcompensated but in order to be on par with other execs’ pay Ghosn arranged this overt/covert compensation system.
From the GP: >> Japan isn’t acting exceptionally with Ghosn. That’s their regular operating procedure.
These two ideas aren't mutually exclusive.
It’s an altogether different discussion whether someone should be remunerated so generously.
For an extreme example of this issue, look at the Middle East. They have simply never taken to democracy, and a good number of people are of the opinion it is simply an issue with their culture. This is why nation-building fails there. Japan is so to a lesser degree. They Westernized more due to losing WWII to America, but are still different. It's not our job to play world police.
This isn’t helped by foreign interference in every election they have. Even the borders, arbitrary lines drawn up by colonial powers, contribute to the problem as the forced groupings don’t suit anyone except for some colonial empire a long time ago. If the meddling stopped for a decent duration democracy might have a chance.
In the Middle East, there are so many bad actors it’s ridiculous. I haven’t consciously encountered Americans blaming the west for the situation in the Middle East. Does the definition of ‘west’ you are using include the US?
In case it is relevant, I am from New Zealand and think the disgusting behaviour in the region started long before the US got involved and includes far more countries than any set defined as ‘western’. Even places as far away and as small as New Zealand have ended up with a record of massacres and murders when in involved in the region.
As to it being patronizing. Speaking for myself—I think if you can’t blame people for the state of their own country, you’re taking agency away from those people. The British did lots of bad things in the subcontinent and looted it. (They also left some really good values and ideas and institutions.) But that ended 70 years ago. In that same time period, South Korea went from being nearly as poor, and far more war torn, to being a developed nation. It’s not the absence of interference from the west that did that, it’s the industry and virtue of the Korean people. Likewise, to the extent Bangladesh hasn’t grown as fast as it should (and to be fair, things have gotten better at least on the economic side in the last decade), who is to blame? I think it’s patronizing to continue to blame the west. Maybe blame the fact that Bangladeshis supported a military dictator for President, supported dismantling secularism, invited fundamentalism in from the Middle East, etc. Whose fault is it? Maybe it’s the fault of the clerks in the Bangladesh Supreme Court that demand bribes to quickly your filings quickly. If we credit Koreans for the development of their country, Bangladeshis must get their fair share of blame for what is happening in their own country.
I think that the two arguments are not in opposition though. It is possible for foreign interference to have harmed democracy in the Middle East and for locals to have damaged it too, and there are plenty of examples of this.
This whole narrative gets more implaussible by the day, the more you look at it. And by defending it, and not trying to look for the real issues, those who push it - further the only counter-quack-narrative, which is basically racism.
It sounds like the rambling of a homeless men by now, inventing invisible foes to justify all bad and random events happening to him.
What narrative? What quack? What racism? Please clarify.
I didn't say all cultures were unsuited to self-determination. Many are. All I said was that some are not, and that we may do better if we recognize this and learn from it.
1. Overthrew the shah in the ~1940s, created a democracy
2. Because a large majority of the economy was going to the british in the form of of the anglo persian oil company, iran nationialized it's oil industry
3. This pissed off the british, who poked it's friend america to overthrow the government in Iran. The first president said no, but the next one said yes, which eventually led to the CIA's first sponsored coup and installed the shah again.
4. This pissed off a lot of people and eventually led to the 1979 revolution and the oligarchical theocracy we have today in Iran.
Today the average young civilian in Iran doesn't really like the government.
And yes, I would imagine that most don't like it; it's not a great place to live. This is why I said it was not really a good example of successful democracy.
Was it? I'm not super well informed on the topic, but my impression was that Mossadegh's policies were largely the kind of mild social democracy that Europe has been engaging in pretty comfortably for a few decades. The two big exceptions would be nationalizing natural resources under foreign influence and raising land taxes, and again, you could probably find plenty of moderate to conservative economists today that would find both of those reasonable.
Is there anything in particular you're thinking of when you say Iran was "turning Communist" in a way that warrants comparisons to "the worst thing that can happen to a nation"?
Inherent human rights are universal. The closer the world comes to this ideal, the better life is for more people.
For an extreme example of this issue, look at the Middle East. They have simply never taken to democracy, and a good number of people are of the opinion it is simply an issue with their culture.
According to the level of democracy in nations throughout the world published by Freedom House and various other freedom indices, the Middle Eastern and North African countries with the highest scores are Israel, Tunisia, Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco, and Kuwait.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_the_Middle_East
Democracy, to the extent which it's established in Europe and the United States, is the result of a long process. Many of the Middle Eastern countries are still dealing with their mainstream religion claiming to override all laws and national sovereignty. By that measure, they are over a dozen generations behind the west in that process.
No, they are not. This reflects a bias to believing that your own ideas and values are best. The only value that is universal is power.
> the... countries with the highest scores are Israel...
I'm not sure what this is meant to argue. It is merely a listing of the countries in a certain area with the highest levels of democracy.
> they are over a dozen generations behind the west
Further reflection of your condescending attitude. Who are you to say they are "behind"? I believe in liberty, and would suppose you do as well, but what right have we to tell others what is right? Democracy may or may not take hold, but it is not intrinsically good.
Democracy is not a universal value, and cannot be forced on others. That is moral imperialism.
Most of history is dominated by such "might makes right" thinking, and much of human history is dark. It's universal inherent human rights which are the outlier, and which have contributed to the outlier of prosperity and individual human well being we have in the US today.
I'm not sure what this is meant to argue. It is merely a listing of the countries in a certain area with the highest levels of democracy.
I'm not arguing. Merely informing.
Further reflection of your condescending attitude.
?? I think you are projecting.
Who are you to say they are "behind"?
They have ideological/philosophical ideas which the West abandoned well over a dozen generations ago, and for good reason, because those ideas have untenable epistemological problems.
I believe in liberty, and would suppose you do as well, but what right have we to tell others what is right?
Given Freedom of Speech, I believe everyone should be able to express their opinion. Then, there is also freedom of association. It's better to convince than coerce. I think we both agree on that.
Democracy may or may not take hold, but it is not intrinsically good.
Individual human rights are intrinsically good. This tends to result in Democracy, but I would grant that the relationship ends there.
Democracy is not a universal value, and cannot be forced on others. That is moral imperialism.
Sure. Forcing people to be democratic isn't democratic. Nor is it respecting individual human rights. I think we should be doing our part to convince others, however.
I did not advocate for this, I simply said it was a reality. It is sad but true. I would ask: why is your set of "universal human rights" true? Who defines it? I would argue that the UN has attempted to define a number of bogus rights that are not intrinsic (indeed, America has in the past protested against some of these; see the holier-than-though stance the UN takes on home-schooling).
> I'm not arguing. Merely informing.
I asked because I wasn't sure what you were arguing by stating which nations were most democratic in that area. Could you clarify?
> everyone should be able to express their opinion
I think most agree on the principle, but courts claim they may restrict time, place and manner. Who draws the line, and where?
> Individual human rights are intrinsically good. This tends to result in Democracy
Yes. Liberty is a good thing. The problem is that not every one's culture has the same degree of liberty. Many languages do not even have the same word for liberty that America does; I believe it is Egypt that has it as a word meaning something granted from above rather than an intrinsic thing given by God.
My point is simply that democracy may never exist everywhere. Quite frankly, it is not perfect. Had America maintained some of her more republican policies (less centralization; state-appointed senators; etc.), we may have had reduced political polarization. Democracy is very difficult at scale.
Indeed. This changes over time. It's a process.
My point is simply that democracy may never exist everywhere.
No one disputed that, or held forth any opinion contradicting that.
Quite frankly, it is not perfect.
Agreed.
Democracy is very difficult at scale.
Indeed, it is very messy.
Poor people and even "middle class" cannot afford to be accused of a crime. It is incredibly, impossibly expensive to afford justice.
In the US, it is far cheaper to accept a plea deal for a crime - even if innocent. Look at the US numbers for accused that actually "get their day in court".
Nolo estimates over 90% of cases never go to trial (https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-criminal-cases-a... ) This sounds remarkably close to the Japanese numbers.
Nor is it that they can restrict access to the outside world, only allowing you to speak to family for max 20m a day, with a translator + officer present at all times.
No, the real kicker is that the clock for the 20-30 day detention period starts fresh every time, for each charge they want to investigate. This means that they can essentially keep people in detention for as long as they want by having a list of charges and "investigating" them one at a time.
If you're used to things like due process, "give me my phone call", etc, the Japanese justice system is quite difficult to wrap your head around.
I have no idea if Ghosn is guilty of what he is accused of. But there are massive pressures to extract confessions from people in his position. And forced confessions reduce the legitimacy of the entire justice system.
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Maybe one way to think of the Japanese justice system is that the trial happens before the defendant is arrested. After all, the conviction rate is nearly 100%, so in some sense the actual trial is just a formality. From that perspective, it's not surprising that defendants may be detained without bail for weeks: the system treats them as if they are already convicted.
It seems to me that with such a system, it's far too easy to convict an innocent person: after all, the decision is made by prosecutors, who are usually incentivized to err on the side of conviction (both by career pressures and by personal predisposition).
Do we know whether Japan has a really high false conviction rate? It's probably very hard to answer, since it's unclear how anyone could collect such statistics.
If it turns out that false convictions are rare in Japan, it may imply the prosecutors are actually trying to discover the truth rather than convict. Which would be a very interesting deviation from any other justice system I know of.
It seemed like a very safe place. I had heard about crime in Japan, and the year before had (allegedly) less than 100 murders for the entire country, which puts the murder rate far, far below the rest of the world.
And these days when I read about how criminal justice works there... well, I'm glad I'm not as naive as I used to be.
E.G. If the police charge you in Japan, there is very little chance not being sentenced to something (or taken hostage). Compared to Germany where you would have a much fairer trial.
constitution that was essentially
written by Americans
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rittersturz-Konferenz
[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verfassungskonvent_auf_Herrenc...
Please don't forget that (1) the allies had really diametrically opposed goals -- France had to be coerced by the UK and the US to agree to the draft constiution. Moreover, (2) the allies tried hard to avoid the impression that they were forcing anything on the german drafters. Only the date for the drafting conference was an allied constraint: 1. September 1948. The allies wanted to West-German population to accept the constitution, remember the cold was was hotting up at the time, and Soviet union was good at exploiting discontent.
approved of the Germans
that went there
When it came to the content of the constitution, the Allies' conditions were clear and pretty general - it had to be democratic, and it had to be federal. (The latter was distinguished from the Weimar constitution only in that the Allies insisted on general size parity between states.) Plus complying with occupation policy on control of heavy industry. See https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurter_Dokumente
The main principles of the constitution itself were assembled by German elected governments of the states (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verfassungskonvent_auf_Herrenc...), and were very much direct responses to the process of the Nazi takeover in 1933.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_of_no_confidence#German...
But more importantly, the post-war constitution was not allowed to be amended in ways that would contradict its "liberal democratic basic order" (banning a rerun of the Enabling Act).
Plus a specific exception that says a state of emergency can't be called against labor disputes.
It's been really interesting listening to German radio this last year, as we're passing 100th anniversaries of assorted formative events of the Weimar era. The idea of the Bundesrepublik being the successor of the republican Reich isn't just a legal concept, it's a very deeply held view (at least among the political and journalistic classes).
How do you know it is safe if you can easily be wrongly convicted, but no statistic about the country shows that?
This is how it is that safe.
This is how it is that safe.
Or, the criminals are organized and have connections and unspoken agreements with the authorities, existing in a kind of truce.
(EDIT: In essence, the seven to seventy times thinking over has been enshrined and institutionalized.)
If the Japanese people want to change this, and want external support to change this, that is an entirely different discussion from what was in this article.
There's plenty of evidence in the form of the many people who want to come here, and in the form of the many people who have come here and established successful happy lives. My family history is evidence. Inherent, universal human rights are the right side of history. The history of the world shows this.
Being a "sovereign" nation is not a justification for anything. I am happy to denounce bad thing that other countries do, because of my "sovereign" right to do so.
Just because something is normalised doesn't mean it's ok, I think we can both agree on that?
Seems like empty rhetoric to me.
The Rikers cases are miscarriages of justice and the two famous cases led to changes in the law to prevent some future horrors.
Just look at how America is all-too-willing to let mass murderers like the Sackler family get away with profiting off of addiction. Do these sound like words of someone trying to do anything other than profit off of death? “The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense, and white.”
Meanwhile you see blue collar Americans charged with federal riot and conspiracy charges for exercising their legally protected free speech rights at a protest that they had acquired a permit for (Rise Above Movement).
No, they weren't attacked. They were the aggressors. They have a history of being aggressors. They openly admit to being violent and aggressive.
Meanwhile the people who show up with weapons and masks, and with no permit and incite the violence don't even get arrested.
It even happened a few days ago at a Trump rally. A reporter got harassed and attacked, and nothing will happen to the perpetrators - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j693_xvdGTI
I like the principle you are espousing here. The people who commit violence, trying to inject/normalize violence and intimidation into the US political system, should be treated as a terrorist group.
They were the aggressors. They have a history of being aggressors. They openly admit to being violent and aggressive.
People who fit the description given by the above three sentences should be treated as a terrorist group. (1 - Aggressors. 2 - History of aggression. 3 - Openly admit to being violent and aggressive.) If you are espousing this principle, I wholeheartedly agree!
Interesting but Japan almost never jails politicians who are by far more often guilty of stealing/using for their private purposes taxpayers money. They just get a slap on the wrist and they are good to go - no jail sentence, no crime. Amazing isn't it?
The pedestrian definition of "torture" as per the Merriam-Webster dictionary is:
1: the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure
2: a) something that causes agony or pain; b) anguish of body or mind
3: distortion or overrefinement of a meaning or an argument
I guess definition 2b in the context of "mind" fits best with your proposition. Which then leads to the definition of "anguish".
Alternatively, we can examine the legal definition, which will vary by jurisdiction, but for completeness, I will link to the UN definition at https://www.apt.ch/en/what-is-torture/. In brief:
"Torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession"
Here, you'd have to ask if prolonged unwanted questioning causes "severe [mental] pain or suffering".
And finally, perhaps you mean torture in the figurative sense.
Either way, if simply questioning someone "longer than they want" is "torture" then pretty much all of us have, at some point tortured someone. At that point, the word "torture" becomes synonymous with "discomfort" or "to annoy" and would, IMO, lose all utility from a legal point of view.
In the final analysis, what this boils down to is that the world does not exist to serve your desires. Unpleasant things can and will happen to you. Even being asked questions you don't want to answer in situations where you cannot leave. While an individual may never have experienced anything more unpleasant than that, and thus it feels horrible to them, the fact is that there are far far FAR more unpleasant experiences that millions of others have faced. Society does not owe the sheltered more than the less sheltered.
2 hours of questioning in a room? Not that torturous. 60 days, 12 hours a day, even if your basic needs are met? Pretty bad.
The Merriam-Webster definition above is weak.
One discussion around torture with my philosophy professor (thankfully the french engineering cursus has one or two interesting classes) really stuck to my mind. We were discussing a text where a french general that had practiced torture in Algerie. He said something that amounts to "I have asked my soldiers to electrocute me so I could see how it feels like, it is not that bad so I felt ok about using it on algerians". It misses the whole point of torture : that you totally lose control, which is where the agony comes from. Anecdotally, I have also been briefly electrocuted by accident once. The pain was indeed not that bad.
But I have not been tied to a chair and subjected to somebody electrocuting me for as long as they like.
This kind of repeated pain is what is impossible to resist to for very long. Not to mention that any sensation can be used that way, tickling is also a form of torture.
So I can see why you can construct that forcing somebody to answer questions, possible very hard ones about somebody close to them that just died, can also be a form of torture.
I think it's the implied 'ill will' of the interrogator also has an effect.
Knowing that someone means you harm and might even be willing to escalate that harm, is very stressful.
So, without using “torture”, what is the position of yours you’re challenging us to change?
You could say the following as well:
I don't see the problem. Dictatorship is normal around the world.
Since when is something normal just because it's widespread? There is no reason to keep someone in jail unless there is a strong suspicion they are a threat to others, or a risk of flight.
There are also done under threat.
"Plea guilty to X and take 6 months in prison, or we will charge you with Y which carries 10 years in prison. If you choose the second option we will give you an overworked public defender who loses 90% of the time."
In effect, it is punishing people for insisting on their right to a jury trial.
My self disappointment is immeasurable.
> The system must change.
> First, every suspect should have the right to consult a lawyer as soon as the case is in the hands of prosecutors, and questioning should be prohibited in the absence of an attorney.
The article makes no attempt whatsoever to explain why the above change "must" be made. I'm on the fence on this matter, but the article just sounds like a sanctimonious scolding of Japan for not doing what other Western countries are doing.
"We're all doing it, so you better do it too" isn't a particularly compelling argument. In fact, given how much more effective their criminal Justice system is compared to America's, I would err on the side of keeping up their good work.
That's not the argument. The real argument is from principle. The principle of inherent human rights.
When a society justifies human rights abuses based on results, bad things tend to happen.
> Japanese prosecutors subject suspects to up to eight hours of daily questioning while they are detained in a bid to obtain a confession, shutting off access to their family and barring them from obtaining legal assistance during the questioning. And according to the popular narrative, it’s all done capriciously, with the nefarious machinations of the state lurking behind.
This is true in almost every western country except the US. England, Canada, Australia etc you have no right to a lawyer during questioning. Police will destroy and cover up evidence in attempt to frame people on a regular basis, and basically join the prosecution from day 1 instead of investigating crime. They seek certain sorts of convictions to please their politics masters. They much rather a rape conviction than a false accusation conviction for example. They will prosecute people against the weight of evidence, where in fact the only evidence is exculpatory.
Consider the case of Mark Pearson. Falsely accused of a rape after bumping into a woman in a subway station. Video evidence proved it wasn't possible, so police slowed down the footage to make it appear it did happen. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/cps-slowed-down-...
Now if this same thing happened in Japan, if they saw the video footage that basically proved it was a false accusation, do you think they would have acted as capriciously as UK police, or maybe charged the woman instead?
The narcissism of the Western political/legal class knows no bounds.
you can find him on linkedin.
Not to mention the 'West' just finished 4 years of blowing each other up, not very "Civilized" imo.