EU Presidency Declaration following execution of three people in Japan

The European Union is deeply concerned at the Japanese authorities' announcement that three people under sentence of death - Mr Yoshiyuki Mantani, aged 68, Mr Mineteru Yamamoto, aged 68, Mr Isamu Hirano, aged 61 - have been hanged.

The acceleration of executions in Japan confirms a particularly disturbing trend at a time when there are more than 100 prisoners waiting on death row.

The EU reiterates its longstanding opposition to the death penalty, whatever the circumstances, and is striving to achieve its universal abolition, seeking a global moratorium on the death penalty as the first step. The EU considers that the elimination of the death penalty is fundamental to the protection of human dignity and to the progressive development of human rights. Any miscarriage of justice in the application of capital punishment represents an irreparable and irreversible loss of human life. No legal system is immune from mistakes and there is no irrefutable evidence that the death penalty provides added value in terms of deterrence.

The European Union therefore asks Japan to re-introduce the moratorium on executions which was applied before 25 December 2006 and to contemplate abolishing the death penalty.

In this connection, the EU recalls that on 18 December 2007 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty which explicitly calls upon all States that still maintain the death penalty to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.

The Candidate Countries Turkey, Croatia* and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia*, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and the EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine align themselves with this declaration.


* Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.

| Arriba |

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