Hands Off Cain
DEATH PENALTY·MAY 29, 2002·2 MIN READ

DEATH PENALTY: THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE ASKS JAPAN TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY

Tokyo, 28 May 2002 The Conference sponsored by the Council of Europe on “Justice and the Rights of Man in the observer countries of the Council of Europe (CoE): the abolition of the death penalty” has just come to an end in Tokyo. The two-day conference was attended by leading Japanese politicians, including the Minister of Justice and 63 members of parliament, the former death-row prisoner Sakae Menda, and 11 members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe promoted the initiative to strengthen the request made in the resolution of June 2001 to the observer countries at the CoE (the USA and Japan) to take significant steps towards the abolition of the death penalty by January 2003, otherwise their status as observers will be suspended.
The Japanese Minister of Justice believes that due to the widespread support for the death penalty among the general public, it is Parliament that must decide. The League of Japanese Parliamentarians for the abolition of the death penalty, composed of 120 members of parliament, pledged to present a white paper for the introduction of a moratorium on executions and the replacement of the death penalty with life imprisonment.

Olivier Dupuis, Radical MEP and member of the Executive Committee of Hands Off Cain, who took part in the Conference, said: “The role of Japan, like that of South Korea, two democratic Asian countries, is of fundamental importance for the globalisation of democracy and human rights. Their support on the issue of the abolition of the death penalty, as on the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court, is both possible and extremely important. A moratorium on executions is the path that can lead Japan to abolish the death penalty. To reinforce this process, however, Europe, and the European Union in particular, must continue to press the General Assembly of the United Nations to establish a universal moratorium on executions.”