EUROPEAN UNION. JAPAN TO ABOLISH DEATH PENALTY

December 2, 2005: the European Union renewed its call on Japan to abolish the death penalty.
"We would like Japan to introduce a moratorium on the death penalty immediately," Michael Reiterer, deputy head of the European Commission delegation to Japan, told reporters.
He criticized the "secrecy" about the death penalty in Japan, which gave inmates only a few hours notice before hanging them in order to ward off last-minute appeals. "Executions always take place when the Diet (parliament) is not in session," the Austrian diplomat said.
Japan, the only major industrialized nation other than the United States to practice the death penalty, had executed only one inmate in 2005, but Reiterer expressed alarm that courts were handing out more death sentences.
"The Japanese government answer that 80 percent of Japanese are in favor of the death penalty is not enough. The argument that the death penalty is necessary to prevent crime is not true because hideous crimes took place even after Japan reintroduced death penalty," he said. Japan suspended the death penalty from November 1989 to March 1993 when justice ministers opposed to the capital punishment refused to agree to executions. (Sources: Agence France Presse, 02/12/2005)