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Japanese executions condemned

11 December 2007, 03:08PM

We strongly condemn and regret the hanging of three men - Hiroki Fukawa, Seiha Fujima, and Noboru Ikemoto - in Japan on 7 December. The executions have taken place despite the United Nations General Assembly's adoption last month of a resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium.

This action runs counter to the universal protection of human rights and comes at a time when there is a clear international trend away from the use of the death penalty. On 15 November, the Third Committee of 62nd session of UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted the resolution calling for a global moratorium on executions with 99 countries voting in favour of it. The resolution will now come before a full sitting of the UNGA for final adoption in mid-December.

Executions in Japan are typically held in secret. Prisoners are only informed hours before their executions and carried out without prior notice to the prisoners or their family.

These executions are the first under the current Minister of Justice, Kunio Hatoyama, who announced publicly in September that he was considering scrapping the rule, under the Criminal Procedure Code, requiring the signature of the Minister of Justice for executions. As of 7 December 2007, there are at least 107 prisoners on death row in Japan; 23 cases carrying the death sentence were confirmed by the courts in 2007, which marks the highest number since 1962.

Very few countries currently carry out executions: in 2006, only 25 countries carried out executions. Among major industrialised countries, Japan now is conspicuously the only country which has a fully operational death penalty system: the US Supreme Court has blocked all planned executions in the country until it makes a ruling on executions by lethal injection.

We call on Japanese government to cease executions and adopt an immediate moratorium on executions in accordance with the UN resolution.

For more information about the executions see BBC News

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