Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-12-Speech-1-007"
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"en.20051212.3.1-007"2
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"Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that this is a good opportunity for the President to make a statement on the death penalty. I say that this is a good opportunity because, as you know, on 10 December — two days ago — we celebrated the anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. These rights include one fundamental right: the right to life.
One significant fact is that 120 people sentenced to death have been released before execution because their innocence has been proven.
That is the situation. There is, however, a glimmer of hope, because United States society is turning against the death penalty, as well as popular juries, and the Supreme Court has abolished it in the case of minors and the mentally disabled. It has been abolished in twelve States; in 20 others, executions no longer take place.
Unfortunately, however, China is the country that holds the record in terms of executions. It appears that there are around 6 000 executions per year, though Amnesty International puts the figure at 3 400.
I wished to remind you of this situation, because I believe that we parliamentarians must work to convince our counterparts in all countries that the death penalty must be abolished, because for us Europeans life is an inalienable right and nobody can be deprived of that right regardless of the crimes of which they are guilty. That is what inalienable means: it does not depend on anybody’s responsibility, but on their very existence and essence as human beings.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Regrettably, however, a few days beforehand, in the United States, the execution took place of the 1 000th person since the death sentence was restored in 1976. The magic of round figures — 1 000 — and the fact that this coincides with the anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights make this situation particularly meaningful.
It was not just in the United States that an execution took place, however. Somebody was executed in Singapore as well, on the same day.
This is a good time to recall that the European Union campaigns against the death penalty, because it considers it contrary to our values. The abolition of the death penalty is a
condition for the accession of any country to the European Union.
Fortunately, progress is being made with the abolition of the death sentence in the world: in 1977, 16 countries had abolished the death penalty and now that figure stands at 84.
In 76 countries, however, the death sentence remains, and, in 24 countries, although it is effectively abolished, since there have been no executions for 10 years, it remains on the statute books.
Although the number of countries applying the death penalty has fallen, the number of executions has risen dramatically. According to Amnesty International, in 2004, 7 400 people were sentenced to death and in 25 countries almost 3 800 people were executed.
We should therefore not just focus on the figure of 1 000 in the United States, and we should retain a global view of what is happening in the world as a whole: 3 800 people executed during 2004.
Nevertheless, 95% of these executions, almost all of them, took place in China, in Iran, in Vietnam and in the United States. The United States is therefore the only democratic country that still applies the death penalty in a significant manner; 3 400 people are awaiting execution in its prisons."@en1
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