DUSHANBE, October 9, Asia-Plus — On the occasion of the European and World”s Day against Death Penalty on October 10, the European Union reiterates its call to other countries and regions to fully abolish death penalty from their legislation and practice or at least introduce moratorium for executions, press release issued by the Delegation of the European Commission in Tajikistan said.
To the date, 94 countries in the world, including all EU Member States have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, while other 45 countries have abolished it with the exception to extraordinary crimes or de facto do not commit executions. At the same time, 58 countries still use capital punishment having 2,390 prisoners executed and 8,864 sentenced to death in 2008.
The European Union has a firm position to achieve the universal abolition of the death penalty as it violates the very concept of human rights.
It is commonly agreed that the use of death penalty does not help to reduce criminality or restore justice, make possible miscarriages of justice irreversible and often leads to cruel and degrading treatment to prisoners in a dead row.
The Delegation of the European Commission welcomes the decision of the Central Asia states to limit the use of the death penalty. For the moment, the Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have fully abolished the death penalty, Kazakhstan has it provisioned only for certain types of crime and Tajikistan introduced moratorium on its use. The Delegation hopes this policy continues towards the full abolition of death penalty in all five Central Asian countries and also encourages Central Asian partners to join forces with the EU on its work on universal abolition of the death penalty within the international fora and toward other countries and regions.
