Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-06-13-Speech-4-221"
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"en.20020613.10.4-221"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should like, in particular, to thank Mrs Frassoni, President of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, for having put this matter to the vote on Monday as an addition to the subjects for topical and urgent debate, and I should also like to thank Mrs Napoletano of the Group of the Party of European Socialists and Mrs Malmström of the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party, as well as the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats – whatever the views of Mr Sacrédeus – and the Communist Group for having supported and upheld this resolution.
I think we had to salute this remarkable Council of Europe initiative, which is aimed not at all countries but at specific ones, namely the countries with observer status within the Council of Europe and, in particular, the United States and Japan.
A delegation from the Council of Europe recently visited Japan to participate in a seminar organised by the Japanese Diet and, in spite of what Mr Ford says, the Parliamentary League, which has actually been in existence for nine years, had been somewhat in abeyance and has only resumed its work very recently.
That said, I think that the issue of the death penalty in democratic countries is one thing, while the death penalty in non-democratic dictatorships is another. I freely admit that the vast majority of cases – the figure is 98% – involve dictatorships but, where dictatorships are concerned, I think that the priority is not perhaps the abolition of the death penalty but a return to democracy and the rule of law. The battle is quite different, as are the forces deployed, but I believe that this initiative, aimed at three democratic Asian countries, is important, and important for one essential reason.
When we meet the top leaders of the People’s Republic of China, we see them basically arguing in favour of a certain relativism in human rights whereby there is apparently a distinctively Asian approach to the issue. What, then, we have to state is that there is no such Asian approach to human rights. There is a universal approach to human rights and democracy and, that being said, enlisting countries as important as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in the ranks of the abolitionist countries is crucial to affirming this universal nature of human rights.
It is therefore obvious – and I hope, by saying this, to reassure Mr Sacrédeus – that we are not giving up the battle for the abolition of the death penalty in dictatorships. It is just that, in such countries, the problem is just one among so many others. What matters now is to affirm this idea of universality, and I think we also need to start thinking about transforming the Council of Europe. With the forthcoming enlargement, there is now an overlap between the European Union and the Council of Europe, and I think we need to think about transforming the Council of Europe into a Universal Council of Democracies into which we could integrate countries like Canada, the United States, Japan and South Korea and have them genuinely spearhead a campaign to affirm democracy throughout the world, beginning with the battles for the abolition of the death penalty and for the International Criminal Court."@en1
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