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Malady Front calls on House of Representative to debate moratorium on death penalty

Malady Front has called on the House of Representatives to debate the possible establishment of a moratorium on the death penalty in Belarus.

On Tuesday, the opposition youth group sent each of the 110 Representatives a letter urging them to initiate the debate, Malady Front spokesman Yulian Misyukevich told BelaPAN.

“Belarus is the last country on the continent where people continue to be sentenced to death,” said Malady Front in the appeal. “We believe that the very fact that the state may kill a person does not fit in with the notion of civilized society and runs counter to the Christian traditions of our country.”

The group said that the risk of a court error was high, while established procedures gave little time to correct it. “Executions are carried out in a short space of time without additional proper checks,” it said.

Relatives of death row inmates are not told about the date of the execution or the burial place, and the bodies are never released to them, which is “outrageous,” said Malady Front.

People have changed and so has the situation in the country since the use of the death penalty was approved through the 1996 national referendum, said the group. “They say on television that we won a victory against crime a long time ago. Most Belarusians, along with the Roman Catholic Church and the [Russian] Orthodox Church, today oppose the use of the death penalty. Besides, statistician data suggest that the use of the punishment does not help bring the rates of violent crimes down.”