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PACE rapporteurs condemn another death sentence handed down in Belarus

 

Marina Schuster, general rapporteur on the abolition of the death penalty in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), and Andres Herkel, PACE’s rapporteur on Belarus, have expressed their dismay at another death sentence handed down in Belarus.

"Despite the signs indicating the prospect of a moratorium on the death penalty and recent progress in Belarus’ relationship with the Parliamentary Assembly, this execution would remove Belarus further from the strong European consensus against the death penalty," the rapporteurs stressed in their joint statement on May 3. "We call on the authorities in Belarus, through whatever means necessary, to prevent it from taking place. The death penalty as a form of punishment is an unacceptable violation of human rights, irrespective of the crime committed."

On April 25, in Strasbourg, the Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy decided to organize a seminar on the abolition of the death penalty and invite representatives of the Belarusian parliament for an exchange of views.

On April 24, the Mahilyow Regional Court imposed the death penalty on an inmate of a Mahilyow prison after he murdered a cellmate.

The 43-year-old man, a native of Ukraine’s Zhytomyr province who was earlier convicted of killing three people, reportedly played a game of dominoes with his future victim, with the stake being life. He won and strangled the loser with a scarf on July 14, 2012 with the help of a young accomplice.

Belarus is the only country in Europe that is not a member of the Council of Europe.

In 1993, the Belarusian parliament was granted Special Guest status in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, but was stripped of it in 1996 following a referendum that approved the use of the death penalty in the country.

In June 2009, PACE decided that the Belarusian parliament’s Special Guest status in the Assembly might be restored only after Minsk imposed a moratorium on the death penalty.

The following year Belarus carried out a number of executions after which PACE advised its members against visiting Belarus.

The use of the death penalty makes it impossible for Belarus to have any status in the Council of Europe, Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland told reporters in Strasbourg in January 2012.  // BelaPAN