6 February Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, condemned the recent executions in Belarus. Earlier, Rene van der Linden, Chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, had also called upon the President of Belarus to abolish the death penalty. Three leaders of Homel criminal gang – Valery Harbaty, Ihar Danchanka and Siarhei Marozau – were recently executed by shooting.  Right, Ales Bialiatski, Vice Chairman of the International Federation of Human Rights. (8-FEB-08)

 

Based on news releases on  http://www.spring96.org/be/ and http://naviny.by/


The attitude of Belarusian human rights activists to death penalty in Belarus was expressed by Ales Bialiatski, the vice-chairman of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). ‘Recently we could several times hear from A. Lukashenka that Belarus is a European country and Belarusians are a European people. Pitifully enough, we have to state that the present authorities conform neither to the people, nor to the country. They simply don’t reach the necessary level, because they behave like barbarians. I mean the death executions in Belarus. There is no death penalty in European and the post-Soviet countries any more!

 

The roots of this are in the Stalinist era
In the 1920s the Belarusian politicians of European orientation from the Belarusian Christian Democracy Party and the Belarusian Social-revolutionaries which acted on the territory of the Western Belarus, declared in their political manifests the abolishment of death penalty after their coming to power. Thus, the roots of the present Belarusian authorities are in Stalin’s totalitarianism of 1930-ies, when millions of people were executed, by shooting. That’s why execution by shooting is a usual, ‘brand-name’ thing for the present authorities. The Belarusian human rights activists decisively speak against capital punishment. We hope that real steps for understanding the notions of civilization and European values will be taken instead of just blank declarations of European orientation that can be periodically heard from the Belarusian state officials, and finally these barbarian traditions will be stopped.’

 

Belarus is ready to declare moratorium on capital punishment

Belarus is ready to declare moratorium on executions. It was said by Aliaksandr Arkhipau, the chairman of the Regular Commission on legislation and judicial issues of the Chamber of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus. However, it is hard to predict, when this moratorium will be really declared.