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RIGHTS: Death Penalty Lingers in Former Soviet Republics

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Apr 4 2010 (IPS) - The executions of two Belarus citizens in March and calls by Russian senators to reintroduce capital punishment for terrorists are being seen as indications that the death penalty is not about to fade out soon in the former Soviet republics.

Amnesty International (AI), the London-based human rights organisation, said in a report that no executions took place in Europe in 2009. Belarus remains the only nation to use the death penalty in the region with two executions last month.

Friederike Behr from AI’s Europe and Central Asia Programme explained to IPS that the Russian constitutional court has clearly stated that the path towards full abolition was irreversible.

“Russia has committed itself to a number of international human rights treaties which simply do not allow the return of the death penalty. Politicians may pay lip service to those among the people of Russia who still believe that the death penalty helps to reduce crime rates,” Behr said.

It would be appropriate, Behr said, for Russian politicians to remind those who still favour the death penalty in Russia of Andrei Sakharov’s words: “savagery begets only savagery”.

The executions of Andrei Zhuk and Vasily Yuzepchuk were shocking and disappointing. President Alexander Lukashenko chose not to exercise his right to grant clemency despite pressure from the Council of Europe and the general global trend to move away from the death penalty.

The UN Human Rights Committee was considering applications from the two men and had asked the Belarusian authorities not to execute the two men until they made a decision. But the authorities went ahead with the executions showing a lack of respect for human rights standards which Belarus has voluntarily signed up to by ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Behr said that the way the death penalty is carried out in Belarus violates international fair trial standards.

‘’Condemned prisoners have only one level of appeal after which they can apply for clemency to the president. Most death row prisoners are executed within a year. They are not informed of the date of execution and will only be told that their application for clemency has failed minutes before they are taken into a separate room and shot,’’ Behr said.

‘’Their families do not have the chance to see them for the last time and are kept in ignorance of the execution, sometimes for weeks or months,” Behr added.

For the first time, AI and local human rights organisations had access to death row prisoners and their families and were able to organise worldwide campaigns on their behalf.

The campaigning had some impact and the prisoners’ relatives reported that they were treated more humanely as a result. Unusually, Andrei Zhuk’s mother was informed by prison guards of her son’s fate within a week of the execution being carried out.

Many former Soviet satellites banned capital punishment in the 1980s and ’90s. Russia and Ukraine have not executed anyone in more than a decade. Amnesty said Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have executed about 130 people between them over the past 10 years.

Since 2006 Belarus has been the only European state to carry out death sentences.

Rait Kuuse, regional director of South Caucasus for Panel Reform International, told IPS in an email that all South Caucasus countries abolished the death penalty years ago. The death penalty was abolished in Georgia in 1997.

The upper house of the Russian parliament may propose amendments to the criminal law stipulating the death penalty for organisers of terrorist attacks resulting in multiple deaths, according to Anatoly Lyskov, chairman of the Federation Council’s Committee on Legal and Juridical Issues.

“This is our reaction to tragic events in Moscow,” Lyskov said referring to the Mar. 29 metro blasts that resulted in the deaths of 39 commuters. .

His committee is working on a draft law which would introduce death penalty for terrorists. The current law provides for life imprisonment for terrorist acts leading to the death of a single individual.

The death penalty was de facto abolished in Russia in 1996. The country imposed the moratorium after it joined the Council of Europe that year and signed the European Convention on Human Rights, but it has not yet ratified the document.

The Russian parliamentarian said amendments to be worked out by the Federation Council’s committee stipulated that people involved in terrorist attacks resulting in multiple loss of life could not be pardoned.

Lyskov said the committee would work out the amendments at the earliest possible date and send them to the government and the Supreme Court for approval.