Famous Belarusian musician Uladzimir Puhach: ‘To execute a human being for committing a crime is the silliest thing on Earth’
Uladzimir Puhach, frontman of J:MORC rock band, has joined the public campaign for the abolition of death penalty in Belarus, saying that ‘it is not the gravity of the punishment but its inevitability that keeps a person from committing a crime.’
‘Mankind has passed through many stages of development. Many things have been invented and many things have been forgotten. This is how the progress comes into being. People used to eat one another – then they gave it up. People used to kill one another and, unfortunately, continue to do so. But I believe that one day people will stop killing each other. And what could be my biggest dream is that one day people will stop killing each other by law.
To execute a human being for committing a crime is the silliest thing on Earth. Because a human being who ceases to exist cannot suffer any negative consequences of his or her deeds, as lawyers say. It is his or her family who are punished. And the main thing is that, as one famous lawyer would say, it is not the gravity of the punishment but its inevitability that keeps a person from committing a crime. In case a person is 100% sure that after committing a crime he or she will be punished, he will not do it. If, instead, the crime will be punished with 5 or 6 death penalties but the criminal is sure he or she can escape punishment, the crime WILL be committed anyway. The gravity of the punishment is helpless.’
