Killer state
Death convicts are executed every year only in one European country, Belarus. The state continues to take revenge on the criminals, forgetting about the principles of rehabilitation and just punishment, and thus becomes the murderer of its citizens.
In the middle of July 2011, Andrei Burdyka and Aleh Hryshkautsou were executed. They had been sentenced to death on 14 May for an armed assault on an apartment in Hrodna in October 2009. The execution was conducted though their personal communication was pending at the UN Human Rights Committee, which means that the execution violated the international commitments of Belarus.
Homel robber and murderer Ihar Malik is waiting to be executed, as on 11 February 2011 the Supreme Court of Belarus dismissed his request for mitigation of the penalty. The ambiguous case about the terrorist act in the Minsk metro can bring another death sentence as well.
On 28 September, during his speech at the death penalty section of the annual OSCE Human Dimension meeting, Andrei Paluda, coordinator of the campaign "Human Rights Defenders against the Death Penalty", drew the attention of the international community to the fact that the state-owned mass media ceased to discuss the issue of the death penalty abolition or moratorium. He addressed the Belarusian authorities with the demand to show the political will for introducing the death penalty moratorium as the first step to the total abolition of the death penalty, as a result of which the lives of death convicts could be saved and Europe could become completely free from such barbarism as the death penalty.
On 10 October, the World Day against the Death Penalty, activists campaign "Human Rights Defenders against the Death Penalty in Belarus," once again remind citizens about the problems associated with the death penalty: the imperfection of the judicial system in Belarus, about the torments which the relatives of those killed have to bear, not knowing the place of burial of the executed, nor the time of the execution, as the law prohibits informing the relatives about the place and time of the execution and passing them the bodies of the executed. The “cause of death” graph in the death certificates they receive is blank.
We intend to hold informational actions in many towns and cities, including the demonstration of human rights movies dedicated to the problem of the death penalty, including the Belarusian documentary “Cause of Death”.
Each of us can cast a vote to leave the life to those who are waiting on the death row, or may be executed in the future, by signing a petition against the death penalty in Belarus, that has been signed by more than 3,500 people already.
