Say NO to the death penalty in Belarus

A resident of Vialeika Tamara Sialiun, whose son Pavel was executed on a verdict of the Hrodna Regional Court in April 2014, visited the photo exhibition of the journalist Siarhei Balai “Capital Punishment”. The heroines of this photo project are Sviatlana Zhuk, Liubou Kavaliova, Tamara Sialiun, Volha Hrunova and Tamara Chikunova – the mothers, whose children's lives were taken by the state under the guise of anti-human law.

The mother, who is still experiencing great suffering from the loss of her son, was impressed by what she saw at the exhibition and says that people need to know and see, at least in the pictures, the burning pain of the mothers whose children are killed on state verdicts. She is convinced of the necessity to demonstrate such things on the widest scale possible, so that the society would know how the mothers of the executed look like and what suffering they have to bear.

"It is a mistake to say that time heals”, said Tamara Sialiun. “This is untrue. Time does not heal. Today I am said that the sun is shining around, there are yellow leaves everywhere, but I do not notice them, I stopped noticing the colors. Yesterday, however, I was very much supported by Tamara Chikunova. I did not expect that there are such people. Her energy has added me the strength to live on, and not to lose heart."

Let us remind that October of in Homel, human rights activists held a meeting within the framework of the "Week Against the Death Penalty", which was attended by mothersof death row prisoners: the founder of the public association "Mothers against the Death Penalty and Torture" (Uzbekistan) Tamara Chikunova, a Vialeika resident Tamara Sialiun and a Homel resident Volha Hrunova. Pavel Hrunou has been executed already, Aliaksandr Hrunou is waiting on the death row.