Statement by the International Commission against the Death Penalty on the execution of Aleh Hryshkawtsow and Andrey Burdyka in Belarus
The International Commission against the Death Penalty (ICDP) would like to join the International Community in strongly condemning the recent executions of Aleh Hryshkawtsow and Andrey Burdyka in Belarus. They were sentenced to death in May 2010 and, according to several human rights organisations, have been executed without neither of them nor their families being notified in advance on their execution date.
ICDP deeply regrets that that Belarus has made use of the death penalty even though the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, stated on the occasion of the Forth All Belarus People’s Congress that he will revisit the issue of capital punishment in his country.
ICDP was founded in order to obtain the establishment of a universal moratorium on the use of the death penalty with a view to its total abolition, and to call for the suspension of executions in cases where International Law prohibits or restricts its application.
ICDP believes that the death penalty violates the right to life recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that it should not be applied whatever the circumstances. ICDP also underlines that there exists no scientific proof that the death penalty deters crime effectively.
ICDP urges the Belarusian authorities to introduce immediately a moratorium on executions and death sentences, and to join the worldwide trend towards abolition of the death penalty which is clearly predominant in Europe, a virtually death penalty free region with the only exception of Belarus.
The ICDP was established on 7 October 2010 in Madrid. Its mandate is to undertake complementary actions to the ones carried out by International and Regional Organizations, civil society and representatives of the political world, favouring the abolition of the death penalty.
