Expert: Belarus should withdraw from UN and then live by its national laws

Another death sentence has been carried into execution in Belarus.

Citizens of Hrodna have been shot. A year ago they were sentenced to death penalty. Why Belarus is still the only country in Europe where people are still executed, and what the reaction of Europe would be?

The convicts were found guilty of a triple murder committed in October last year. It was the first verdict of supreme penalty by Hrodna regional court in the last ten years. After the verdict was delivered, convicts Aleh Hryshkavets (Oleg Grishkovets) and Andrei Burdyka wrote an appeal for pardon to the president, but it was refused. As in the case of Andrei Zhuk and Vasily Yazepchuk shot last year, the sentences were enforced despite the fact that the both convicts appealed to the UN Committee on Human Rights and appropriate procedures were started.

- According to these procedures, Belarus could not carry out the sentence, -- stressed the deputy chairman of Vyasna human rights centre Valyantsin Stefanovich. – But our country, as far as I understand, once again disregarded its commitments to the United Nations.

When in March last year Andrei Zhuk, 25 and Vasily Yuzepchuk, 30, were put to death, the UN Committee on Human Rights in its special statement expressed indignation at the legal killing of the two persons, whose appeals were under consideration of the committee.

Touching upon the official inquiry of the UN Committee on Human Rights on this issue, Anatoly Kulyashou, Belarusian Interior Minister, noted that he “is not living by the laws of the UN.” “I am living according to the laws of my country. Our laws are a priority,” Anatoly Kulyashou underlined. “When we discuss all these inquiries, then we shall observe them. And today we are living in the framework of our legislation, and not the norms introduced by someone,” Anatoly Kulyashou underlined.

“In such a case Belarus must withdraw from the UN and go on living by its national laws,” Valyantsin Stefanovich believes. “I do not see any sense in ratification of the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other UN documents defending human rights, when they are not abided by?

A political analyst Yury Chavusau stresses that Belarus is the only state not only in Europe but in the ex-USSR countries where capital punishment is not abolished. However he thinks that in this case reaction would be not so loud as in the last year when Zhuk and Yazepchuk were executed.

“Last year liberalization of the Belarsuain regime was a topical issue, and execution of the death sentence was demonstration departure from the policy proclaimed,” the expert said. “After December 19, 2010 no one expects any compromises form the Belarusian authorities, even in the issue of capital punishment.”

As said by Chavusau, now a new wave of criticism from human rights watchdogs is expected, but Belarusian leadership does not conduct a dialogue on capital punishment abolition, at least in the public sphere. So this criticism would remain just one of the items on the long list of claoms against the Belarusian authorities.

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