06/02/2008 President
The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Lluís Maria de Puig, today expressed his profound dismay at the executions of Syarhey Marozaw, Ihar Danchanka and Valerii Gorbatii in Belarus.
“The Belarusian authorities have once again chosen the course of barbarism and injustice. President Lukachenko could have commuted these sentences and thus shown a clear determination to bring Belarus closer to the Council of Europe. Instead he decided to distance his country even further from the values shared by 800 million Europeans,” PACE President said.
He added that “this atrocity has unfortunately overshadowed the good news of yesterday’s release of the political prisoner Artur Finkevich”.
The PACE President pointed out that Belarus is the only European State which carries out executions and the only one which is not a member of the Council of Europe. He summed up by saying that “a firm will to place an immediate moratorium on executions and abolish the death penalty would be essential for any rapprochement with the Council”.