23/04/2014 President
“The Assembly has on numerous occasions expressed its total and unconditional condemnation of the death penalty,” said Anne Brasseur, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE ) in reaction to the execution of Pavel Sialiun, aged 23, by the authorities in Belarus.
“However hideous the crime committed by the individual, a killing authorised by the state cannot be an answer in today’s Europe,” she said. “In this instance the death sentence was carried out while the victim still had a complaint pending before the UN Human Rights Committee and the mother of the victim only learned of the execution after it took place. The lack of information and the cruelty surrounding this intolerable practice in Belarus, the fact that the body of the executed is not given to the family and that the burial place remains secret, emphasises to me the barbaric nature of capital punishment in Belarus,” Ms Brasseur added.
The President explained that abolition of the death penalty is one of the highest priorities for the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly in its dealing with Belarus, but regretted that little progress has been made on the issue over the years. “It is hard for me to understand the reasons why the Belarusian authorities resolve to retain the right to kill: Belarus is the last country in Europe to apply capital punishment. I am certain that Belarusian society, like the rest of Europe can abandon this practice and I call on the authorities in Belarus to take their responsibility and make Europe a continent free from the death penalty,” she concluded.