President of the legislative commission

ABSTRACT: * Igor BEZRUKOV: The death penalty has been applied during the history of Russia. It has been abolished at times (in 989 under Prince Vladimir of Kiev) and in modern times it has been replaced by exile in Siberia. The Bolsheviks'' claim that there would have been no death penalty in the U.S.S.R. was followed by mass purges. In the fifties it was reintroduced as an effective way of eliminating political dissidents. The present ruinous economic situation in Russia increases the crime rate and thus the use of the death penalty.

* Anatolij PRISTAVKIN: President of the commission for pardon established by Eltsin, who opposes the death penalty. The Commission, that was created 18 months ago, has already spared some 100 defendants.

* Petru MUNTEANU - Moldavia: suggests a progressive abolitionism, achieved by stages, in order not to shock the public opinion.

* Vladimir GRISHKIN - Russia: one of the authors of the new Russian Constitution, suggested to scrap the article on the death penalty. But 100 MPs voted against his proposal. The weight of the public opinion is very strong.

* Zejnal IBRAGIMOV - Azerbaijan. There is still no new penal code, and the Soviet one is still in effect. The war complicates the situation. The death penalty is applied also in cases of desertion. The Muslim religion, moreover, favours the death penalty.

* Sonia MLADENOVA - Bulgaria. Until the new Constitution is approved, in 1990 a moratorium was adopted in Bulgaria on executions, which is still in effect.

* Jakov GILINSKI - Russia. The mass executions and repressions are a means to maintain the power of a group. In the former Soviet Union between 1921 and 1953, 642,000 people were sentenced to death.

* Gaqo APOSTOLI - Albania. The Albanian population has been through so many massacres, occupations and acts of violence that it is more familiar with death than with life.

("HANDS OFF CAIN", 1 February 1994)

In the resolution, the Brussels congress said that the right of every human being not to be killed as an effect of a sentence or judicial measure, even if it is issued in the respect of the law, must be promoted as a fundamental and irrenounceable individual right in every juridical code, with particular reference to those States who are revising their Constitution, as for instance in many republics of the former Soviet Union.

During the Russian history, the death penalty was applied in various ways. In some periods it was also abolished. In 989, under Prince Vladimir of Kiev, a discussion was started on the basis of the principles of the Gospel. During his Principality a legislation was in effect that did not envision the death penalty.

In modern times things changed: the seed of the first millenium led to a rather peculiar situation, and capital punishment was replaced by exile in Siberia. The convict was pardoned, and in many cases was assisted by the local population. After 1917 the psychology of the masses changed: the Bolsheviks twice tried to abolish the death penalty, but failed. After their coming into power, they proclaimed to the world that the death penalty would no longer have been applied in the Soviet Union; these declarations were followed by mass purges and by the reintroduction of the death penalty in the fifties. The regime wanted an effective system to eliminate its political dissidents, and occasionally resorted to pretexts to apply capital punishment.

In 1953 an amnesty was introduced, followed by another one in 1987. This did not reduce the terror among the population, even if a comparable terror was generated by crimes.

At present a penal code adopted in 1960 is is force in Russia. More recently, until the end of the seventies or the early eighties, our jurists interpreted the penal code in the sense that it provides for the death penalty the status of "exceptional" penalty. During my university years, I had written that the death penalty was the "supreme" punishment; I was bitterly criticized, because capital punishment was an "exceptional" punishment, since the deprivation of freedom is considered the supreme penalty. Now that things are changing, it seems that capital punishment is once again regarded as a supreme and no longer an exceptional punishment, even though we are revising the penal code.

It contains the seed of the suppression of the death penalty: it rules that the death penalty cannot be applied to minors, pregnant women and people over sixty years of age. Recently, with a series of provisional modifications of the penal code, the death penalty was suppressed for a series of crimes. It is no longer applied for thefts of large sums of money but only for very serious crimes such as gangsterism, terrorist acts, certain cases of homicide, certain cases of rape, namely rape against a minor. There are about six categories of crimes for which the death penalty is applied.

But it is interesting to note that, despite the reduction of the categories to which it is applied, the number of death sentences has instead increased.

According to the Russian law, the crimes that can be punished with the death penalty are examined by a first-degree court which is higher than the regional penal tribunals.

We are experiencing serious economic hardship and we are witnessing a rigid division of society into classes, the rich and the poor: inevitably, in a society of this kind crimes increases, and with it, the use of the death penalty. Nonetheless, the use of the death penalty does not seem to contribute to reducing the crime; in fact, the two phenomena seem to grow in proportion. The criminal cares little whether he will sentenced to death or not; the important thing is not to be arrested. Not everyone in Russia realizes this situation. The members of the institutional commission of the Congress of People's Deputies have decided to operate for the complete suppression of the death penalty. The fact that we have switched to a democratic regime has brought about a reconsideration on the part of the population in favour of democratic humanitarian principles. When first drafting the Constitution, we wrote that the State wants to suppress the death penalty. The current Constitution, submitted to a referendum last 12

December, contains declarations of principle on the State, on the role or on the way to address the problem of the death penalty. But it also contains declarations that tend to advocate its exceptional application for particularly serious crimes, until the day it will be definitively abolished. It also says that the application of the death penalty will be submitted to the federal laws. But under the new Constitution, the Russian federal states will have no competences in this field: the penal law remains a federal competence.

The president of the Russian federation opposes the death penalty, and thanks also to his initiative we are gradually replacing it with other penalties. While in the past the person sentenced to death, if not pardoned, was sentenced to 25 years, now things have changed. The outgoing Parliament has followed the initiative of the president, i.e. changing capital sentence into life imprisonment if pardon has been granted. The position of the new president and the new Parliament with regard to this issue remains to be seen. In the case of a Russian federation, a resolution on the death penalty could be addressed to the newly-elected Parliament; pressure could also be exerted to modify the penal code, re-writing it completely. I am among the authors of the new penal code, but no one knows which executive will decide whether or not to adopt it. Many members of parliament are elected bt the social classes that are most heavily affected by the crime; they will need to be informed and given statistics that disprove

the arguments in favour of the death penalty. They need to also be informed about the evolution of crime in the countries that have abolished or no longer apply the death penalty; also, the position of the electorate will need to be analysed, since no member of Parliament will accept to adopt unpopular decisions. The population will need to be informed of our initiatives: for instance, publicly commemorating the victims of extrajudicial executions under the previous regime, as in the case of political dissidents who have been eliminated with the pretext of penal offences.

I will conclude by saying that it would be important to organize initiatives like this congress in countries that apply the death penalty; we would force the population and the authorities to reconsider their ideas. Last May I visited the French Parliament. I asked the president of one of the Senate's Commissions how they obtained the suppression of the death penalty in France. The answer was that the population had elected the senators considering that they were perhaps slightly more intelligent and farseeing that others. I proposed this same argument in my country with the hope of obtaining the benevolence of my colleagues.

Anatolij Pristavkin - Russia

President of the Commission for Pardon

I am participating in this congress in a twofold role. Firstly as a Russian writer: I spent many years of my youth in a colony for young criminals, and I have described this experience in my novels. Secondly as a minister in my country, where I am a member of the commission that decides on the death sentences and the fate of the prisoners in Russia (about one million citizens). President Eltsin, who opposes the death penalty, set up the commission for pardon a year ago. Among its members are poets, jurists, physicians, psychologists, religious men. The democratic conditions in Europe are such that the problems of pardon can be considered as part of the judicial system; here in Russia they must instead by examined by famous people such as Sacharov. No person sentenced to the death penalty can be executed without the prior opinion of the Commission. Before this was appointed, of one hundred people who were sentenced to death only two were pardoned, and many were sentenced without a trial. The most alarming fac

t is the convict was often executed by the other prisoners of the same institute.

Our commission, which was appointed 18 months ago, has managed to save the lives of some one hundred people, but has attracted negative criticism from all parts. Thanks to the trust given by the president and to the commission's activity, we have adopted a de facto moratorium. The role of the intelligentsia vis-à-vis the problem of the death penalty is a difficult one, and only some courageous people are active in this struggle. Our friends and family do not understand us, and in such conditions it is hard to be abolitionists. There are no means to build prisons in which to keep the persons who are sentenced to life imprisonment. We have the opportunity of struggling for the abolition of the death penalty, but we don't know where the pardoned prisoners might continue living.

Petru Munteanu - Moldavia

MP

I represent a State which proclaimed its independence on 27 August 1991, freeing itself from the weight of totalitarianism: the Republic of Moldavia.

There has been so much discussion about the "European home" of which we wanted to be part; the death penalty, as far as the European continent is concerned, is associated above all to the ex Republics of the U.S.S.R., which are now independent "de jure". In the former U.S.S.R. - in the past seven years of the "perestrojka" - over 2500 people have been executed. This is double the number of executions in Iran, three times the ones of South Africa and twenty times the ones of the United States. It is not rare to want to justify the death penalty with the excuse that the public opinion demands it. Such justification may seem democratic, at a superficial analysis. The judgment of the public opinion is based on incomplete information.

The totalitarian State has placed itself on the highest step of the hierarchy of values, placing all others on a lower echelon. Human rights and human life itself, in this hierarchic scale, have been reduced to instruments of the state for the achievement of its goals. And while man is seen as a means or an instrument, it becomes easy to justify not only the death penalty, but even mass extermination.

Moldavia is presently discussing the new Constitution. It includes the use of the death penalty (art.2, point 3).

For this reason I am asking you to send an exhortation to the members of the Moldavian parliament, to ask that the death penalty not be included in the new Constitution, not even for exceptional crimes. In expressing my position against the death penalty and in acknowledging the need to abolish it, I also realize the negative position of the public opinion, so I think it is wise to carry out the abolition by stages.

The starting point is a moratorium of executions. In Moldavia there have been no executions since 1990. This is already a step in the direction of the democratization of the penal system.

During the period of the moratorium a vast debate could be organized through the media.

Vladimir Grishkin - Russia

Member of the Mossoviet

In the past I chaired the permanent legislative commission on the defense of the law and of civil rights. Before that I worked as a preliminary judge, and I once had to question a woman who was sentenced to death for homicide. This episode shocked me to such a point that I convinced myself of the immorality of the death penalty. Since then - twenty years have gone by - I have been struggling for the abolition of the death penalty. This summer I took part in the project of a new Russian Constitution at the Kremlin. I tabled an interrogation for the elimination of the article on the death penalty from the text of the project. Unfortunately, when this was voted about twenty members of Parliament - except me - voted to keep the article in the legislation. This reflects the position of the public opinion: a number of polls carried out in 1993 showed that only 7% of Russians are in favour of eliminating the death penalty, while 30% are in favour of extending the range of cases for which it should be applied. Thirt

y articles of the penal code of the Russian federation include the death penalty as an alternative penalty. It is provided not only for crimes against the individual, homicide or other crimes, but also for less serious crimes. Article 64 of the penal code envisions the death penalty for the crime of treason: if one of us who are gathered in this Congress does not return to Russia the competent organs could accuse us of treason under article 64 and sentence us to a penalty between 10 and 15 years or the death penalty with the confiscation of our assets. Capital execution occurs through shooting, and no one officially knows how this occurs. I have worked for many years in the procurator's office and I heard police officers or KGB officials say that the execution occurs in the following way: the convict is taken into a narrow corridor. Behind him a prison guard shoots at him at the back of the head, after which the prosecutor comes with a doctor to ascertain the death. As I said, no one knows how the executions

are carried out.

In 1991, according to statistics provided by the Ministry of Justice, 59 people were killed following a sentence of the Tribunal. In 1992 eighteen people have been killed, whereas in the last six months of '93 no death sentence has been carried out. Some 500 people are awaiting to be sentenced, but we need to take into account the fact that there is a wide margin between the sentences issued and the sentences carried out. In Russia, as in other countries, there is the institution of pardon, which is granted by the President.

The population, in 70 years of Soviet regime, has been educated to class hatred, to a constant struggle between interior and external enemies, and has been taught that the higher the number of death sentences the more order there is, and the better the quality of life. At present, the defects of capitalism have summed up to the legacy of communism. The tide of crime is evident: the number of homicides has grown tenfold, people are kill in the street and during the day.

The radical party and I in particular have never assumed the task of representing single cases of persons sentenced to death, but of struggling in general for the abolition of the death penalty from the legal texts; that is why I do not take care of any case in particular. Rutskoj's and Kashbulatov's entourage, during the siege on the White House, adopted a new article of the penal law, which we considered illegal, which envisioned exectuion by shooting for political crimes. The law was short-lived, and was not applied not even for a day and luckily disappeared along with the putsch. I have seen the project of the new penal code of Russia, and despite the fact that it is just a draft, it presented a counter-tendency: only 6 articles envision the death penalty.

Zejnal Ibragimov - Azerbaijan

MP

I am a journalist and a member of the Radical Party, which I represent in Azerbaijan. The situation here is not unlike that of the other ex-Soviet republics, since we were all under a single legislation. The new penal code has not yet been written, and the old one, which provides for the death penalty, is still in effect. The situation in my country is becoming more and more complicated because a war is under way. In the past the death penalty was applied for cases of violation of the penal code, but on 27 November this year the Parliament of Azerbaijan issued a decree which envisioned the death penalty also in cases of desertion. While in the past the person who was sentenced for an ordinary crimes could hope for pardon, now, if a crime is committed at the front, there is no regular trial and a field court is set up on the spot and deserters are punished with shooting. How can you kill someone who is not apt to fight? Killing them for this is incomprehensible.

As far as the abolition of the death penalty is concerned, we need to take into account two fundamental historical factors: Azerbaijan was once part of the Soviet Union, where the death penalty was applied and where a Stalinist regime was in force; moreover, the presence in our country of the Muslim religion, which provides for the death penalty, has contributed to making most of the population remain in favour of its application. The only abolitionist action is the one carried out by the radical party. I believe it is necessary to exert pressure on the Government rather than on the people, who will, in time, change their attitude.

Sonia Mladenova - Bulgaria

MP

I am a Bulgarian jurist, member of Parliament for the second legislature. My profession is related to penal law, and for this reason I have been against the death penalty for many years. I consider homicide as immoral in any circumstance, whoever it is that commits it: from street homicide, to homicide by the State on the basis of a law. Society should refrain from killing one of its members, also in consideration of the mistake which the judges can commit. Moreover, I consider it unacceptable for a State to maintain a body of murderers who carry out the executions.

Death sentences do not solve the problem of crime: one of the duties of the State is not allowing the existence of reasons and conditions that favour serious crimes, including attempts against the individual. Under the new Bulgarian Constitution, which I have had the pleasure and honour of signing in 1991, the attempt against human life is the greatest crime, and human life is the supreme value. For this reason, until the new Constitution is created, in 1990 a moratorium was applied in Bulgaria, which is still in effect. A reason of satisfaction for me, as a jurist and politician, is the fact that the government and the Bulgarian political élite have realized that the State cannot play with human life. That is why the penal code should be modified in the sense that there should finally be an alternative to the death penalty: life imprisonment. This idea has found a legislative solution through the introduction on the part of the government of a bill which we hope will be passed as soon as possible, without a

mendments.

Jakov Gilinski - Russia

Jurist

The death penalty is not a punishment, but a means of revenge which can be justified from the point of view of the victim but not from that of the State.

Contemporary society is extremely violent. Someone should break the vicious circle of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". The States should be deprived of the right to kill both at war and by legal sentence. Until the death penalty is abolished, no one can consider life an absolute value. In totalitarian regimes, the executions and mass purges are a means to maintain the power of a group. Gradually, with the help of the official propaganda, the belief that the need for repression was the adequate means to solve social problems was been hammered into people's minds. Even after the fall of the totalitarian regimes, there will be a repressive mentality for many years to come.

In the former Soviet Union between 1921 and 1953, 642.000 people were sentenced to death (but the actual executions exceeded this figure by far); 25.000 from 1962 to 1990, with 21.000 actual executions. In other terms, an average of 850 people a year were sentenced to death and 750 of these were executed. Between 1985 and 1990, 445 people have been sentenced to death each year: of these, 392 have been executed.

In the democratic Russia 157 people have been sentenced to death, and 61 of these have been executed each year. To make a more effective comparison, in the Zarist Russia 612 people were sentenced to death between 1826 and 1906 (7 people a year), and 170 of these sentences were carried out (2 a year).

We suggest the following measures to eliminate the death penalty in Russia:

1) immediate moratorium of death sentences;

2) large-scale appeal to the President of the Russian Federal Republic and to Parliament to urge the abolition of the death penalty;

In parallel, the media should start promoting the values of tolerance, non-violence and rejection of the repressive means and of the death penalty.

3) abolition of the death penalty and its elimination from the penal code.

We believe that in 1993, a first step in this direction could be obtained by introducing life imprison,ent as an alternative to the death penalty. This despite the fact that I personally oppose life sentence.

Gaqo Apostoli

MP

The Albanian population has been through so many killings, occupation and acts of violence that it is more familiar with death than with life. The communist dictatorship, which replaced the previous forms of barbarianism, led to massive and secret purges. On the eve of its fall and of the advent of democracy, the dictatorship was forced to loosen the grip of the penal legislature, abolishing the death penalty envisioned in 22 articles.

At present, the death penalty is contained in six articles for crimes against the State; in two for crimes against state property, and in one for crimes against human life.

The anarchy that has spread in Albania since the end of the dictatorship and in the transition to democracy has generated a tide of organized and spontaneous crime. Despite this situation, the death penalty can still be reduced with respect to the nine cases for which it is provided; the subsequent steps will be related to the improvement of the socio-economic situation. In Albania there has been a discussion on the elimination of the death penalty thanks to thirty parliamentarians who are members of the transnational radical party, who signed a petition for its abolition by the Year 2000.