Human Rights Information Agency "Express-chronicle"

English Weekly News Digest

02 December 1996

MOSCOW (E-C) A two-day conference titled "In the third millennium without the death penalty: the situation in CIS countries" concluded on 24 November. It was organised by the 'Ne tronte Kaina' society, Memorial, the Human Rights Chamber of the Presidential Political Consultative Council and the Presidential Commission for Pardons. It was attended by activists of the movement for the abolition of the death penalty, human rights activists, parliamentarians, lawyers and cultural figures from CIS states and abroad.

At the conclusion of the conference, its participants adopted a document expressing concern that the governments of Russia and Ukraine, despite obligations assumed at the time of their accession to the Council of Europe, "had not only failed to take any legislative measures to introduce a moratorium on the imposition of the death penalty, but continue to conduct executions." The authors supported the draft law on the abolition of the death penalty drafted by State Duma deputies Valery Borshchyov and Yuri Rybakov, and the activity of Ukrainian justice minister Sergei Golovaty aimed at the immediate introduction of a moratorium on executions in Russia and Ukraine "as a first step on the road to the full abolition of the death penalty in a three year period."

Participants in the conference also remarked that the conditions of detention of prisoners, not only those condemned to death, "cannot but evoke concern, since they do not meet even minimum standards of respect for the security and dignity of the person." The participants also called upon the leaders of CIS states "to introduce independently a moratorium on the death penalty in their countries, and also to sign a proposal for a moratorium which will be presented at the session of the UN Human Rights Commission in spring 1997 in Geneva.