RUSSIA / DEATH PENALTY / MORATORIUM: "LAUDABLE" FREETHINKING OF RUSSIAN OFFICIALS - THE NEW MINISTER OF JUSTICE, MR. PAVEL KRASHENINNIKOV, NOT YET ACCUSTOMED IN HIS OFFICE, HURRIES TO RENOUNCE RUSSIA'S INTERNATIONAL OBLIGATIONS WHICH HE MUST FULFIL ACCORDING HIS POST.

ON JUNE 11, AT 14.00 DEMONSTRATION OF PROTEST ORGANIZED BY RADICAL PARTY AT THE MINISTRY OF JUSTICE

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Press Release of the Transnational Radical Party

Moscow, June 5, 1998. A "laudable" freethinking of Russian officials becomes already a sort of tradition. After a scandalous letter of Boris Nemtsov, now Mr. Pavel Krasheninnikov, the new Minister of Justice, not yet accustomed in his office on Vorontsovo Pole, hurries to declare urbi et orbi: abolition of death penalty in Russia is premature, the country is not yet ready, the people will not understand it, he as Minister of Justice is against the moratorium on executions.

We would like to remind to Minister Krasheninnikov: the immediate moratorium on executions is an obligatory condition for Russia's membership in the Council of Europe. Moreover, not later than on February 26, 1999 Russia is obliged to ratify the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights and Basic Freedoms and, therefore, to abolish capital punishment fully and forever. All this is a part of international legal obligations, which have been taken by Russia on its own initiative and, therefore, is not matter for discussion now. The more strange sound such declarations pronounced by Minister of Justice - a federal official responsible for execution of punishments and, therefore, for Russia's fulfillment of its obligations in that field.

On Thursday, June 11, at 14:00 we will hold demonstration of protest at the Ministry of Justice (Vorontsovo Pole 4) in order to remind to Minister Krasheninnikov: his business is to realize the policy determined by President and his Government, also in the field of Russia's international obligations, and not to intervene with public statements full of populist demagogy of the most lousy kind.

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