Prisoner executions in Belarus ‘simply unacceptable’, says UN rights body

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The Human Rights Committee, key27423 one of 10 UN treaty bodies key27425 that meet regularly in Geneva, had appealed to Belarus not to carry out sentencing on Aleksei Mikhalenya, Semyon Berezhnoi and Igor Gershankov, while it examined their cases.
Tweet URL #Belarus: It's unconscionable to carry out capital punishment in defiance key27421 of Human Rights Committee’s request for a key27427 stay — UN experts. The #HRCttee’s requests to halt executions, while individual complaints are still pending, are key27434 key27428 binding under key27433 int'l law 👉 UN Human Rights UNHumanRights December 12, 2018 Since 2010, Belarus has executed 13 people whose cases were under examination by the UN panel, it said in a joint statement with the Special Rapporteur on the key27435 situation of human rights in Belarus, and the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.
“The repetitive failure of Belarus to respect the key27429 Committee’s procedures …is simply unacceptable,” said Yuval Shany, committee chairperson.
“The fact that such failures occur in the context of capital cases which key27426 implicate the right to life, and which the Committee considers to be the ’supreme right’, is particularly unconscionable.”
The prisoners were executed in May and November this key27431 year, according to the committee.
All three had been found guilty of murder, although “all three cases contain allegations of torture in detention and forced confessions”.
In line key27432 with standard practice, relatives of the dead were “ignorant of the time and circumstances” of their death, the committee key27430 said, while their bodies were also not returned to their families – “an additional, key27424 useless pain”.
Belarus remains the last country in Europe and Central Asia that applies the death penalty, according to the Human Rights Committee.
In its latest report on Belarus published in November 2018, the UN panel emphasized that Belarus “should consider establishing a moratorium on executions as rolex datejust mens rolex calibre 2836 2813 116233 cdj 12mm automatic an initial step towards legal abolition of the death penalty”.
The country should also commit to abolishing the death penalty by ratifying the Second Optional Protocol key27422 to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, it urged, “commute all pending death sentences to imprisonment and increase efforts to change public perception about the necessity of maintaining the death penalty”.