Death penalty issues discussed in Minsk

13 сентября 2017

Belarusian MPs and international experts discussed the death penalty issues in the House of Representatives of the Belarusian National Assembly on 13 September. Ivan Simonovic, a delegate of the non-governmental organization International Commission Against the Death Penalty, thanked Andrei Naumovich, the chairman of the standing committee on human rights, national relations and mass media at the House of Representatives, for the meetings that were organized for experts in Grodno a day earlier. He noted that the subject of the death penalty was discussed with all stakeholders, including MPs, government representatives and students. Ivan Simonovic pointed out that similar meetings will be held in all regions of Belarus. Ivan Simonovic stressed that international experts are in Belarus solely for the purpose of informing the public on the subject of the death penalty. Citizens will afterwards decide on this issue on their own. For his part, Andrei Naumovich expressed the view that dialogue helps the parliamentary working group on the death penalty issues and international experts to move in the right direction.