Amnesty International Report 1995 - Belarus

At least one person on death row was awaiting the outcome of a petition for clemency. Elections to the newly created post of President were won in July by Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Parliament rejected a draft law on a civilian alternative to compulsory military service in February, and did not include provisions for conscientious objectors in the new constitution adopted in March. The Constitution also retained the death penalty as "an exceptional measure of punishment for particularly serious crimes". A draft new criminal code which would decriminalize consenting homosexual acts between adult males and limit the scope of the death penalty (see Amnesty International Report 1994) had still not been adopted by parliament by the end of the year. Statistics on the application of the death penalty in 1993 were released at the beginning of the year. They revealed that 21 people on death row had submitted petitions for clemency and that 16 people had been executed in 1993. One death sentence had been commuted. All death sentences and executions were for premeditated, aggravated murder. No such statistics were known to have been published for 1994. At least one man, Sergey Kutyavin, had his appeal against his death sentence rejected by the Supreme Court in March. At the end of the year he was on death row awaiting the outcome of a petition for clemency. He had been sentenced to death for murder in July 1993. Amnesty International continued to urge the authorities to introduce a civil-ian alternative to military service, of non-punitive length, for conscientious objectors. The organization also urged the President to grant clemency to Sergey Kutyavin and to commute all other pending death sentences.