Rada abolishes death penalty

KYIV - The Verkhovna Rada voted on February 22 to abolish the death penalty in Ukraine, thus meeting the country's 1995 pledge to the Council of Europe.

Provisions for capital punishment were stricken from the criminal and reformatory codes. Interfax-Ukraine reported that a total of 229 deputies voted in favor and 15 against amending Ukraine's legal codes.

The Verkhovna Rada also ratified Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention), which provides for the abolition of the death penalty except in time of war or the imminent threat of war. The vote on that measure was 228 for and six against.

According to the UNIAN news service, Communist Party and Progressive Socialist Party deputies did not participate in any of the voting.

Life imprisonment will now replace the death penalty in Ukraine. Ratification of Protocol No. 6 effectively means that existing death sentences will be commuted into life sentences, noted the worldwide human rights organization Amnesty International.

Although Ukraine had introduced a de facto moratorium on executions in March 1997, it had continued to pass the death sentence. On December 30, 1999, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional, both violating the principle of the right to life, which is enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine, and contravening the constitutional provision that no one should be subjected to torture or to cruel or inhuman treatment or punishment.

The cancellation of the death sentence meets the prerequisites for Ukraine's entry into the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The president of PACE, Lord Russell Johnston, said that "Ukraine has now fulfilled its obligations to the PACE."

London-based Amnesty International welcomed the decision of an overwhelming majority of members of the Ukrainian Parliament to abolish the death penalty.

"Ukraine has taken the monumental step of joining the vast majority of its European neighbors who have already removed this cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment from their statute books. This signals an important new commitment to protect fundamental human rights in the country," an Amnesty International statement released on February 22 noted.

"The speed with which the Ukrainian Parliament has removed the death penalty from its penal code has been both unexpected and very impressive," the organization said.

Ukraine had made the commitment to abolish the death penalty in November 1995 upon entry into the Council of Europe. The government of Ukraine also committed itself to sign and ratify the European Convention within three years of its accession to the Council of Europe. Neither of these commitments were fulfilled by the Council of Europe's deadline of November 1998 or its extended deadline of June 1999.

In June 1999 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe decided to extend this deadline until its next session in January 2000.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 5, 2000, No. 10, Vol. LXVIII

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