THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE OSCE AREA Moratorium No moratorium on executions is in place. In 2000, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe issued a recommendation in which it stated that it “condemns in the strongest possible terms the executions in Belarus and deplores the fact that Belarus is currently the only country in Europe where the death penalty is enforced and, moreover, is regularly and widely enforced.”40 The Parliamentary Assembly urged the Belarusian authorities to declare an immediate moratorium on executions and set in motion the legislative procedure for the abolition of capital punishment. On 30 May 2002, the House of Representatives of the National Assembly (lower house of parliament) held hearings on the issue of the death penalty. It was widely reported that the majority of the parliamentarians opposed the abolition of the death penalty or the introduction of a moratorium.41 On 11 March 2004, the Constitutional Court concluded its assessment of the compliance of the death-penalty provisions in the Criminal Code with the Constitution, following a request from the House of Representatives of the National Assembly. The Court found a number of provisions of the Criminal Code to be inconsistent with the Constitution and thus provided for the possibility of either the abolition of the death penalty or the imposition of a moratorium on executions as the first step towards full abolition. The Court recalled that such measures may be enacted by the head of state and the National Assembly. During his visit to Belarus in June 2004, the OSCE Chairman-in-Office encouraged Belarus to introduce a moratorium on the death penalty as a first step towards abolition.42 Method Shooting43 40 41 42 43 Recommendation 1441, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, 26 January 2000. “Belarusian Parliament fails to abolish death penalty”, Belorusskaya gazeta, Minsk, 3 June 2002. “OSCE Chairman-in-Office discusses implementation of OSCE standards and commitments with Belarusian leadership”, OSCE press release, 9 June 2004, http://www.osce.org/news/show_news.php?id=4135. Article 59(1), Criminal Code. 18