Whenever people talk about the death penalty, they focus on the criminal and his terrible crime. But the death penalty is not only a problem of executions of several terrible criminals a year, it is a problem of how the atmosphere in society changes, what happens to a good citizen when there is a death penalty in his country. The Belarusian Helsinki Committee has consistently advocated the abolition of the death penalty and use life imprisonment.
We are against of capital punishment. But it does not mean we are ready to let him escape the punishment.
Each crime should be punished.
But not at the cost of our inner purity, our integrity.
We renounce capital punishment in favour of life sentence not because we are indifferent to crime. The responsibility is unavoidable. Punishment stays punishment even it is not capital.
But we do not punish ourselves.
We do not punish ourselves with the most terrible, intolerable, fatal evil – murder.
Because we are humans.