For more than a decade, Ukraine's death penalty has been outlawed but interest in bringing it back was revived by Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lutsenko.
For more than a decade, Ukraine’s death penalty has been outlawed, but interest in bringing it back was revived by the Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lutsenko a month ago.
“I am for re-instating shooting as capital punishment for especially heinous crimes against citizens,” Lutsenko said last month while answering journalists’ questions during a parliamentary session break.
Lutsenko referred to the Soviet method of executing those convicted of a capital crime. It’s unclear what motivated the minister’s suggestion as his political faction favors aggressive EU integration. The EU opposes the death penalty.
Until Lutsenko’s comment, the Communist Party of Ukraine was the only major political player advocating the death penalty’s return.
Though about 51 percent of Ukrainians support using the death penalty to punish heinous crimes, according to a 2007 survey conducted by the non-profit FOM-Ukraine, it’s not likely to make a comeback.
In February, a vote was held on a bill on renewing the death penalty but only drew 49 votes in support, mostly from the Communists, who claim that homicides nearly doubled since its abolishment, but offering no specific figures or evidence proving one caused the other.
The Post was unable to independently verify these statistics.
The Soviet government employed the death penalty, typically by shooting, for 17 types of crime, said Svitlana Poberezhna, the head of Amnesty International in Ukraine. The death penalty was also used against traitors, spies and saboteurs. Shooting was the sole technique used in carrying out the death penalty in the USSR.
Executions were carried out privately, in the soundproof basements of special shooting prisons. The basements of these prisons were equipped with a special carpet upon which the condemned stepped on before receiving a bullet to the back of his head. The carpet was cleaned by an automatic washing device.
In the five years before the Soviet Union’s collapse, more than 2,000 people were condemned to death and 276 were executed, Soviet Minister of Justice Sergei Lyschikov revealed in January 1991. The Ukrainian SSR didn’t maintain separate statistics.
Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, a total of 612 people were executed under the death penalty, according the Vinnytsia Human Rights Organization, all for premeditated murder.
Former President Leonid Kuchma put a moratorium on the death penalty in 1997. Reinstating it could harm Ukraine’s Eurointegration efforts, since the EU frowns on capital punishment among its members.
“This is a very important issue for the Council of Europe, of which Ukraine is a member,” warned Ian Boag, head of the European Commission in Ukraine.
Ukrainian human rights groups will fight any attempt to bring back the death penalty, particularly through shooting, which they assert is unconstitutional and a cruel punishment.
In response to Lutsenko’s proposal to use shooting as capital punishment, the Vinnytsia Human Rights Organization sent an official request to Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to dismiss the internal affairs minister from his post, as well as a second letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a request to comment on Lutsenko’s statement.
“This statement threatens Ukraine’s international reputation,” said Viktor Rolik, assistant manager of Vinnytsia Human Rights Organization.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not commented.
Observers speculated Lutsenko raised the death penalty issue simply to score political points, though he is not a candidate for the May 25 mayoral election.
“Exclusively to collect populist points, Lutsenko posed an issue that a responsible politician today wouldn’t even raise, considering the country’s present problems, such as corruption in the ministry which he heads and can’t deal with,” said Mykhaylo Prohrebinskiy, director of the Center for Political Research and Conflict Studies in Kyiv, financed by its clients.
