EDITORIAL: Ukraine must live up to promises (12/15/96)

EDITORIAL

Ukraine must live up to promises

Days after the Council of Europe found that Ukraine had not lived up to its promise to abide by a moratorium on carrying out death sentences, President Leonid Kuchma was in Lisbon at the summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) proclaiming Ukraine's support for human rights.

Speaking before world leaders on December 2, he said, "The biggest threat to state security in today's world usually comes from internal factors, such as the social and economic environment, human rights issues and politics."

It seems that Mr. Kuchma has become politician extraordinaire with the ability to speak out of both sides of his mouth, and juggle words and actions as if they were torches and bowling balls. It is not an easy thing to do, but once you get the hang of it, you can do it with a smile on your face.

While President Kuchma was making his declaration and telling summit attendees that Ukraine would do all it takes to implement human rights according to the European standard, scores, if not hundreds, of people sat on death row awaiting execution for capital offenses.

What is alarming is that in Ukraine the number of government executions is not decreasing, as in those European countries that have not yet outlawed capital punishment, but is on the rise. In 1991, the year that Ukraine declared independence, 42 citizens were executed. In the first half of 1996, 89 had been put to death, a rate that if sustained would lead to 178 government killings this year. Only in the previous year were more people executed.

These numbers, which were presented at the seminar on abolition of the death penalty held in Kyiv in late November under the sponsorship of the Council of Europe, were produced by Minister of Justice Serhii Holovatyi. Mr. Holovatyi took pains to explain that he is for abolishing the death penalty but that his ministry has no jurisdiction over sentencing and executions. Those belong within the domain of the procurator general and Ministry of the Internal Affairs, respectively.

One cannot say Ukraine has hidden the figures, but one must question Ukraine's desire to go forth with capital punishment after it pledged almost exactly a year ago that it would put a moratorium on government executions with the goal of eliminating the death penalty by the year 2000. As Zsolt Nemeth of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe explained, "We had suspected such before our conference, now we are sure."

And this is where Mr. Kuchma comes in. Mr. Holovatyi specifically named the president and Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko as those who must make the decision to abolish the death penalty and move a step closer to Europe, where government executions are the exception rather than the norm - and becoming increasingly so. Mr. Kuchma should continue to talk the talk. It is time also for him to start walking the walk.

The most tragic part of a tragic story is that those executed are buried in unmarked graves, and their families are not told of the date of the killing or the location of the grave. One must ask, at the bare minimum, why must the families suffer for whatever heinous crime the executed were found guilty of?

If a government wishes to continue barbaric acts of punishment for capital crimes, then at the very least the government should show humanity and sympathy for the families of those executed.

Only 6 percent of Ukrainians support abolishing the death penalty - this in a country where crime is exploding and at times takes on very vicious dimensions. But, as Justice Minister Holovatyi said at the seminar, the death penalty is not something for the people to decide. The government must lead the way in developing a consensus that the death penalty is barbarism and that the monetary cost of life imprisonment of a capital felon is the cost of a civilized society.