On January 21, Anatoly Pristavkin, a writer and chairman...

On January 21, Anatoly Pristavkin, a writer and chairman of the presidential pardons commission, said it was a struggle to persuade the public of the need to do away with capital punishment. "Vocal opposition in the Duma lower house of Parliament will slow any decision to enshrine a moratorium on the death sentence into law, so that Moscow will not abolish the death penalty ahead of the Council of Europe's February deadline. We have to change our own lives first, we have to change the way we act in the streets before we get around to abolishing the death penalty. If someone needs help we should learn to help. Communists and their allies would block any bill in the State Duma lower house of Parliament aimed at abolishing the death penalty," commented Pristavkin, adding that Vladimir Zhirinovsky's nationalist Liberal Democratic Party was also against halting capital punishment. Sergei Vitsin, deputy chairman of the pardons commission, called for those politicians who demand tougher measures against crime to remember those who have suffered unfairly because of overly harsh punishments. He said that 44 death-row prisoners had already been pardoned in January, and there was 418 prisoners on death row whose cases had not been reviewed.