The Belarusian Prosecutor's Office is campaigning for...

The Belarusian Prosecutor's Office is campaigning for the preservation of capital punishment as a measure of last resort, Belarusian Deputy Prosecutor-General Mikhail Snyahir said at a hearing in the National Assembly's House of Representatives [lower house of parliament].
Snyahir said the entire prosecution system held the opinion that "guaranteeing a murderer the right to live is not always justified".
He added that capital punishment was a result of an individual's conscious choice to commit a very serious crime.
Snyahir reported that the number of serious crimes in Belarus increased every year. About 1,500 murders were reported in 2001, while more than 41,000 crimes were reported in the first four months of this year, including 16,500 serious or very serious crimes of which 378 were murders.
There is no evidence that the liberalization of criminal legislation brings about a decline in crime rate, Snyahir said. Therefore, he believes, the problem of capital punishment should be addressed not from the standpoint of a penalty's severity, but in proportion to the crime committed.
Granting an early release or a pardon to very dangerous criminals "opens the floodgates of mass multiple crimes", Snyahir believes.
Snyahir also said that in the country's current economic conditions, changing capital punishment to life imprisonment was "an even more severe and inhumane penalty".
Snyahir believes that Belarus should rely on its own historical experience and public opinion. "We can approach Europe via other paths, but not by 'grovelling' for acceptance into European institutions," he said.