A/HRC/41/52 Special Rapporteur hopes that related issues of concern and recommendations mentioned in the present report will contribute to the work of the Committee. 18. The Special Rapporteur’s predecessor welcomed the adoption of the national human rights action plan for the period 2016–2019, which was approved by the Council of Ministers of Belarus on 24 October 2016.1 The period of the plan will soon come to an end and the Special Rapporteur is looking forward to the final implementation report. Positive steps are noticeable, however many activities set out in the plan still remain to be implemented.2 The Special Rapporteur regrets that the plan did not set specific measurable indicators to evaluate the progress of implementation and that many activities were aimed at exploring options, thereby focusing more on the process than on achieving resultsoriented change. Belarus will go through its third cycle of the universal periodic review in the spring of 2020 and the Special Rapporteur hopes that this will be the occasion to draft a follow-up plan, designing clear measures to address pending human rights issues. III. Human rights concerns A. Right to life and physical integrity 1. Death penalty 19. All European countries have abolished the death penalty de facto or de jure, except for Belarus, which has executed an estimated 400 people over the past two and a half decades.3 Owing to the continued secrecy surrounding the death penalty, statistics on the number of people executed are not openly accessible. According to the information available, four individuals sentenced to death for murder in 2017 were executed in the period covered by the present report. In mid-May 2018, Viktar Liotaŭ and Aliaksej Michalenia were reportedly executed, while Siamion Beražny and Ihar Hershankoŭ were executed on 19 November 2018.4 20. Aliaksej Michalenia, Siamion Beražnyand Ihar Hershankoŭ were executed while their complaints were still pending before the Human Rights Committee. 5 Since 2010, in 13 cases Belarus has repeatedly failed to respect the request of the Human Rights Committee to stay executions by executing individuals before the Committee had concluded its consideration of their cases. 21. Death penalty sentences continued to be handed down during the reporting period. On 30 May 2018, the Supreme Court dismissed Aliaksandr Žylnikaŭ’s appeal and upheld the death sentence pronounced in 2015. 6 The most recent decision known to the public dates from 9 January 2019, when Aliaksandr Asipovič was sentenced to death on a charge of murder.7 A third detainee, Viačaslaŭ Sucharko, sentenced in March 2017, is awaiting execution. 22. The Special Rapporteur notes that relatives are kept ignorant of the time and circumstances of the death of their close ones, bodies are not returned and no details of places of burial are given. That constitutes unnecessary additional pain and suffering unfairly inflicted on relatives, which has been recognized by the Human Rights Committee as constituting inhuman treatment in violation of article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protecting individuals from torture and cruel, inhuman or 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Available from geneva.mfa.gov.by/docs/interagency_plan_of_belarus_on_human_rights_eng.docx. See http://mfa.gov.by/upload/18.06.26_HR_report_2017.pdf (in Russian). See International Federation for Human Rights and Human Rights Center Viasna, “Death penalty in Belarus: murder on (un)lawful grounds” (October 2016). See International Federation for Human Rights and Human Rights Center Viasna, “Human rights situation in Belarus: 2018. Analytical review”. See www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24009&LangID=E. See http://dp.spring96.org/en/news/91677. See www.svaboda.org/a/29699064.html (in Belarusian) and http://spring96.org/ru/news/91768 (in Russian). 5