A/HRC/38/51 time of completion of the present report, Mr. Zhamchuzhny received as many as 24 penalties. 74. Fourteen individuals were arrested during the March 2017 events for having allegedly created an illegal armed group (the White Legion case) and detained. By the end of June 2017, on the eve of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly session, all of those persons had been released, although the charges against them had not been dropped. The criminal case in their regard was closed on November 2017. Their appeals to the courts for compensation for moral harm caused by their illegal pretrial detention were all rejected. G. Death penalty 75. According to information available, two individuals were executed in Belarus in 2017 and another six are currently on death row. The family of Kiryl Kazachok was only informed in March 2018 that he had been executed in October 2017, having been sentenced in 2016. 26 Siarhei Vostrykau was executed in April 2017, after spending 11 months on death row. The Special Rapporteur joins members of the international community who regularly condemn Belarus for conducting executions, when the authorities could so easily adopt a moratorium on the practice or commute death sentences into life imprisonment. 76. Death sentences were most recently handed down in Belarus on 20 January 2018, by Minsk City Court in the cases of Viachaslau Sukharka and Aliaksandr Zhylnikau. Those decisions were the first death sentences to be issued by that court since at least 2009. Both of those defendants had initially been sentenced to life imprisonment, but, following an appeal to the Supreme Court, which had sent the case for retrial, Minsk City Court sentenced them to death. 77. There are reports that the Belarusian parliamentary working group on the question of the death penalty resumed its work in 2017. The Special Rapporteur is, however, unaware of any concrete developments in that regard. Rumours that the President might hold a referendum on the issue failed to materialize. In an interview with ONT TV, the Chair of the Central Election Commission, Lidia Yermoshina, referring to the intentions of the President, dismissed “speculation” about a referendum on constitutional changes in the near future. The Chair noted that some aspects of the Constitution needed to be modernized, but that, where outdated clauses did not interfere with the everyday functioning of society, it was better to opt for stability and not initiate a constitutional referendum.27 The President himself has shown no leadership on the matter, often referring to the public support the death penalty allegedly enjoys in order to close down any positive development in that regard. 78. The Special Rapporteur recalls that Belarus is the only country in Europe and the only former Soviet republic to retain the death penalty. The overall judicial system and the way in which executions are carried out paint a grim picture of the rule of law in Belarus, and entail a number of violations of basic rights for those convicted and for their relatives. The secrecy surrounding executions, and the fact that no details of executions or of places of burial are given to the families also amount to torture, 28 and contravene paragraph 7 (c) of General Assembly resolution 71/187 on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. H. Local elections of February 2018 79. Local council elections to select 18,110 representatives in 1,309 oblasts, large cities and villages were held as scheduled on 18 February 2018. As for previous polls, neither the way in which they were conducted nor their results were transparent, and the authorities committed a number of human rights violations in that regard. 26 27 28 See https://dp.spring96.org/en/news/89411. See http://ont.by/news/our_news/lidiya-ermoshina-prezident-vnyos-polnyyu-yasnost-vo-vserazgovori-referendy (in Russian). See, for example, Schedko v. Belarus, (CCPR/C/77/D/886/1999). 13