Duma should address death penalty abolition - Foreign Ministry official
MOSCOW. Nov 12 (Interfax) - The ratification of the protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights on the legislative abolition of the death penalty remains an issue that should be addressed by the Russian parliament, Alexander Kurmaz, a deputy director of the Foreign Ministry's general European cooperation department, said at an 'Open Tribune' session at the State Duma on Thursday.
"I am just reminding you without setting any tasks that the ratification of Protocol No. 6 [to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms] on legislatively abolishing the death penalty in peacetime remains an issue that has still not been settled," Kurmaz said.
Russia committed itself to abolishing the death penalty legislatively when joining the Council of Europe in 1996. At the present time, it is observing a moratorium on the death penalty.
"Certainly, this norm is stipulated by the Russian constitution, but it has not yet been stipulated legislatively," Kurmaz said.
The 'Open Tribune' session on Thursday is dealing with lessons and prospects of Russia's 20-year membership of the Council of Europe.
The Council of Europe Convention on the counterfeiting of medical products and similar crimes involving threats to public health (the MEDICRIME convention), which Russia has already signed, will be submitted to the Duma for ratification at the end of 2015 or in early 2016, he said.
"We need to be involved in European pharmacopeia in order for our medicines to be exported," Kurmaz said.
This would bring dozens of billions of euro to Russia and help create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, he said.
"Perhaps we need to step up and resume work on joining the bioethics convention, since this concerns not only biotechnology but a host of ethical questions, which Russian law is successfully elaborating on now and which are likely to find their way" into legislation, Kurmaz added.