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As a practicing Catholic, the Polish prime minister said during a question and answer session on Facebook that he did not share the Catholic Church’s position. Abolition of the death penalty? “A premature invention”
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki surprisingly spoke out in favor of the death penalty, admitting that he disagreed with the Roman Catholic Church on the issue. Morawiecki, a practicing Catholic, made the comments during a public question-and-answer session on Facebook Monday. When asked by an apparent critic whether the death penalty could stop his government from doing more harm to society, Morawiecki replied, “In my opinion, the death penalty should be allowed for the most serious crimes,” stressing that he was not. “I agree with the issue of church doctrine because I’m a supporter of the death penalty.” He also called its abolition a “premature invention.”
Poland abolished the death penalty in 1997 as it ditched some communist-era rules and prepared to join the EU. In 2013, then-President of Poland Bronislaw Komorowski signed the law ratifying the norms providing for the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances under Protocol 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Poland was one of the few Council of Europe countries that still allowed the death penalty for war convicts. The ratification had come at the urging of the EU: the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe had called on the countries that had not yet acceded to Protocol 13, approved in 2002, to urge them to sign (Russia and Azerbaijan) or to ratify (Poland and Armenia).
The last execution was 35 years ago by hanging a 29-year-old young man who had raped and killed a woman: subsequently, by 1996, the courts had passed another nine sentences, but which provided for the death penalty In the 1989 after the first free After the amnesty decided by the elections, the sentences were commuted to 25 years imprisonment. In 1997, the Polish Penal Code replaced the death penalty with life imprisonment. Even Hungarian Prime Minister Orban hypothesized a reintroduction a few years ago, prompting the reaction of European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker. Some Polish opposition MPs, including Monika Falej, noted that views like the prime minister’s are characteristic of authoritarian rulers.
January 3, 2023 (change January 3, 2023 | 12:51)
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