The Coalition of Non-Governmental Organizations Against Torture demanded from the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to eradicate torture as a fact.
In its open appeal, the NGO Coalition Against Torture calls on the head of state to show political will and contribute to developing a comprehensive strategy to combat torture and ill-treatment.
According to the authors of the appeal, the draft law being developed today to introduce amendments and additions to the Criminal, Criminal Procedure, and Penitentiary Codes to prevent torture and ill-treatment is an attempt by government agencies to formally “cover up” this problem through unsystematic changes to specific provisions of laws.
“We are closely monitoring the situation with torture in Kazakhstan, and we assure you that despite the many measures taken by the state in recent years, the problem of torture and ill-treatment continues to go beyond individual cases and is chronic precisely because of the lack of a systematic approach,” – the appeal says.
The NGO Coalition regrets that one of the most important recommendations of the UN Human Rights Committee to Kazakhstan is “to ensure that victims of torture have access to full compensation for harm, including rehabilitation, adequate redress and the opportunity to resort to civil remedies that are independent of criminal proceedings” has not been implemented since 2016.
“Until now, no state body was ready to take responsibility for the implementation of this recommendation, since it is associated with the payment of compensation at the expense of the state. Torture is rightly considered, including in the legislation of Kazakhstan, as malfeasance, and is always committed by persons involved in the state. Hence, the principle of compensation for harm to the victims is precisely the state,” the authors of the appeal emphasize.
In this regard, the NGO Coalition asks the President to develop a comprehensive strategy for the adoption of legislative, administrative, and managerial measures in order to prevent, effectively investigate and fully redress victims of torture in accordance with Kazakhstan’s obligations under the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
“We propose to create a working group, together with national experts of the NGO Coalition of Kazakhstan against Torture, to jointly develop the content and mechanisms for implementing this strategy. Based on practical experience in the field of protection of victims of torture and guided by international standards, we are firmly convinced that the time has finally come to comprehensively approach the problem of torture in Kazakhstan in order to completely eradicate it as a systemic phenomenon,” the authors of the appeal sum up.
