Over 100 prisoners over the past two months have contracted the coronavirus in penal colony №10 in the Kashkadarya region. This was reported to ACCA by Uzbek human rights activists who have difficulty receiving information from places of detention.
Those serving sentences are deprived of the opportunity to contact their relatives by phone. Thus, the Ministry of Internal Affairs seeks to prevent the dissemination of information about the situation in places of detention.
An Uzbek activist, speaking on condition of anonymity, notes that conditions in the colony are horrible.
“Salty drinking water in the heat only worsens the already unfavorable sanitary and epidemiological situation,” he said. – The prisoners have significantly weakened immune system. They are deprived of treatment even according to the protocol of the Ministry of Health with the use of dubious medicine such as Plaquenil, they deprived of support from relatives, and now their situation is simply hopeless. It is not known what drugs are used, how many severely sick patients, and those who died. “
The Main Department for the Execution of Sentences under the Ministry of Internal Affairs does not disclose the number of infected. According to the Uzbek service of Radio Svoboda, in the Karaulbazar detention center in the Bukhara region, about 70 people, including prisoners, operatives, and soldiers of the guard service, have been quarantined due to suspicions of being infected with the coronavirus. They have to get tested. Around 20 employees and prisoners of the colonies in the Tavaksay settlement of the Tashkent region and the city of Almalyk have already been diagnosed with the infection.
Pre-trial detention center No. 1 (“Tashtyurma”) in the Zangiata district of the Tashkent region has switched to an enhanced quarantine regime. Here, National Guard and sentry soldiers, as well as seven prisoners, are quarantined with suspected infection.
According to the ACCA expert, the spread of COVID-19 was facilitated by the irresponsible behavior of the country’s penitentiary system.
“Since the beginning of the quarantine in March, they have neglected basic precautions,” he said. – Only on May 22, the government assessed the alarming situation when the Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution “On additional measures to ensure openness and transparency of the activities of the internal affairs bodies in the field of the execution of sentences related to imprisonment when the disease has already become widespread.”
The document obliges the Ministry of Internal Affairs to make public information about the death and state of health of persons held in penal institutions and pre-trial detention centers. In practice, the classification of information on the number of prisoners who have contracted or died from COVID-19 continues.
Now the authorities are taking urgent measures, deciding to build a quarantine zone for 3,000 prisoners in Angren, Tashkent region. In some colonies, special sanitary centers will be established to provide medical care to those infected. So far, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has allocated $ 30,000 from the budget for the fight against coronavirus.
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