The country’s penitentiary institutions contain 49 people convicted of sodomy. Statistics on their number is contained in the response of the Main Department for the Execution of Punishment to the online media Qalampir.uz.
The list includes persons who were prosecuted for this type of crime for four years: in 2016 – 6 people, in 2017 – 15 people, in 2018 – 7 people, in 2019 – 7 people, in 2020 – 9 people. Judging by the response of the Department, five were sentenced this year.
The country still hasn’t adopted a comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation that would recognize such signs of discrimination as sexual orientation and gender identity. Last time the government considered this issue in September 2019, and then it was announced that there were no criminal cases on the facts of violence against LGBT people.
From the response of the Main Department for the Execution of Punishment, the general public became aware of the special requirements in the regulations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the detention of persons with non-traditional sexual orientation. Their essence is not disclosed, but it is said about the creation of a psychological service to prevent “repeated crimes and offenses”.
In practice, this means the isolation of homosexuals from other convicts in the prisons and the status of the most restricted category of prisoners. It’s also noted that some psychological work is regularly carried out with such prisoners. International organizations have no doubts about the repressive nature of such activities.
“Homosexual men, who are subjected to human rights violations, cannot count on adequate legal defense,” say the human rights activists from Human Rights Watch.
Criminal liability for consensual same-sex relationships remains only in two states of the former USSR: Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The latter announced his intention to revise its legislation in this area. In Uzbekistan, you can still get up to 3 years in prison for such a crime.
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