In Uzbekistan, prisoners are kept in inhuman conditions

The report on monitoring human rights in prisons in Uzbekistan was prepared by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (Poland) and the Uzbek-German Forum on Human Rights (Germany). ACCA has the full text of the document.

In the course of the study, they interviewed people, who were convicted of political motives, peaceful religious beliefs, entrepreneurial activity, and corruption-related reasons. The target audience included journalists, human rights activists, practicing Muslims, businessmen, former law enforcement officers, etc. When selecting respondents, the snowball method was used, in which the respondents, having familiarized themselves with the objectives of the study, involved another respondent.

All prisoners were arrested between 1999 and 2017. At the time of writing the report, seven were still in prison. Sixteen were sentenced to additional terms, already being in custody. Former prisoners and their relatives describe inhuman and degrading treatment in places of deprivation of liberty.

The report provides numerous facts of torture of prisoners. Water was supplied only for an hour a day at irregular times, so that prisoners filled all the cups or bottles they had with them. Former prisoners described that the cells were full of lice, scabies mites, rodents and flies. One prisoner, who suffered severe burns as a result of torture, could not put on a shirt over the wound. He said that his cellmates had to constantly wave a towel at him, so that the flies would not swarm all over his wounds.

One of the respondents was held in solitary cell for more than a year and a half during pre-trial detention. During all this time, he didn’t go out of the cell, except for interrogations, once a day to the toilet and once a week to the shower. He was denied access to fresh air and exercise, to visit relatives and to have access to a lawyer whom he could choose. He said that he wrote complaints, but nothing happened, because they had to be transferred to the investigator.

In two other cases, respondents reported that after being detained, they were held without contact with the outside world for several weeks or months in unofficial places of detention before their formal detention. During this time, both of them were tied day and night, the first to the battery, the second to the bed frame.

In a conversation with a researcher, the interviewee said, “Every day I was called and told to testify against [colleague]. They put a gas mask on me and shut off oxygen, torturing me. They put a knee-length rubber straitjacket on me. With any movement, it was compressed, and it became very painful. They hit me on the head and feet with a bottle with water so that there were no traces. There was nothing in the room, except for metal chairs and places for fastening the handcuffs …. They tortured and left me on the floor, chained to the table leg, like a dog, and then they left me for several hours, without food, without water, without access to the toilet … They said that if I sign the protocol, they would let me go. And if I refuse, then they will send me to Zhaslyk [prison], where “we will torture you, and you will die”. They beat me so hard that I could not walk.”

Torture, cruel treatment, isolation, lack of protection and poor conditions of detention can cause inmates a sense of hopelessness and despair, or even coercion to suicide. During the three months of pre-trial detention, the respondent was allowed only one meeting with a lawyer and one meeting with his wife. During the trial, the guards put him in a solitary cell for the whole day, in which there were only metal plank bed and a piece of rope. According to him, the guard told him that he had no chance at the trial, but that he could “take other measures”.

“Your life costs 50 cents. This is the price of the piece of paper on which the death certificate of the prisoner is written.” Such words, the guards in places of deprivation of liberty spoke almost every day to the former convict in Uzbekistan.

Researchers note that since the government of Uzbekistan seeks to put an end to the country’s repressive history and to carry out reforms aimed at modernizing and bringing the situation closer to international standards, the close attention to the penitentiary system becomes justified. Even against the background of an extremely worrying human rights situation in Uzbekistan, the penitentiary system has long attracted attention to the appalling conditions of detention and numerous abuses, including torture and cruel treatment. Although the aim of all penitentiary systems is to punish criminal behavior, many of them also seek to perform other functions, primarily rehabilitation, helping the offender to return to society and preventing repeated violation of the law. The prison system of Uzbekistan stands out for its almost purely punitive approach, lack of opportunities to undergo training or rehabilitation, inhumane conditions and practices, the purpose of which, as it seems, is to humiliate and dehumanize prisoners.