Kyrgyzstan: convict wasn’t included in the amnesty because of lack of passport
Prisoner Artur Becker, who is serving his sentence in the colony No. 3 in the village of Novopokrovka (Chui region), cannot get a passport because he is wanted. Human rights activist Indira Sautova told ACCA about this.
Artur Becker was convicted of robbery four years ago, during which the owner of the house shot him in the patella. The young man was taken to the hospital, where doctors first saved his life, and a few days later amputated his wounded limb. In the hospital, Becker was guarded by a convoy for about 10 days. After he was discharged and transferred to a pre-trial detention center. Then there was the trial, the verdict and the prison.
Last year, an amnesty was announced in Kyrgyzstan, which was supposed to reduce the prison population. Under the amnesty law, people with disabilities of I and II degree were given the opportunity to be released.
However, despite the absence of a leg, Artur Becker wasn’t able to be released under the amnesty, because for the state he is a healthy person, having available and in working condition all the limbs.
In order to qualify for release, Artur Becker needs to undergo a medical and social examination, which will confirm his disabled status, and receive all the relevant documents.
“However, according to government decree of 2012, it’s prohibited to conduct a commission to examine convicted persons, although this document violates the Constitution, which says that everyone is equal. In addition, the decree as a whole contradicts the legislation of the Kyrgyz Republic, which stipulates that persons with disabilities, regardless of their place of residence and location, have the right to social security, documenting their status,” Indira Sautova emphasizes.
When studying this situation, it turned out that there is an order from the State Penitentiary Service of 2012, which, in principle, says that it’s possible to examine these persons. According to this order, since 2012, employees of the State Penitentiary Service haven’t examined anyone for their disability status.
To solve the problem, the State Penitentiary Service sent a draft government decree to change this norm, but it wasn’t accepted. An interdepartmental working group has been created to amend this decree. That is, since 2012, people with disabilities have been limited in their right to document their status and receive social support.
However, even if there were no legal conflicts associated with the conduct of a medical and social commission, Becker would still not have been able to pass the necessary examination, since he doesn’t have a passport of a citizen of the Kyrgyz Republic.
The young man was born in Germany, in the city of Siegburg. When the boy was 9 months old, his family (his mother, his older sisters and himself) was deported from Germany. As a result, of all the documents, Artur only had a record from a German hospital.
In Kyrgyzstan, he first entered school without a birth certificate; his grandmother agreed with the director. Then, the lack of identity documents didn’t prevent the young man from being convicted and imprisoned.
“Many people in the penitentiary system don’t have passports. The State Penitentiary Service, of course, issues passports, but government agencies only make documents for those who have a birth certificate, and whose passport has been lost. The rest remain without identity documents,” Sautova notes.
Currently, Artur Becker is serving his sentence in the institution No. 3 in the village of Novopokrovka. As Indira Sautova says, recently she, together with a social worker of the colony, began to deal with the issue of obtaining a passport for the young man.
“We have collected all the documents in order to hand them to the Public Service Center. When a responsible officer of the State Registration Service came to the colony and checked Artur in the base, it turned out that Becker was wanted. It became known about the presence of preventive measures against him. In this regard, we were denied a passport for him,” the human rights activist says.
She calls the situation absurd. “How is it possible that a person, who has been in prison for several years, was simultaneously declared wanted?”
“In addition, the presence of preventive measures is not a reason for not documenting a person. They [officials] tried to explain to me that the program reads it just like that. However, I am outraged by the fact that for a month and a half, while we were preparing the documents, no one managed to check Becker in the database and somehow eliminate this error,” Sautova notes.
She believes that all these bureaucratic obstacles make documenting convicts extremely difficult, and the government decree of 2017, guaranteeing the issuance of passports to prisoners, doesn’t work.
It should be noted that there have been no precedents of class action suits by prisoners in Kyrgyzstan, including PWDs, against the state due to the latter’s failure to comply with constitutional guarantees. As human rights activists note, in prison, people are not allowed to write collective statements. In addition, they are afraid to do this, because they are in a vulnerable position. If a person in prison complains to higher authorities, they may be subject to various punishments and sanctions.
