Tajikistan: 14 cases of torture were recorded by human rights defenders since the beginning of the year
“During the first half of the year, the secretariat of the Legal Aid Group and member organizations of the Coalition documented 14 complaints on the use of torture and cruel treatment. Work continued on 9 cases of previous years,” human rights activists said.
“Major human rights violations were during arrest and investigation: unlawful and arbitrary arrests; physical violence in the form of beatings, torture with electric shock; threats of rape of the victim and / or family members; intimidation with detention, punishment, humiliation,” the members of the Coalition emphasize.
Torture and cruel treatment were used to extract confessions, punish certain acts, or as a measure of restraint and humiliation of personal dignity.
Complaints about the use of torture and cruel treatment were received by various state bodies, but most of all by the internal affairs bodies (11 out of 14).
“The analysis of the activities of the Legal Aid Group shows that there is still a negative practice of not issuing an order to refuse to initiate criminal proceedings in cases of torture and cruel treatment; lawyers are not provided with materials of prosecutorial inspections, justifying this by the fact that these materials are classified,” the report says.
There are cases when lawyers are denied access to the materials of the criminal case. The refusal of torture victims and their relatives to further appeal against the illegal actions of law enforcement officers at different stages of the development of the case is still a serious problem for the effective work of the Legal Aid Group.
Despite the fact that in the Law of the Republic of Tajikistan “On amnesty” of 2019, torture (Article 143 note 1 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Tajikistan) falls into the list of crimes in respect of which amnesty is not applied. However, in practice, those convicted under Article “Torture” are subject to a reduction in the term penalties under other provisions of the amnesty law in violation of the state’s obligations under the Convention against Torture.
