23 March 2011. Johannesburg. Government paid security personnel employed at Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan prisons have been implicated in alleged widespread torture and abuse, said CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation in a report released today.
The 40-page report, a compilation of personal narratives and analysis presented as a briefing to United Nations Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights entitled "Torture and Arbitrary Detention in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan" identifies torture as a common practice in the Turkmen and Uzbek penal systems used to interrogate, punish alleged criminals of all varieties, silence perceived and actual dissent, or for no apparent reason. Long administrative detentions, medical malpractice, and other illegal activities often occur in conjunction with abuse.
The report, presented to the UN last week in Geneva, details 12 cases of specific abuse and examines the impact of the governments' observed complicity in said abuse. It calls on UN special mechanisms to guide an independent investigation into the deaths, torture and arbitrary detention of Turkmen and Uzbek citizens.
"Partners in civil society find that years after the special rapporteur on torture concluded that systematic torture exists in Central Asia, torture in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan continues to be a routine component of investigations and long, brutal administrative detentions are common practice," said Will Lasky, Eurasia project coordinator at CIVICUS. "These studies on Turkmen and Uzbek prisons and penal colonies detail arbitrary detention and torture as both physical and psychological daily realities."
Torture is often used to combat the perceived threat of dissent, said CIVICUS. People linked with the Andijan events of 2005 - when Uzbek government forces opened fire on protestors resulting in an international refugee crisis and hundreds of arrests - including innocent family members, are routinely detained, brought up on bogus charges and subjected to long years of bodily torture and psychological terror.
In both countries, the report documents the torture and abuse suffered by human rights defenders, religious people, refugees, asylum seekers and journalists. For example, refugees, who believed the promises of the Uzbek authorities, returned to Uzbekistan where they faced constant interrogations, surveillance, denial of employment and inhuman and degrading treatment. Dilorum Abdukadyrova, who returned to Uzbekistan from Australia in 2010, was immediately sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment.
The report noted that covering up the signs of torture is an entrenched policy in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Medical personnel often play a key role in concealing evidence and fabricating documents. Forensic teams concealing crimes to the detriment of victims and hospitals not registering people with torture signs are examples cited by the report.
A case study in the report compiled by Mutabar Tadjibayeva, Head of the Human Rights Watch Club "Fiery Hearts", said that although the International Committee of the Red Cross had been allowed to investigate claims of torture and abuse in Uzbekistan, their policing efforts were counterproductive. Tadjibayeva noted that prisoners who did report torture and abuse to the ICRC during its visits to Uzbekistan were soon after held for long periods in detention centres and subjected to "merciless torture".
"In Uzbekistan, administrative arrest for around 15 days is common when being charged with murder, rape, robbery, membership in illegal religious organisations, membership in a human rights organisation, being a prostitute, etc. Those arrested have no access to legal counsel and are held in complete isolation. And at this time they are severely tortured for the purposes of forced confession," Tadjibayeva said.
Tadjibayeva, who spent over two years imprisoned in Uzbekistan, said torture techniques such as bludgeoning with batons, genital torture, male and female rape and sodomy, psychological humiliation and degradation and electrocution, are "widely" used in Uzbekistan today.
The CIVICUS report also examines the status of prison facilities. Turkmenistan's crowded prisons and colonies house over three times the number of inmates they are designed to accommodate, concludes the report. In one facility, MRK/16 in the town of Bairam-ali, its occupancy is reported at 800 people but in fact it houses over 3700 inmates.
Insufficient government funding has resulted in prisoners not getting access to proper nutrition, recreation or bathing and toilet facilities, depriving them of human dignity and often resulting in the spread of rampant disease.
Lasky said that the only way that abusive governments will end this practice is that other governments that support human rights must insist on the honouring of international commitments and treaties against torture as a firm requirement for economic and strategic cooperation. "These medieval practices need to be factored in when engaging Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Commerce and geo political strategy is not an excuse to turn a blind eye to this ongoing travesty, which by its very nature impedes stability, development and prosperity."
Download the report [PDF].