Oct. 25
TAJIKISTAN:
Controversy over suspension of death penalty
"A man raped his own mother, and then killed her. To hide the traces, he
decided to burn the corpse," Sharifmat Rajapov, a judge from Tajikistan's
southern Khatlon province, told IRIN, recalling a case he had recently
presided over.
The judge recounted the story to support his argument that the country
should scrap a controversial moratorium on the death penalty that came
into force in July this year. "Now people are not afraid of anything.
Earlier, fear of the death penalty constrained them somehow. Now that the
moratorium on capital punishment has been declared, this will untie the
hands of criminals."
Lilia Yaharieva, human rights officer and legal adviser at the UN bureau
for peace-building, disagrees. She believes that there is no place for the
death penalty in a civilised society. "It has already been proved many
times that the death penalty cannot serve as a deterrent," she told IRIN.
"When someone is going to commit a crime, as a rule they do not think of
the consequences."
Yaharieva believes the moratorium on the death penalty is an opportunity
to prevent miscarriages of justice. A Russian mass murderer, known as
Chikatilo, killed and dismembered about 70 women. By the time he was
caught, 2 people had been executed after having been found guilty of the
crimes committed by Chikatilo.
"This is one of the steps undertaken by the government of Tajikistan on
the humanisation of criminal legislation," Alikhon Rakhmonov, the Tajik
deputy justice minister, told IRIN.
The decision to call a halt to capital punishment was preceded by
discussion in the media and society as a whole. "About three years ago,
there were debates in Tajikistan about whether Tajik society was ready for
the death penalty moratorium or not," Riccardo Lepri, a human rights
adviser with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) based in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, said.
That discussion followed an international conference organised by the OSCE
in December 2001 in Dushanbe. After the conference, participants submitted
a number of recommendations to the Tajik authorities on the liberalisation
of criminal law.
According to Lepri, the law that brought in the moratorium did not
stipulate the period of suspension. "The moratorium is termless; it does
not specify how long the suspension of the death penalty will continue."
Representatives of some Tajik NGOs are concerned about this in the wake of
growing terrorist attacks in the region. "We have concerns that the
moratorium could be cancelled at any moment," Nigina Bakhrieva, head of
the National Human Rights and Law Observance Bureau, said. "After a series
of terrorist acts in Russia, people there started considering whether it
was time to cancel the death penalty moratorium here in Tajikistan."
Some argue that the death penalty is preferable to a lifetime spent in a
Tajik jail - where conditions are often very poor. "Rumours say that
prisoners simply die of hunger and diseases in our inhumane jails,"
Abdullo Latipov, a 56-year-old inhabitant of Dushanbe, says.
Many prisoners are known to have died from malnutrition and disease while
serving sentences in the nation's jails. "Some of the lucky ones who are
brought food by their well-to-do relatives at least once a week are able
to survive somehow. As for the others, they simply die like flies," one
former convict, recently released after a 5-year sentence for theft, told
IRIN.
IRIN asked Deputy Justice Minister Rakhmonov under what conditions
prisoners are kept and whether prison constituted a humane alternative to
the death penalty. "The prisons and corrective facilities of Tajikistan
are indeed overcrowded. At current capacity, they are able to admit 6,000
prisoners. However, at present, more than 9,000 prisoners are serving
their terms in corrective facilities. Those sentenced to the death
penalty, who are under the moratorium, are serving their 25 years of
imprisonment in Kurgan Tyube prison."
The minister also admitted that prisons were breeding grounds for disease.
"Last year prisoners underwent medical examinations with the support of
international organisations," Rakhmonov said. "The examinations revealed
more than 1,500 prisoners infected with tuberculosis, including 750
convicts with the open form of the disease."
(source: IRIN / Reuters Alert Net)
