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Introduction

Several Uzbek government documents describe steps it has taken in the area of torture reform. These include a series of communications with the Special Rapporteur in 2003 and a separate report in 2004.³ While it would be reasonable to expect delays or problems with implementation of some recommendations, particularly those calling for major changes, in its reports the government claimed to have addressed only ten recommendations in the first year and fourteen in the second year. In fact, even on the recommendations the government claimed to have addressed, in some cases the action taken does not correspond to the recommendation at all. For example, the government lists prison programs run by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to teach macramé and hairdressing to prisoners and allow prisoners to stage musical performances as examples of progress for the recommendation calling for non-governmental investigators to monitor conditions of detention.⁴ Finally, some of the recommendations that could easily have been implemented, such as making a clear statement that torture is prohibited and those who engage in it will be punished, have yet to be addressed.

Another key document is the “National Plan of Action to Implement the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” (the Plan), which the government of Uzbekistan approved on March 9, 2004, more than a year after the release of the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations. Early drafts circulated to representatives of the international community, including Human Rights Watch, called it a plan to implement the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations. The government has not explained why the Plan no longer makes reference to the Special Rapporteur’s report, conclusions, or recommendations.

If fully implemented, the Plan has the potential to complement other reform efforts. As conceived, however, it is weak, does little to implement the recommendations made by the Special Rapporteur, and should not be accepted as a satisfactory or sufficient step toward much-needed torture reform.

The structure and content of the approved Plan are confusing; it is unclear which “actions” in the Plan correspond to which articles in the Convention Against Torture (CAT)—assuming that the Plan is designed to implement the CAT—or to which recommendations of the Special Rapporteur. This makes it difficult to monitor and evaluate the Plan’s success toward meeting its stated goal and toward meeting the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations. Overall, the actions contained in the Plan are vague and are linked to unnecessarily attenuated timelines. The Plan focuses on roundtables and conferences rather than on implementation of concrete reforms. The government itself has acknowledged that much of the Plan is aimed toward educating law enforcement officials and gradually changing the mindsets of lawmakers. While such activities may be crucial for sustaining institutional change, they cannot substitute for real reforms designed to eradicate the use of torture and create a culture of transparency and accountability.

Some of the actions outlined in the Plan are of questionable relation to reducing the use of torture. For example, Action 4.4 calls for “Organizing a roundtable to discuss possibilities of introduction of ‘plea bargain’ institute [sic], in cases where defendants plead guilty and request simplified review of the case,” sometime in 2005.