The Uzbek government should immediately implement the United Nations? recommendations on ending torture, Human Rights Watch said today.
The U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture presented his report on Uzbekistan during a special NGO briefing at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva today. The report, based on the Special Rapporteur’s mission to Uzbekistan in late 2002, found torture in Uzbekistan “systematic” and listed numerous measures the government must take to stop it.
At the same session, Human Rights Watch presented a 12-page briefing paper documenting torture-related deaths in Uzbekistan caused by prolonged beatings, suffocation, and other methods.
“For years, the Uzbek government has rarely held torturers accountable, even when they killed their victims,” said Elizabeth Andersen, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division. “The government should implement the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations now to end impunity for torture.”
The Human Rights Watch briefing paper describes eight suspicious deaths in custody apparently resulting from torture that occurred over the past fifteen months. The paper also cites thirteen cases in which authorities contributed to the deaths of ill prisoners by beating them, holding them in extraordinarily harsh conditions, or denying them food parcels and medical treatment. In all twenty-one cases, the Uzbek authorities either refused to investigate the death or provided improbable conclusions after inadequate investigations, and failed to bring the perpetrators to justice or compensate the families.
In its briefing paper, Human Rights Watch emphasized several of the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations that the Uzbek government should implement as a matter of priority, including:
- Introducing judicial review of detention into Uzbek law;
- holding accountable those responsible for torture, in conformity with relevant U.N. standards;
- compensation for torture victims and, where relevant, their families;
- ensuring evidence obtained by torture is not admissible;
- allowing the United Nations Committee against Torture to receive individual complaints concerning violations of the Convention; and
- access for independent monitoring organizations to places of detention.
Human Rights Watch also urged the U.N. Commission on Human Rights to call on the Uzbek government to implement the recommendations.
“The Uzbek government has claimed that by inviting the Special Rapporteur it has taken an important step toward ending torture and cooperating with the U.N. system,” said Andersen. “But the real test will be in implementing the recommendations. That is the best hope for reducing detainees’ fatal risk of torture.”
