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Background

Torture and ill-treatment—and impunity for perpetrators—are part of a wide-ranging problem of human rights in Uzbekistan. The Uzbek government has a poor record across a spectrum of violations. It does not tolerate dissent, severely restricts media freedoms, has persecuted and imprisoned a number of human rights defenders, and does not in practice permit public demonstrations that express criticism of the authorities. Individuals whose Islamic beliefs, practices and affiliations are at odds with official Islam are branded “fundamentalists” or “extremists” and are sentenced to lengthy prison sentences. Great numbers of people in Uzbekistan face barriers to lifting themselves from staggering poverty due to corruption and human rights violations.⁴

Torture and ill-treatment is an enduring problem in Uzbekistan. In the past decade a number of reports by Uzbek and international human rights organizations have documented ill-treatment, including torture, in Uzbek police and security facilities, remand prisons, and post-conviction facilities.⁵ Three things, however, have distinguished the discussion of torture in the past few years from previous years. First, Uzbekistan’s engagement with the United Nations anti-torture machinery, which resulted in several legal reforms. Secondly, the government’s strenuous efforts to convince the international community that it is committed to torture reform, while acknowledging neither the scale of the problem or the impunity for it. Thirdly, the government’s fierce crackdown on civil society following the May 2005 Andijan uprising and massacre.

UN Engagement and Some Steps Forward

Uzbekistan became a party to the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention against Torture) on August 31, 1995.⁶ The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) reviewed Uzbekistan’s first report on its compliance with the Convention against Torture in 1999, and its second report in May 2002.⁷ In its 2002 conclusions, CAT made 15 recommendations to the Uzbek government, including: to amend the Criminal Code to include the crime of torture defined in a manner fully consistent with article 1 of the Convention against Torture; to establish complaint mechanisms, outside the prosecutor’s office (or procuracy) for persons who are held in official custody; to ensure prompt, impartial and full investigations into allegations of torture; to ensure in practice absolute respect for the principle that evidence obtained by torture is inadmissible; and to take measures to permit detainees access to a lawyer, a doctor and family members from the time they are taken into custody.⁸

Six months later, the government of Uzbekistan took the important step of issuing an invitation to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman degrading treatment or punishment, the first government of the Central Asian states to do so.⁹ The UN Special Rapporteur on torture’s long-awaited fact-finding visit in November 2002 represented a major development in torture reform efforts and raised significant hopes that it would trigger fundamental changes toward eradicating the use of torture in Uzbekistan. His subsequent report, published in February 2003, detailed Uzbekistan’s pervasive torture problem, which he characterized as “systematic,” and made 22 recommendations for combating it. The report’s recommendations were similar to those made by CAT and included calling on Uzbekistan to issue a public condemnation, by the highest-level authorities, of torture; to amend the Criminal Code to include the crime of torture; to include the right to habeas corpus; to ensure investigation of torture allegations by an independent body outside the prosecutor’s office; to ensure access to defense attorneys; to introduce a moratorium on the execution of the death penalty; to give urgent and serious consideration to the abolition of capital punishment; and many others.¹⁰

In its third periodic report to CAT, submitted in December 2006, and in other public documents the government said that it had fully complied with 18 of the 22 recommendations made by the Special Rapporteur.¹¹ It is beyond the scope of this report to analyze this claim, yet it is important to note two measures the government has undertaken in the framework of its engagement with the UN.

First, in August 2003 the government of Uzbekistan amended the definition of torture in article 235 of the Criminal Code.¹² Significantly, however, the amended definition under article 235 still falls short of the authoritative interpretation contained in article 1 of the Convention against Torture. It provides an unduly narrow list of law enforcement authorities prohibited from engaging in torture, while the CAT definition makes clear that what is prohibited are acts of torture “inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”¹³ The narrow category provided for in Uzbek law reflects an erroneous view that only law enforcement authorities are capable of using torture in their official capacity, rather than anyone acting in an official capacity, or with the consent or acquiescence of any such person. In fact, torture and ill-treatment by third parties acting presumably at the behest of law enforcement or security officials are common in Uzbek prison and pre-trial detention facilities.¹⁴ Article 235 also unnecessarily narrows the circumstances in which the law deems torture can be perpetrated, e.g. against a party to criminal proceedings, on a prisoner.

Second, in a positive and long-awaited move, on June 29, 2007, the 10^th plenary meeting of the upper house of the Uzbek parliament approved two new laws: one transferring the authority to issue arrest warrants from the prosecutor’s office to the courts and the other regarding the abolition of capital punishment.¹⁵ Almost two years earlier, President Islam Karimov had issued presidential decrees recommending that these laws be adopted. Both laws will come into force on January 1, 2008.

While the adoption of these laws is to be welcomed, it is too early to assess what effect in practice they will have on combating torture in Uzbekistan, as too often the gap between the existence of a law on the books and its implementation is wide. The Uzbekistan Rapid Response Group (RRG)—an association of local human rights defenders that documents a wide range of human rights abuses, including torture—published a commentary welcoming the adoption of the two laws but expressing concerns that other problems within the judicial system in Uzbekistan will “significantly thwart” their implementation. In particular, the RRG pointed out that “many law enforcement agents rely mostly upon instructions and procedures defined and developed within their agency rather than by the [criminal procedure code].”¹⁶

Uzbek authorities also held a number of conferences, roundtables and trainings. For example, the Office of the Ombudsman organized several conferences involving approximately 600 participants in Tashkent and other provinces of Uzbekistan on the rights of prisoners and on cooperation between the Office of the Ombudsman, the authorities and NGOs to monitor human rights.¹⁷

These steps notwithstanding, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture’s March 2006 annual report described in detail the absence of improvements in combating torture.¹⁸ In June 2006 the UN Special Rapporteur on torture stated that “the mandate… continues to receive serious allegations of torture by Uzbek law enforcement officials, which are regularly transmitted to the Government for clarifications and urgent action.”¹⁹

The Scope of Torture

In the years since the Uzbek government began contemplating measures to address the UN Special Rapporteur on torture’s recommendations, torture remains a serious problem. The government has persistently denied that the problem is “systematic,” rejecting this key conclusion by the UN Special Rapporteur and concomitantly refusing to meet one of his main recommendations—to issue a clear public statement at the highest levels condemning torture and declaring an end to the culture of impunity. ²⁰

Statistics provided by the Office of the Prosecutor General and the Office of the Ombudsman indicate a decline in torture complaints. The Office of the Prosecutor General received 523 complaints about “threats and other methods of pressure” in 2002 and 180 in 2006.²¹ The Office of the Ombudsman received 566 complaints about “disagreement with actions by law enforcement officers” in 2002 and 314 in 2006.²² Human Rights Watch cannot confirm or deny these figures. Yet they are unlikely to reflect the true scope of torture and ill-treatment since victims and their relatives might not report their abuse, either because they do not expect this to be effective or because they fear retribution.

Since the 2oo5 Andijan events it has become significantly more difficult to verify through independent sources government claims of progress in implementing reforms such as combating torture and improving prison conditions. Whereas before the uprising and massacre in Andijan the Uzbek government tolerated, with notable exceptions, human rights organizations, afterwards it unleashed a fierce crackdown on civil society, imprisoning dozens of human rights defenders and causing many others to flee the country altogether.²³ This has significantly hampered independent groups documenting and reporting torture and other human rights problems and enabled authorities to increasingly control and monopolize information. Because there is no centralized independent data, it is difficult to quantify the true scope of torture and other ill-treatment in today’s Uzbekistan.

However, there are numerous indications that torture and other ill-treatment is commonplace. One is the frequency with which the remaining independent human rights groups receive reports of torture. Surat Ikramov, head of the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Defenders, told Human Rights Watch about his daily work: “Everyone who comes in [to talk to me] says there is torture. In fact, I do not remember a single case where someone was held in detention and not tortured.” Ikramov is convinced that operatviniki²⁴torture because they see it as part of their job, in a system where the goal is to extract a confession and to spread fear amongst people.”²⁵

This view is supported by the incidents detailed in this report and others reported by Uzbek and international nongovernmental organizations which indicate that any detainee, whether held on suspicion of committing an “ordinary” crime such as murder or robbery, of committing treason, or of being affiliated with religious groups or movements that the government has branded “extremist,”²⁶ is at risk of torture.

This is a long-established pattern. In the past decade the Uzbek government has had to respond to several episodes of political violence—the 1999 bombings of government buildings in Tashkent, the 2000 incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a militant group, into southern Uzbekistan, and a series of shootings and bombings in 2004 in Tashkent and Bukhara. Dozens of those detained on suspicion of involvement in some episodes of this violence, and their lawyers, made credible allegations of torture and ill- treatment.²⁷

Other credible allegations of torture were made by dozens of detainees held in the aftermath of the 2005 Andijan events, who have spoken to journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders and Human Rights Watch. In its efforts to investigate the uprising and as part of its massive cover-up of the massacre, the authorities rounded up hundreds—and perhaps thousands—of people with connection to the uprising, no matter how remote. Human Rights Watch interviewed twelve individuals who were beaten or threatened into signing false confessions and statements to support the government’s version of the Andijan events.²⁸ The series of trials related to the Andijan uprising that followed, raised serious concerns about the methods by which confessions and witness testimonies were obtained – all the trials except one were closed, several defendants in the open Supreme Court trial read prepared testimony, and all of them where represented by state-appointed defense lawyers.²⁹