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Monitoring Post-conviction Detention

Uzbekistan does not have an effective prison monitoring mechanism which would provide for unannounced, unaccompanied repeat visits and confidential meetings that are essential for detecting and preventing ill-treatment and torture. Uzbekistan has not ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the Protocol), which establishes monitoring mechanisms that ensure international experts a minimum level of access to places of detention.¹⁵²

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) suspended its monitoring of detention facilities in Uzbekistan in 2004. Although the European Union is said to be encouraged that the Uzbek government and ICRC will soon agree on resuming visits to places of detention, to the best of Human Rights Watch’s knowledge, no such resumption of ICRC visits has commenced.¹⁵³

Prisoners therefore do not have access to a fully independent body to which they may complain about abuse. Prisoners may, and often do, relate abuses to their visiting relatives or lawyers, though prison authorities can and often do restrict access to prisoners by putting them into punishment cells when a visit is due.

The office of the Ombudsman conducts prison visits, and while these are welcome they do not meet standards essential for detecting and preventing ill-treatment. In its letter to Human Rights Watch, the Office of the Ombudsman states that in 2006 and 2007 the office and its regional representatives inspected 20 detention facilities, twelve of which were conducted together with foreign visitors.¹⁵⁴ Meetings with prisoners are not private and take place in the presence of the deputy head of the prison system, the head of the prison and a special prosecutor. Sayora Rashidova, the head of the Ombudsman’s office, told Human Rights Watch that the prisoners are not “prepared” for these visits.

Although Sayora Rashidova told Human Rights Watch that the prison authorities cannot conceal abuse “because the visiting group is too big,”¹⁵⁵ currently the ombudsman’s office does not appear to have any safeguards in place to ensure the safety of prisoners complaining to the representatives of the office during prison visits. When Human Rights asked Rashidova about this issue, she said “We have not had one complaint of bad treatment after a prison visit by the ombudsman. The relatives or our regional representatives could inform us if there were any problems.” She also mentioned that prisoners have the right to write a letter to the ombudsman and the head of the prison is obligated to forward that letter.¹⁵⁶

Throughout the period covered in this report, numerous relatives of prisoners and visitors to Human Rights Watch’s Tashkent office expressed their lack of confidence in the ombudsman’s office and perceived it as unwilling or unable to launch effective investigations into their complaints.

Furthermore, relatives are often afraid to complain to the prison authorities or the office of the ombudsman about ill-treatment in prison because they do not want to worsen the situation for the prisoner. There are no safeguards or transparency in place that would allow a complainant outside the prison to ensure whether the situation for the detainee has improved. At best they get their next regular prison visit, usually after three months, to follow up with the prisoner.

For example, Nargiza N. had not heard back for more than a month after she informed the head of the N. prison that two prison officers had beaten her son, Agzam A. Nargiza N. asked the prison chief to transfer Agzam A. to the hospital section of the prison. The chief promised to do so and promised that Agzam would call her later, but when she talked to Human Rights Watch she had not heard anything from him for over a month. She was very worried that “something could go really wrong” and as he suffered from high blood pressure he might have a stroke.¹⁵⁷

The head of the Ombdudsman’s office has told Human Rights Watch that a discussion is underway about whether to establish the institution of a prison ombudsman in Uzbekistan.¹⁵⁸ For such an institution to be effective, it would have to follow procedures far more consistent with internationally accepted good practices¹⁵⁹ for prison visiting than are currently followed, including by having the power to ensure the safety of complainants by providing a confidential means to report reprisals, and having the ability to refer cases of abuse for prosecution or disciplinary action.

Breaking Newcomers in Post-conviction Prisons

Uzbek human rights groups have reported widely about conditions for those in prison serving sentences.¹⁶⁰ Human Rights Watch did not conduct comprehensive research into abuse in prisons, where convicted prisons serve out their sentences. We did, however, document two cases during the intake process that appear to indicate patterns of serious abuse.

When a conviction is handed down, the convicted person is normally brought to TashTiurma and then transferred to a post-conviction prison or labor camp. Upon arrival new prisoners are put in a separate part of the prison for “quarantine.” Two former detainees told Human Rights Watch that the quarantine process is aimed at the complete breaking of the will of the prisoner. For this reason its nickname is “lomka,” the Russian word for “breaking.” “We were warned by former prisoners, that a ten-day “lomka” would be awaiting us in prison. But they never told us what it really would mean,” Ulugbek Khaidarov told a Human Rights Watch representative. He arrived at Navoi prison in the morning of November 1, 2006 with fourteen other men:

We were forced to run through a cordon of prison guards beating us with nightsticks. But this was not the worst. You could protect your head and not all the nightsticks hit you. Later we had to carry metal on our backs and make rounds around a square. Three of us [of the 15] we did not see again. They broke down and were taken away.

Yadgar Turlibekov spent 20 days in quarantine in November 2006 in an unheated building where everybody slept with jackets, caps and shoes because of the cold.

We were forced to march [in a yard] all the time. This is called lomka. During that they beat you with truncheons without any reason on your back, head, and lower legs.

Turlibekov also witnessed how prison guards beat another prisoner who was working as a “supervisor” for the newcomers. The prison guards forced the man to stand with his face to a fence and to keep his arms through the fence while they beat him on his back and his head. The guards accused him of having been too soft on the new prisoners.¹⁶¹

In an article Khaidarov published after his release he said that the prison authorities use more experienced prisoners to deal with the newcomers in exchange for privileges:

The scums, in prison slang, are the prisoners who work for the prison administration as a punitive detachment, who forced us to kneel down with our hands behind our necks. After half an hour of sitting in this position our legs tired out, and the older prisoners started to fall down, one after another. “Sit still, don’t move!” the scum [...] shouted out. He was around 25 or 30, and he had been sentenced to 12 years. He was an active assistant to the guards, who always entrusted him with quarantine prisoners, because he generated the cruelest methods of crushing the newcomers.¹⁶²

Both Turlibekov and Khaidarov described other elements of the “lomka”:

• Prisoners being forced to act out “Duck steps” – a position where the prisoners must squat down and are forced to walk up and down a staircase. Those who fall down are beaten.
• Prisoners being forced to squat on their haunches with their hands behind the neck for an hour or more.
• Prisoners being forced to squatting, with their arms extended out in front of then, so that the prison guards could beat them with a truncheon on the fingers.

Khaidarov summarized his “lomka” experience:

You start to lose your human look and feelings. You start thinking that you are stuck forever in this place. Everybody says that you have to survive lomka, and then you will be okay.¹⁶³