Amnesty International Report 1995 - Kazakstan

A conscientious objector to military service sentenced to one year's corrective labour but released on appeal was a prisoner of conscience. At least six death sentences were passed. Multi-party elections in March to a new parliament returned a majority of deputies supporting President Nursultan Nazarbayev. The elections were criticized for procedural irregularities by monitors from the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE). Conscientious objector Roman Grechko, a Jehovah's Witness, was sentenced in March to one year's corrective labour for "evasion of active military service". He was a prisoner of conscience. In May a court upheld his appeal against the sentence and substituted a non-custodial punishment. The law in Kazakhstan does not offer an alternative service for all people who declare a conscientious objection to compulsory military service (see Amnesty International Report 1994). At least six death sentences were known to have been passed for murder; the true number was probably much higher, but no statistics were available on the application of the death penalty. Amnesty International also learned during the year of five death sentences passed in 1993. Amnesty International called for the immediate and unconditional release of Roman Grechko. It called for commutation of all death sentences and continued to urge the total abolition of the death penalty. In January Amnesty International wrote to the Minister of Justice requesting him to provide clarification of the status of Article 170-3 of the criminal code ("infringement upon the honour and dignity of the President"), and Article 170-4 ("infringement upon the honour and dignity of a people's deputy"). Amnesty International had consistently lobbied for the repeal of these articles on the grounds that they placed unwarranted restrictions on freedom of expression (see Amnesty International Report 1994). In February the Minister replied that Article 170-3 had been repealed, but that Article 170-4 remained in force. Amnesty International wrote in July to the chairman of a newly created parliamentary commission set up to reinvestigate demonstrations in 1986 in the capital, Almaty. The organization urged the commission to include in its activities a reinvestigation of the death in suspicious circumstances of Kairat Ryskulbekov, a participant in the 1986 demonstrations who was subsequently prosecuted and was found hanged in his prison cell in 1988.