Covering events from January-December 2001

Republic of Kazakstan
Head of state: Nursultan Nazarbayev
Head of government: Kasymzhomart Tokayev
Capital: Astana
Population: 16.1 million
Official language: Kazak
Death penalty: retentionist
2001 treaty ratifications/signatures: Optional Protocol to the UN Women's Convention

Death sentences continued to be passed and at least 30 people were reported to have been executed; no official statistics on the application of the death penalty were published. Members of the Uighur ethnic minority faced continued harassment.

The death penalty

No comprehensive official statistics on the application of the death penalty in Kazakstan had been published since 1998. However, at least three death sentences were imposed and at least 30 people were reported to have been executed. According to a report on Kazak Commercial Television in 2000, between 40 and 60 executions were carried out in the country each year.

Relatives of prisoners on death row were often treated by the authorities in a manner which could cause unnecessary distress and itself constituted cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The families were usually not informed of the date of execution. They also did not have the right to receive the body of their relative; the bodies of executed prisoners were buried in unmarked graves in an undisclosed location. In past years there were also reports that in some cases the family was not informed of the prisoner's death until some months after the execution.

There were reports that courts, including the Supreme Court, continued to admit evidence based on coerced confessions and to base convictions primarily on such evidence. There was particular concern that people may have been sentenced to death and executed on the basis of confessions made as a result of torture.

Torture and ill-treatment

Torture and ill-treatment of criminal suspects remained widespread.

The government responded to some of the concerns raised by the UN Special Rapporteur on torture on a number of cases of alleged ill-treatment by law enforcement officers. One of the cases raised was that of Irina Cherkasova, who alleged that she had been tortured in police custody in 1999 in order to force her to confess to a murder charge. The government admitted that Irina Cherkasova had stated in both her initial trial and during her appeal hearing at the Supreme Court that she had been tortured in detention, but claimed that her allegations had been carefully investigated. According to the government her interrogation had been carried out in accordance with the law and in the presence of her lawyer.

Harassment of Uighurs

Members of the Uighur population throughout Central Asia were increasingly accused of sympathizing with, and even supporting, banned Islamist opposition movements. Uighurs were frequently arbitrarily arrested, tortured and ill-treated by the authorities in Central Asia, and some were forcibly deported to China, where they faced ill-treatment, torture and the death penalty (see China entry). There were concerns that the harassment of Uighurs would intensify in the wake of the attacks in the USA on 11 September.

  • Nurpolat Abdullah, a 30-year-old Uighur with Australian citizenship, was tried on charges of "forming and leading a criminal organization"; "terrorism"; "illegally storing ammunition, explosives or explosive devices"; and "concealing a serious crime".
Killing of human rights defender

On 9 June the body of 44-year-old Dilbirim Samsakova, a prominent Uighur activist, was discovered near a water reservoir outside Almaty. She had been missing since 24 May. She had reportedly been hit on the head with a blunt object. There were concerns that Dilbirim Samsakova's murder was politically motivated and that she was killed because of her ethnic origin and her high-profile activities in support of Uighurs.

Dilbirim Samsakova was the chairwoman of Nuzugum Foundation which she set up to provide assistance to Uighur women and children from Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in China and from Central Asia. She was also a member of an organization based in Germany campaigning for the independence of XUAR. Dilbirim Samsakova played an active role in defending the rights of Uighurs. For example, in March 2001 she travelled to Osh in Kyrgyzstan to assist four Uighur men from XUAR who had been charged with terrorism and murder in relation to a 1998 bomb explosion in Osh which killed four people. She acted as translator and legal adviser for the accused during a retrial in March (see Kyrgyzstan entry).

AI country reports/visits

Report
  • Central Asia: No excuse for escalating human rights violations (AI Index: EUR 04/002/2001)

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