Tajikistan hopes to commute death penalty to life imprisonment soon, official

Tajikistan cannot abolish the death penalty at present, an official from the Justice Ministry, Sh. A. Nodirova, head of the ministry's Directorate for International Legal Relations and the Protection of the Economic Interests of the Republic of Tajikistan, has said in an article published in the Tajik newspaper Asia-Plus on 7 November.

 "Because of the current political and economic situation in the country, we can not renounce the death penalty as the highest form of punishment at the present stage. But, at the same time, we hope that we shall manage to commute the death penalty to life imprisonment with the laying down of minimum standard conditions for treating prisoners in the near future," Nodirova said.

 The official said that the observance of constitutional human rights is the basis for the stability of the state and society. "The encouragement and protection of personal rights is the most important condition for the development of democracy in Tajikistan and the ensuring of political and social stability in the country," the article said.

 Nodirova argued for the adoption of a decision by the Tajik government on transferring prisons and corrective institutions from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Justice Ministry. "The result of the reform of the penitentiary system, as international experience shows, will be the transition from the strict punitive measures of influence on convicts to the wide stimulation of law-abiding behaviour." She said that measures would be adopted for "humanizing" the detention of convicts and bringing the conditions of their detention up to international standards.

 Nodirova said that though the legal foundations had been created in Tajik society for the equality of rights of the sexes, women were under pressure. She said that women had "limited opportunities for the implementation of their rights compared with men."