DUSHANBE, October 11, 2010, Asia-Plus — A working group established by the government is currently analyzing the social and legal aspects of the abolishing the death penalty in Tajikistan, Sodiq Shohnazarov, the Adviser to the President for Legal Issues, remarked at a news conference in Dushanbe on October 11.
According to him, the group made up of representatives from the government, law enforcement agencies and specialists in law is headed by Jumakhon Davlatov, the State Adviser to the President of Tajikistan for Legal Policy.
“According to the official statistical data, 60 percent of residents of Tajikistan are against the full abolition of the death penalty in the country,” said Shohnazarov, “The working group that is currently analyzing all aspects of the abolishing or executing the death penalty will make a resolution on this subject.”
In the meantime, Zafar Azizov, the chairman of the Shuroi Adliya (the Council of Justice), noted that the country’s judicial system has been taking efforts to mitigate punishment.
We will recall Tajikistan introduced a moratorium on executions and the handing down of death sentences on July 15, 2004. The country’s legislation reduced the scope of its death penalty by limiting the number of crimes punishable by death from 15 to five and revoking its use against women and minors.
The paper, The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area: Background Paper 2010, prepared by OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and covering the period from July 1 2009 to June 30 2010, says the Tajik delegation stated the clear political will to fully abolish capital punishment in the future at the annual OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw on September 30, 2009. This commitment was reinforced again in April 2010, when President Emomali Rahmon established a working group with the aim of analyzing the social and legal aspects of abolishing the death penalty in Tajikistan. The working group consists of government ministers and deputy ministers, as well as the General Prosecutor and the Human Rights Ombudsman. The latter has actively advocated for the full abolition of the death penalty and has pushed it as one his priorities. Several NGOs have been supporting the government’s intentions in this area through the development of projects aimed at raising awareness of the issue and engaging in a dialogue on abolishing the death penalty and the general question of the right to life.
