DUSHANBE, April 16, 2011, Asia-Plus — The U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe released the 2010-2011 Country Report on Human Rights Practices in Tajikistan in both Tajik and Russian on the U.S. Embassy website.
The Report summarizes the human rights situation in Tajikistan, followed by comprehensive information about various subjects such as trial procedures, political detainees, freedom of speech and the press, freedom of religion, political participation, corruption, trafficking in persons, and the rights of women and children. The Country Report on Human Rights Practices was released by the U.S. Department of State on April 8, 2011.
The Report notes that corruption and inefficiency were significant problems in 2010. Low wages for judges and prosecutors left them vulnerable to bribery, which was a common practice. Government officials subjected judges to political influence.
The government addressed problems of judicial integrity by holding some judges and prosecutors accountable for criminal conduct. During the year the government arrested three judges for corruption.
The section on official corruption and government transparency notes the law provides criminal penalties for official corruption, but the government did not implement the law effectively. Officials frequently engaged in corrupt practices with impunity. Corruption, nepotism, and regional hiring bias were pervasive at all levels of government.
According to the Report, government officials at all levels and in all regions extorted money from citizens and businesses in a state campaign to raise funds to build the Roghun hydroelectric dam during the first half of 2010. Those directly on the public payroll were the most vulnerable. Teachers, doctors, and government employees were instructed to buy shares or their employers would fire them. University students were forced to show their professors share certificates before being allowed to sit for exams. Businesses were told they would be assessed fines for failing to purchase shares. The amounts demanded varied widely. According to some reports, poor villagers had to pool resources to buy one share at 100 somoni ($22.70). Students had to buy between one and four shares. University professors were forced to buy as much as 4,452 somoni ($1,000) in shares; some doctors had to spend as much as 22,261 somoni ($5,000). The country”s few large companies were told to pay many millions of dollars.
Corruption in the Education Ministry was systemic. Prospective students were required to pay as much as 66,674 somoni ($15,000) in bribes to enter the country”s most prestigious universities, while even provincial colleges required several hundred dollars. Students often paid additional bribes to receive good grades on exams.
Many traffic police retained fines they collected for violations. Traffic police posted at regular intervals along roads arbitrarily pulled over drivers to ask for bribes. The problem was systemic, in part due to the low official wages paid to traffic police. According to reports, many traffic police must pay for their jobs, a down payment they try to recoup by extracting bribes from motorists.
The MOI and Prosecutor General”s Office are responsible for investigating, arresting, and prosecuting corrupt officials. The government acknowledged a problem with corruption and took some steps to combat it, including putting lower-level officials on trial for taking bribes. The government did not charge high-level officials with corruption.
The prosecutor general investigated some cases of corruption by government employees, but the bulk of the cases involved mid- or lower-level officials, and none involved large-scale abuses. Public officials were not subject to financial disclosure laws. According to the anticorruption agency, the government identified 510 cases of corruption by government officials. The government dismissed 77 officials for misconduct.
