DUSHANBE, June 21, 2013, Asia-Plus – A roundtable formally titled “Death Penalty and Life Imprisonment as Types of Punishment in Tajikistan” is being held in Dushanbe today.
The roundtable is organized by Tajikistan’s lower house (Majlisi Namoyandagon) of parliament and Penal Reform International (PRI)’s Regional Office for Central Asia within the framework of the European Union (EU) project aimed at progressive abolition of death penalty as capital punishment.
The meeting has reportedly brought together Tajik parliamentarians, senior representatives from relevant public institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as independent experts and representatives of international organizations to analyze the strategy of use of capital punishment and application of alternatives to the death penalty in Tajikistan.
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 16 to five and revoking its use against women and minors.
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. Several NGOs have supported 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.
