26 May 2006 :

experts from 8 countries will convene in Almaty on Monday, May 29, to attend the Coordination meeting of NGOs “Kazakhstan from the Moratorium on Death Penalty Toward the Adoption of the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR”. The conference will be held at hotel Kazakhstan, in Prospekt Dostyk since 9 am.
The Vienna-based International Helsinki Federation and the Pavlodar Committee for Monitoring Penal Reform and Human Rights have organized the event, which is part of the project, funded by the European Commission, “A Coordinated Civil Society Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty in Central Asian States”. The Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Kazakhstan and Freedom House Kazakhstan Human Rights Support Program provided funding and technical assistance. About 30 NGOs leaders from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will participate at the discussion, as well as experts from Italy, Austria, United Kingdom, Norway, and from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Elizabetta Zamparutti and Marco Perduca, HOC’s Board of Directors member and UN representative of Transnational Radical Party, will explore the possibilities for an extension of the moratorium (currently in force in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) to other countries.
According to Yuliya Vassilyeva, coordinator of Hands Off Cain in Central Asia and responsible of the meeting, “Kazakhstan has been showing a sincere interest for the humanization of the penitentiary system, and the moratorium on death penalty is a positive step. Civil society should support it as a means to achieve a complete abolition”.
Antonio Stango, Freedom House Project Director in Almaty and a member of the Board of Hands Off Cain, sees the issue as “a matter of rule of law, especially in countries where the judiciary system did not achieve yet a high level of guarantees for the defendants.”
While Kazakhstan ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in November 2005, it has not signed the two Optional Protocols – the second one calling for the abolition of death penalty.
The NGOs involved in the campaign include, among else, the Kazakh International Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, the Uzbek association “Mothers against death penalty and torture” and the Kyrgyz Committee for Human Rights.