Death Penalty Proposal for Drug Offences

Kazakstan’s interior ministry is advocating the introduction of capital punishment as a deterrent to serious drug crimes, even though the country has a moratorium on carrying out the death penalty. NBCentralAsia observers question whether the law enforcement and judicial systems are in a position to enforce such tough legislation.



On October 30, the interior ministry submitted a bill to parliament stipulating a tougher range of punishments for offences related to the narcotics trade, including the death penalty.



Anatoliy Vyborov, who heads the ministry’s committee for combating the drugs trade, told NBCentralAsia that the proposal has been under review for some time, and was conceived because it was felt that the current sanctions available to the authorities are too soft and have failed to curb drug-related crime.



“The problem is that these people [drug dealers] never stop committing crimes; there are many such examples,” he explained. “When major dealers are given a conditional sentence, they go back to crime again and again with a sense of impunity.”



Vyborov outlined three areas where the ministry is seeking tougher punishment: drug dealing by organised crime gangs, offences involving large amounts of illicit narcotics, and recruiting minor to work in the illegal business.



If this bill becomes law, Kazakstan would be the first country in the Commonwealth of Independent States to impose the death penalty for the offence of selling narcotics. The interior ministry has been looking at the application of similar laws in China, Indonesia and Thailand.



Kazakstan introduced an open-ended moratorium on capital punishment in 2003. In Central Asia, similar moratoriums are in place in Kyrgzystan and Tajikistan, while Turkmenistan has abolished the death penalty and Uzbekistan intends to do so in 2008.



Maria Pulman, an activist with the International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law in Kazakstan, described the proposed change to the law as “medieval barbarism”.



She explained, “The moratorium that we now have is consequence of our defective judicial system, in which the innocent can be sentenced to death. The same would apply to harsher punishments for drug offences. Our judicial system is not up to the job.”



Amnesty International has frequently cited the potential for judicial error as a reason why Central Asian republics should not carry out executions.



Other NBCentralAsia commentators note that the trend in Kazakstan has been towards total abolition as the government focuses on its bid to chair the OSCE. That in itself makes the interior ministry’s proposal less likely to succeed.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)