Human Rights Watch remains concerned, however, about a number of other serious human rights abuses that continue to take place on a systematic basis in Turkey. One of the most disturbing is torture, a practice that continues to be rampant in Turkish prisons and police precincts. In February 2002, the government enacted reforms aimed at curbing torture, but since then, Human Rights Watch has received reports of twenty-nine cases of torture and ill-treatment involving fifty-two individuals, including four juveniles. The single most important step that Turkey could take to address this continuing serious problem would be to guarantee all detainees access to legal counsel from the first moments of detention, as recommended by a number of international monitoring bodies, including the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, whose recommendations have been endorsed by the European Union as part of Turkey’s accession process.

Russia
Two other OSCE participating states deserve a special mention in today’s discussions of torture—Russia and Uzbekistan. Russia’s war in Chechnya has continued to be plagued by severe human rights and humanitarian law violations perpetrated against the civilian population in Chechnya. Over the past year, Human Rights Watch has documented numerous military sweep operations, in which Russian troops arbitrarily detained, tortured and killed civilians in a climate of lawlessness. The war is also characterized by sexual violence, including rape, by Russian servicemen against women in Chechnya. Human Rights Watch documented five such cases in connection with sweep operations in winter-spring 2002. Efforts to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of crimes against Chechen civilians are deeply flawed. There still exists no official record of the abuses committed during the conflict, and the government has continued its refusal to grant access to relevant U.N. human rights mechanisms, including most importantly the Special Rapporteur on torture. Meanwhile, the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11 has sadly seen the international community largely drop its criticism of Russian abuses in Chechnya.

Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan remains a stronghold of repression, where nearly every civil and political right is commonly violated. Torture is a routine practice employed to extract confessions or other testimony. Following its review of Uzbekistan in May, the U.N. Committee against Torture expressed concern about the numerous reports of torture in Uzbekistan and, using unusually strong language, called on the Uzbek government to review all convictions handed down since 1995 that were based solely on confessions, recognizing that they may have been coerced through torture.

In the past fifteen months alone, Human Rights Watch has documented eleven deaths arising from suspicious circumstances in custody. Just last month, two religious prisoners, Muzafar Avazov and Husnidin Alimov, died brutal deaths at the Jaslyk Prison, which is infamous for its harsh conditions and ill-treatment and torture of religious prisoners. Doctors who saw Avazov’s body reported that such burns could only have been caused by immersing him in boiling water. His hands reportedly had no fingernails. Prison conditions overall continue to be appalling, and the ICRC has still not resumed its visits due to continued lack of satisfactory arrangements with the Uzbek authorities; this past summer, we received a letter that a prisoner serving time in a facility in Kashkadaria province in southern Uzbekistan managed to have smuggled out that listed, among many other descriptions of abuse, eighteen independent Muslim prisoners who had been raped or sexually assaulted by officials in that facility this year. Religious prisoners are particularly vulnerable to abuse, and the government’s crackdown against independent Muslims continues unabated, with no sign of progress on legal reform that would improve the climate for religious freedom or provide protection from torture.

Torture and inhuman or degrading treatment are, of course, not limited to Turkey, Russia and Uzbekistan. Such practices occur throughout the OSCE region and in the overwhelming majority of cases, the perpetrators of these abuses remain unpunished. Human Rights Watch calls on OSCE participating states to intensify their efforts to end the practice of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment and, in particular: