Gay convicts' rights abused in prisons

Prison authorities and inmates are abusing the rights of gay prisoners in Kyrgyzstan by harsh internal rules dating back to Soviet times and the strict informal hierarchy within the penal system, according to a new report by a local NGO, Oasis. "They [gays] are separated from the other prisoners. They do the dirtiest jobs and are never paid for them. They wear plastic bags instead of shoes and live in shelters made of boxes, rubbish, dirty clay and waste. Some of them are exposed to violence on average 20 times per day," Oasis director Vladimir Tyupin told IRIN on Wednesday at the official launch of the report. The Oasis report on prison monitoring for the observation of human rights of sexual minorities, supported by Freedom House, a US-based rights watchdog group, revealed that every prison has a strict informal hierarchy with its own leadership elected by the convicts, the mainstream group and the "offended" group, including gays. The "offended" are the outcasts in prison who don't comply with the harsh prison norms or informal rules and are deprived of their rights. Every mainstream prisoner who communicates with someone in the "offended" group will eventually be expelled to that group. If a prison officer communicates with such a person, prisoners avoid any contact with him as well. It is assumed that once someone is in the "offended" group, the stigma will remain permanently attached to him. "Such laws are not written down, but apply there. The mainstream prisoners are not happy with the 'offended' [inmates] and try to ostracise them," Timurkhan Jedilbaev, a spokesman for Oasis, told IRIN. The Kyrgyz authorities initiated penal reform in 1998 and the country's corrections department provided some NGOs and international organisations with access to its facilities to mitigate the risk of TB, HIV/AIDS and drug abuse amongst prisoners. According to the Kyrgyz AIDS centre, more than 75 percent of the officially registered 500 HIV-infected persons in the Central Asian country are injecting drug users, with the majority of them being inmates or former convicts. The country's prison population is around 17,000, of whom roughly 500 are gays, according to Oasis estimates. "The corrections department undertook some measures, but it has not yet overcome stigmatisation of them [sexual minorities]," Tyupin said. The population of Kyrgyzstan is some 5 million. "The prison system represents a mirror of our society. There are rich and poor, strong and weak. There are sexual minorities. Their rights are discriminated against, as in many other countries. But we are taking measures to change the situation [on the ground]," Turgunbek Toktosunov from the corrections department told IRIN. Toktosunov added that one of the reasons for prison officers mistreating inmates was their low pay. "The living conditions of prison officers are not good. Therefore, they don't treat prisoners well, especially the 'offended' group." An average monthly salary is US $47 for junior prison officers and around $94 for senior staff. Rights activists hope that the report will help the penal authorities to eliminate discrimination in prisons. "We expect that the report will be the first step in reforming the system," Freedom House adviser Dmitriy Kabak said.