Crossroads Asia | Society | Central Asia

Uzbekistan’s Death Penalty Debate Returns After Child Abuse Case

The debate over the death penalty is back in Uzbekistan, this time involving the country’s most senior officials.

Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis

For the second time in the  span of a year a brutal child abuse case has sparked heated public discussion in Uzbekistan. Reportedly, a five-year-old girl was repeatedly raped in a public kindergarten by a facilities manager who worked at the school in the Uchkurgan district of Namangan. According to the mother of the survivor, the alleged perpetrator is their neighbor and she became suspicious after she saw him smiling at her five-year-old daughter. She gently asked the girl questions only to find out that the facilities manager would buy sweets for the girl, tell her he loved her, and promised to buy more presents and sweets if she didn’t expose him. The mother suspects the man had threatened her daughter.  

Last year a similar case, which also occurred in Namangan, where a previously imprisoned convict raped a seven-year-old girl, caused a wave of demands by the public to restore the death penalty for serious crimes such as the sexual assault of minors. Public discussions over the death penalty typically emerge in Uzbekistan after news of an especially brutal crime against children breaks. An earlier wave of loud discussions took place in 2024 after a three-year-old was stabbed 12 times. 

What’s new this time is that high-ranking political figures are getting involved. 

Saida Mirziyoyeva, the head of the presidential administration and a deputy chair of the Security Council (and also the president’s daughter) chimed in. “In my opinion, the death penalty should be used for such heinous crimes. Unfortunately, the current legislation does not provide for the death penalty,” she wrote on her Telegram channel on September 27. 

“We are preparing a proposal to amend the legislation to maximize liability for this type of crime,” she added. 

Echoing Mirziyoyeva’s words, Alisher Qodirov, leader of the Milliy Tiklanish (National Revival) Democratic Party and deputy speaker of the Uzbek parliament, called death penalty a “necessity.” Qodirov is famous for making nationalist, sometimes controversial statements. 

“The continued existence of those who intentionally kill innocent people, especially child murderers and pedophiles, is a motivation for further crimes of this kind!” Qodirov wrote on his Telegram, reposting Mirziyoyeva’s earlier statement. 

This is not the first time Qodirov has voiced his position on the death penalty. Previously, in 2024, after news reports about a three-year-old girl being murdered, Qodirov suggested “cleansing” society. “It’s illogical to use our taxes to support a criminal who’s become an animal, keep him healthy, feed him, and then wait for someone else to die! Society needs to be cleansed of such people!” he wrote.

Both Mirziyoyeva and Qodirov know that Uzbekistan abolished capital punishment in 2008 and acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR aimed at abolition. Uzbekistan has no mechanism to reinstate the death penalty without a much larger legal overhaul, and no such overhaul is presently underway.

In a rather unusual course of developments for Uzbekistan, the discussion over the death penalty divided the country’s political parties. As a new bill to increase liability for violence against children was introduced to the Legislative Chamber on September 29, Qodirov announced a neutral position on the proposed bill and doubled down on his stance regarding the need to resurrect the death penalty. Qodirov referred to Norwegian neo-Nazi and mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, stating that he had complained “about the lack of facilities for writing a book, and those conditions were subsequently provided for him.”

Qodirov’s interpretation isn’t quite accurate. While Breivik did complain about the “stab-resistant” pen he was made to write with and was reportedly provided with an electronic typewriter, Breivik’s communications continue to be censored by prison authorities and he has not published a book.

Nevertheless, using Breivik as a point of reference, Qodirov questioned the compatibility of Uzbek values and international........

© The Diplomat