Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.uz) — Head of the Presidential Administration Saida Mirziyoyeva said Uzbekistan is preparing proposals to significantly tighten liability for sexual crimes against children following a case involving a five-year-old girl at a kindergarten in Namangan Region. She made the statement on her Telegram channel.
Mirziyoyeva said she felt anger after receiving information about what had happened. She described the crime as monstrous and said that, in her view, the death penalty should apply to such acts.
“Since the current law does not provide for it, we are preparing proposals to amend the legislation in order to tighten liability as much as possible,” the Head of the Presidential Administration wrote.
Mirziyoyeva also said that the relevant state bodies had been given the necessary instructions. She stressed that the perpetrator should receive the strictest possible punishment. She separately called for accountability for those who acted negligently and failed to ensure the child’s safety.
Earlier, Gazeta reported that the suspect in the case is a 52-year-old head of maintenance at the kindergarten who was also a neighbour of the girl’s family. According to the publication, the child’s mother said that her daughter had become afraid to attend kindergarten after the incident.
The mother also alleged that the institution’s surveillance cameras were not working. She said relatives of the suspect had offered her money to withdraw her complaint.
The publication further reported that the suspect may have prepared for the crime and committed it over an extended period. The kindergarten director said she was on leave at the time, while a teacher said she had never left the children unattended.
According to the kindergarten director, law enforcement officers came to the institution on 11 September. Information about the incident appeared in the media in the 20s of September.
On 26 September, the Ministry of Preschool and School Education announced the creation of a special working group to examine the circumstances of the incident. The same day, the Prosecutor General’s Office said a criminal case had been opened, although its statement did not specify the exact date when the case was initiated.
The issue of tougher penalties for crimes against children had been discussed in Uzbekistan before the latest case. In March, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed a decree on additional measures to protect the rights of women and children and prevent harassment and violence.
The decree instructed the authorities to prepare within three months a draft law providing for life imprisonment for rape of a person under 14 in cases involving people previously convicted of sexual crimes against minors, sexual relations with minors or lewd acts against them.
In April, the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis adopted a law transferring the investigation of crimes against the sexual freedom of women and children to the prosecutor’s office. The need for the changes was attributed to problems with the quality of investigations, loss of evidence and the heavy workload of investigators in internal affairs bodies.
It was also reported that about 1,000 crime-scene examinations had been conducted by employees without legal education. The draft legislation was not submitted for public discussion.
Irina Matvienko, founder of the Nemolchi.uz project, pointed to gaps in the adopted legislation. In her view, some types of crimes against children could remain outside the jurisdiction of the prosecutor’s office.
