Here is the translation of the post that I’ve placed on Tajik-Russian blog. All the sources are in Russian

Recently I’ve heard a story about one guy, who was put in jail for drug-smuggling, and after a year he died of tuberculosis. He was not even thirty years old and he had a little kid. Everybody was shocked. No one could believe that he was a drug-dealer and no one could believe that he could die in such a young age, because physically he was very strong.

Unfortunately, one can hear a lot of such stories in Tajikistan. There are many young people who are put in jail for drug-smuggling and some of them do not come back. It’s a one way ticket. They die of different diseases, mostly of tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a widely spread disease in Tajik jails.

48 prisoners in the first half of the year 2006 died of in the jail facilities. The main causes of death are tuberculosis and heart disease…

…nowadays 1,400 prisoners are suffering of tuberculosis.

This statistics was provided this year in July by the head of the Jail facilities department at the Ministry of Justice of Tajikistan, Bahrom Abdulhakov. Last year according to the same official 62 people died during the whole year. 115 people were registered as HIV-positive.

Till October of this year in the jail facilities of Tajikistan were kept more than 12 thousands prisoners, but the number was substantially decreased by the amnesty. 3,960 prisoners were released and the prison term of 2,457 prisoners was half shortened in accordance with the amnesty which was dedicated to the fifteenth anniversary of Independence Day. The last amnesty was pursued in 2001. In accordance with that amnesty about 10 thousand.

There are 14 jails in Tajikistan for 8,450 prisoners, and 5 investigative isolation wards for 2,500 prisoners.

This year on 30th of January the number of convicted people in Tajikistan was 9 thousand - 164 people out of 100, 000 of the country population were in jail. This statistics made Tajikistan stand on the 79th position in the world, rated by International Center for Prisons Studies (ICPS) at London University.

In this sense the situation with jails in Tajikistan is much better than in other Central Asian countries. For instance, in Kazakhstan this number equals to 386 prisoners, Kyrgyzstan – 390, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan 489.

Obviously the number of prisoners in our country is lesser but the living conditions of the prisoners leave much to be desired. Only 1,27 somonis (about 35 cents) per day are allotted to each prisoner, while in Kazakhstan 2,000 dollars a year are alloted.

The allotted money is not enough for the normal food, not saying about the medical care and clothing. The sense of kinship is strong in our country and it makes the life of prisoners much easier, because all the necessary stuff they can get from their relatives if it is not provided by the government.

Despite the hardships in captivity, some of the prisoners do not lose hope. Recently, Ferghan.ru citing Varorud reported that in one of the jails in Sogd region one prisoner got married to a girl non-prisoner. It was the sixteenth marriage this year. Last year there were registered 20 marriages in Sogd region.