Human rights defenders say that this procedure is necessary, but they are in doubt that the data base will be inviolable. Officials of the General Prosecutor’s Office promise that: “Everything will be under the strict control”.
The police spoke about this idea several times: first time it was in 2002, the in 2007. In the beginning of this year MIA again recalled the fingerprinting procedure. During these yeas the country had many tragic event: extremists activation, plane crash, flood in Kyzyl Tash village, vehicle accident , incidents in mines, indiscriminate killing – at Arkankergen frontier post and in the Ile-Alatau national park. That is why people are ready for any methods of safety. 118 countries use it. You cannot obtain a visa in USA and European zone without fingerprinting in an embassy.
The bill has been developed the whole year. For this once one has intelligently approached the subject: fingerprinted identification and DNA identification will be conducted on a voluntary basis, and only for some categories of citizens it will be obligatory procedure. They are convicted and those being on remand, employees of security agencies, military men, firemen, officers of the court, life-savers, yagers, bill collectors, crew team and water transport team, as well as employees involved into the dangerous production. Fingerprinting will be obligatory for disable people as well for people suffering form the loss of memory. Is is planned that this procedure will be free.
– Obligatory list also includes certain groups of foreigners: expats, leaving the country for permanent living in Kazakhstan and violators subject to deportation, – Yerlik Kenenbayev, the Minister of Internal Affairs said. – Data obtained will be stored in the centralized database.
According to the words of the incharge of the department of fingerprinting and second name registration of the general prosecutor’s office, Botagoz Zhagiparova, every year hundreds of people are buried without identification. If their fingers are available in the database, relatives will be found out. She also believes that this new introduction will help policemen to clean crimes.
– There are more than 2m fingers printed in our card files – convinces, arrested, homeless persons, Botragoz Zhagiparova said. – No one fingerprint was transferred to third parties.We have a very strict control. We change a password of access to the database every month. We can guarantee the safety of the database.
As Yerlik Kenenbayev says, law-abiding citizen should not afraid of it. Only those who violates the law have a negative attitude.
However, the human rights defenders have another opinion. The chairman of the board f the Kazakh International Bureau on human right s, Yevgeniy Zhovtis sad that he would not agree to pass the procedure on a voluntary basis: “Firstly I would like to have 100 % guarantees that the data collected would not be used for other illegal purposes.”
Most probably MIA will improve in the next year, taking into account critics and all the proposals. In 2015 you may prepare your fingers!
Gulmira MATKHALIKOVA, Astana
Source: Web-site of the Express K Newspaper
