18.09.2017

Kieran Pender

A regime with one of the world’s worst human rights record is staging the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games and the IOC – like Australia, which will be represented – is silent.

The city of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan is famous for two characteristics. It has the highest concentration of marble buildings in the world and is capital of one of the most repressive regimes in the world. The two are not unrelated: all-powerful central Asian dictators with natural resource wealth are able to construct ostentatious monuments to themselves with little concern for their citizens. But the current Turkmen leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, has grown tired of building with marble. On Sunday the 60-year-old dentist’s newest vanity project will be unveiled: the latest edition of the… >> подробнее

17.09.2017

Arkady Dubnov

The Preface to the book of the poems by Batyr Berdyev

We can live our life, create a family, have children, plant a tree, build a house, not knowing who we will become in extreme circumstances, those requiring determination of will, mind, and even—daring, right? Batyr Berdyev learned that about himself.

It took me a long time to write this introduction to the poems Batyr Berdyev wrote in prison, and not because I am not a literary critic—Batyr was not a poet; he himself wrote that from prison… Reading through what Batyr wrote, I found it really difficult to find the words to express my feelings of melancholy and despair, along with the feeling of helpless rage. Melancholy and despair at the impossibility of using common words to describe the condition of those who are aware that they are foreveryes, that is basically it: forever immured in a prison cell without any hope of seeing their relatives… >> подробнее

16.09.2017

The “Prove They Are Alive!” Campaign

On September 15, 2017 the Campaign “Prove They Are Alive!” published a book of poems written by the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan and former Representative of Turkmenistan to the OSCE, Batyr Berdyev, during his imprisonment.

The book with the poems in the Russian original and English translation, produced by the Campaign, was distributed at a side event held today at the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw and published on the Campaign website. Batyr Berdyev was arrested on December 7, 2002, and charged with involvement in the coup attempt against then-President Niyazov, which took place on November 25, 2002. A video of his “confession” was broadcast on television on December 18, 2002, and he was convicted on January 21, 2003 by the Ashgabat city court and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. Testimony… >> подробнее