31.03.2006

Lack of human rights in Turkmenistan

Statement by the representative of the Republican Party of Turkmenistan Shahnazar Berdyev at the 3rd working session of the OSCE Supplementary human dimension meeting "Human rights defenders and national human rights institutions: legislative, state and non-state aspects" in Hofburg, Vienna (30-31 March, 2006)

I would really like to say, that Turkmenistan today does not have any problems in the human rights sphere, but alas, such a statement would be contrary to fact. Therefore, I would leave the report made in the best traditions of the Soviet-style propaganda and narrating about ”great success in observance of the human rights” for the official representative of the Turkmen delegation, and talk about the real state of affairs.

To speak about improvements in the field of observance of human rights in Turkmenistan would be as ridiculous as to speak about success reached in the field of observance of racial equality in faschist Germany 65 years ago. The facts speak for themselves. Just during the last three months, there was a lot of events in Turkmenistan which for some reason did not get proper attention on the part of the world community:

On January 4th of this year, Turkmen authorities have detained a 70 years old dissident Kakabay Tejenov and placed him in psychiatric hospital. The reason for repressive measures against Kakabay were ”Statements on violations of the human rights in Turkmenistan” which he wrote and sent abroad.

On March 9th of this year, Turkmen police arrested two correspondents of the Radio Liberty - Meret Hommadov and Djumadurdy Ovezov. In spite of the fact that detention has occured in the beginning of the month, there is still nothing known about destiny of these two men. Only God knows what are they going through now, as we speak. They are journalists of the American radio station, so they have a chance. But how about other people, ordinary citizens of Turkmenistan who also need support and protection?

According to our sources, Mr. Batyr Berdyev, the former ambassador of Turkmenistan to OSCE has died in custody under tragic circumstances. Secondly, there is nothing known about ambassador Kadyrov, which had this position after him. And it is very possible that current distinguished ambassador of Turkmenistan also becomes a victim of Niyazov’s regime and a few months from now we will be sitting here wondering about his fate. And we’re talking about officials who are supposed to be able to defend people’s rights when even they themselves not able to defend their own rights.

There are people in Turkmenistan who went from a vice premier to a prisoner in an instant. It is virtually impossible to defend human rights in this country simply because any politician and a human rights activist has a good chance to end up in prison over this type of activity. If even the high ranking officials are thrown in jail without a trial what could we say about NGO members, representatives of the human rights groups or the ordinary individuals.

One of our special concerns is the cancellation of the pension payments carried out by authorities of Turkmenistan under a screen of ”pension reform”. And due to this reform, more than a hundred thousand Turkmen pensioners could barely survive now, in literal sense of these words. I couldn’t bring myself to name these Niyazov’s innovations anything other than a genocide.

At the same time the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Rolf Ekeus pays a visit to Turkmenistan, carries on negotiations with Niyazov, and by virtue of his mandate tactfully bypasses the issues concerned with the human dimension. The OSCE center in Ashgabat, which in opinion of simple citizens of Turkmenistan has totally discredited the organization which it represents , in a pointed manner, just nominally, opens the information centre with three computers connected to the Internet with severely limited access to the information... And the background for all this are the infinite repressions which already long time ago have lost the character of a single instance and have turned into a genocide, well planned and organized.

In conclusion I would say that there are no human rights activists in Turkmenistan as well as there are no human rights in Turkmenistan. The only person who has rights in this country is Mr. Niyazov and he is quite satisfied, I even would say he enjoys the current state of affairs.

In this connection our recommendation would be to conduct a special supplementary human dimension meeting devoted to critical situation in Turkmenistan.

Thank you.