Turkmen Leaders Need to Show Commitment to EU Human Rights Project

Tajigul Begmedova (Photo: Turkmen Helsinki Foundation)

Human rights defenders in Turkmenistan were excited to hear of a September meeting between European Union and government officials to discuss a new programme intended to strengthen the country’s capacity to protect human rights. 

The three-year EU project is to be implemented jointly with the United Nations Development Programme and the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The meeting also discussed the possibility of the Turkmen government embarking on a “human rights dialogue” process with the EU.

Privately, Turkmen officials say the government is responding to the initiative merely as a formality, to hoodwink the international community.

An effective human rights project of this kind presupposes transparency of government and a willingness to engage civil society – both of which are lacking at present.

The project should seek to assist people whose rights have been abused over the years. One way of doing this would be for the EU to open an office where citizens of Turkmenistan could bring complaints and receive assistance from international human rights experts.

At the moment, Turkmen citizens have little recourse to the local missions of international organisations. This summer, for example, Amangelen Shapudakov, an activist from Balkan province in western Turkmenistan, went to the UN mission in the capital Ashgabat in the hope of submitting a complaint to the UN’s Human Rights Committee. He was stopped at the gate by guards, who sent him away after telling him he was “unpatriotic” and threatening to call the police. He was not even able to make UN staff aware that access was being blocked in this manner.

Another obstacle to implementing a national human rights project is resistance from local officials, who are reluctant to take responsibility for anything. An officer of Ashgabat’s municipal court says virtually all the cases heard there are decided arbitrarily in favour of whichever side is more powerful. If a judge were to turn down a request for a favour from some official with an interest in the case, he or she would not last long in the job.

On the rare occasions when people officials stand up to be counted, they are at best ignored. One example of this was a local government in Kopetdag who drafted a proposal for working on human rights issues together with international organisations in 2008. She submitted the idea to her superiors, who shelved it.

When the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation, THF, asked local civil society leaders what they thought of the EU human rights programme, they said a number of practical steps would be needed to get it started.

Firstly, they said, President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov should make it clear to officials and to society as a whole that he is serious about the initiative. Then a proper awarenesss-raising campaign should be launched, run by UN and EU journalists rather than Turkmenistan’s state media outlets, which are heavily censored and spend their time praising the president.

A THF activist in the eastern Lebap province suggests the “information blockade” in the media should be broken down with interesting programmes, stories about real cases of complaints being reviewed, practical recommendations about what people should do if their rights are violated, and speeches by international experts. Right now, UN and EU experts come and go, holding meetings with different ministries, but none of this trickles down to ordinary people.

Above all, the authorities need to win public confidence. The special president commission which Berdymuhammedov set up to review complaints about wrongdoing by the police has proved ineffective, so it would do well to hand over to a team of international human rights lawyers. Citizens should be allowed to submit complaints and recommendations to the authorities via official websites, where they could also learn about court rulings. This would follow the practice in other countries, where anyone can follow a legal case they are interested in. This would certainly inspire more trust in the system.

Finally, the authorities could allow an independent investigation into people who suffered under the late president Saparmurat Niazov, and ensure that officials begin delivering on constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, faith and movement.

Tajigul Begmedova is head of the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, based in Bulgaria.

This article was produced as part of IWPR’s News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.