On December 2-3, Stockholm (Sweden) hosted the 28th meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the OSCE member states. A delegation from Turkmenistan also took part in the event.
On the eve of the meeting, the Civil Solidarity Platform organized a parallel conference of the OSCE civil society, which resulted in an appeal to the OSCE member states on the human rights situation in Turkmenistan.
The authors of the appeal, which were signed by more than 50 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), recalled that in 2022 it will be 20 years since the beginning of mass repressions in Turkmenistan, aimed not only at active critics of the regime, but also at their friends and relatives.
“Arbitrary mass arrests, torture, physical and psychological pressure on relatives of suspects and even bystanders, the use of special pharmaceuticals during interrogations, rapid closed trials based on trumped-up charges, and sentences to long terms or even life imprisonment, in gross violation of the current legislation, affected a large number of people, ”the appeal says.
Due to the scale of the repression, the OSCE participating States applied the Moscow Mechanism against Turkmenistan. Situation Report was entrusted to prepare the professor Emmanuel Decaux ( E mmanuel Decaux) , which according to the results of work on it said: "The contrast between the law in the form in which it is presented, and a reality marked by terror and fear is overwhelming. […] Turkmenistan cannot be a “black hole” in the OSCE, a desert of human rights ”“ The contrast between the law as it is presented and the reality marked by terror and fear is overwhelming. […] Turkmenistan cannot represent a “black hole” in the OSCE, a desert of human rights ”.
The new Turkmen government, represented by President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov , has not stopped the practice of enforced disappearances in the prisons of Turkmenistan. Prove They Are Alive! Campaign has documented 162 cases of enforced disappearance since 2002.
“Throughout these years, the government has denied families and the outside world any information about the disappeared. The prisoners were prohibited from meeting and correspondence, making phone calls or other contacts with families, lawyers, doctors, etc., ”the human rights activists write.
11 people from the list of the missing have already served their time, but have not been released. More than 10 more people are to be released from prisons in 2022.
Turkmenistan continues to ignore the decisions of intergovernmental organizations on enforced disappearances and refuses to disclose any information about the vast majority of cases from the list of those who disappeared to their relatives and the international community.
Human rights activists fear that the Turkmen authorities are preparing a new wave of repression. At the moment, they demand the deportation of civic activists in Turkey and Russia, who may also disappear in prisons if they are sent back to their homeland.
The scale of the ongoing repression in Turkmenistan requires an adequate response, the authors of the appeal say and call on the OSCE participating States to use the OSCE human dimension mechanisms in relation to Turkmenistan, namely the Vienna and Moscow mechanisms.
Source: Chronicles of Turkmenistan