On October 15, two men with a knife attacked 28-year-old Turkmen migrant Shamil Kurbandurdyev in Istanbul , the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (THF) reports .
THF cites the story of the victim: “On the morning of October 15, I rode my bicycle to work in a shoe store. Not far from home, I was stopped by two middle-aged men. One of them hit me with his fist, the other took out a knife and began to threaten me, I ran away, and my bike was left with them.
In the evening I returned home and went to bed, but my father woke me up and said that two men were asking me who had my bike. Together with my parents, I went out into the street, where these men said that in the morning they did not have time to take a picture of how they beat me, and since they were paid for it, they must fulfill the order. In order to peacefully disperse, they offered to make a photo collage with traces of beatings on my face. We agreed with the parents.
I was made up and the men began to pretend that they were beating me. This was filmed and sent to the customer in my presence. A few minutes later, the answer came via SMS that I needed to be wounded with a knife so that I could not walk. Then we had a real fight again and filmed it again. Leaving, the men warned us to stay at home and wait for instructions. They set a condition: not to contact the police, so that I would not go anywhere and tell everyone that I had been beaten so severely that I could not go to work.
On October 16, I received instructions that my parents should tell about the beating on video and put it on the Internet. Then we had already decided to go to the police, but at the station we were told to go to the prosecutor’s office, because without the order of the prosecutor’s office, the police could not provide us with protection. In the evening of the same day, several men came to our house. We called the police, to whom they confessed that I was “ordered”.
On October 17, the Kurbandurdyevs appealed to the Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office.
The THF reports that the young man tried 18 times to renew his passport at the Turkmen consulate. Shamil’s father, 56-year-old Rozymurat Kurbandurdyev , was injured while visiting the Turkmen consulate in Istanbul on August 16. On that day, he and several other activists, accompanied by a Turkish lawyer, wanted to deliver a letter to Turkmen President Serdar Berdymukhammedov , drawing his attention to the many problems faced by Turkmen citizens abroad. Right in the courtyard of the consulate, they were all beaten up by a group of unknown people in masks.
Source: Chronicles of Turkmenistan