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HRW About Illegal Arrests of Dissidents in Ashgabat

August 18th, 2006

“On July 12, 1995, a group of between several hundred and 1,000 residents held a peaceful march in the capital, Ashgabat, during which they distributed flyers calling for new popular elections and urging the police not to oppose them. According to one eyewitness, the protestors, surrounded by nearly as many police and secret service agents as there were demonstrators, proceeded for about an hour toward the presidential palace before the police began to beat them and carry them off in cars. In all, some 200 protestors reportedly were detained; roughly fifteen of them are believed to remain in custody four months later. The Turkmenistan authorities have not responded to requests for information about the charges against these individuals.

Abuses abounded in the wake of the rally. One protestor, Sukhanberdi Ishanov, approximately twenty years old, reportedly was badly beaten during interrogation, during which he incriminated at least one person as a rally organizer and apologized in a television appearance. Upon his release, Ishanov reportedly hanged himself; relatives who prepared his body for burial reported that it was covered with bruises, presumably from blows suffered during detention. Relatives who protested his death reportedly were themselves detained, interrogated and threatened.

Vladimir Kuleshov, for the last ten years the Ashgabat correspondent for the Moscow-based daily newspaper Izvestia, reportedly was interrogated and threatened with criminal charges by the Turkmenistan Procurator’s office in the days following the march. In his coverage, he described the rally as a “protest march.” (According to an Izvestia report of July 29, his interrogator objected, “We never had and never will have ‘protest marches’.”) On July 20, authorities reportedly sealed his office without a court order, and Kuleshov was forced to leave Turkmenistan. On July 18 and 25, respectively, journalists Mukhammet Myratly and Yovshan Annagurban reportedly were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the march, although authorities have failed to reveal the charges against them…”

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/WR96/Helsinki-20.htm

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