OSCE Secretary General to Visit Turkmenistan

The OSCE’s secretary general Marc Perrin de Brichambaut is expected to raise Turkmenistan’s poor human rights record on a visit to the country in December.

Tajigul Begmedova, leader of the Turkmen Helsinki Human Rights Fund based in Bulgaria, believes De Brichambaut will use his talks with President Gurbanguly Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov to press him to move from merely talking about a more liberal society to instituting the reforms needed to make that happen.

"First of all, there need to be constructive discussions about releasing prisoners of conscience, particularly the ones the authorities avoid talking about," Begmedova said.

There are dozens of political prisoners convicted of a range of offences. Begmedova noted in particular the cases of Annakurban Amankylychev and Sapardurdy Hajiev, both members of the Turkmen Helsinki Fund jailed in 2006, whose “crime” was informing the outside world about the true state of human rights in Turkmenistan.

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