On 29 March Ashgabat will host the annual EU-Turkmenistan Human Rights Dialogue.The dialogue comes shortly after the European Parliament adopted the resolution, which envisages concrete benchmarks to evaluate Turkmenistan’s sustainable progress in the human rights area before signing the EU-Turkmenistan Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA).
The Parliament has withheld approval of this agreement for years because of human rights concerns.Human rights organizations International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) and the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights (TIHR) welcome these important benchmarks and urge the EU to insist on their implementation at the upcoming dialogue.
The benchmarks set out in the European Parliament resolution include, among others:
Ensuring unhindered access to alternative sources of information;
Ending the persecution of independent journalists and civil society and human rights activists based in the country and abroad, as well as their family members;
Guaranteeing freedom of expression and assembly and removing restrictions on the registration and functioning of NGOs;
Ending arbitrary travel bans and allowing free travel abroad of those prohibited from leaving;
Ending secret detentions, enforced disappearances, and torture, and disclosing the fate and whereabouts of disappeared persons; and
Allowing visits by UN and other international human rights representatives who have requested visits.
The TIHR and IPHR prepared the briefing paper outlining the human rights situation in Turkmenistan.
While the current economic crisis has had a serious impact on the population, the authorities have sought to cover up its impact by rigidly controlling state media, preventing citizens from accessing foreign sources of information and intimidating those who dare to speak up about socio-economic problems.
The authorities continue forcibly mobilising citizens en masse to take part in festive celebrations and arbitrarily bar individuals from travelling overseas.An unknown number of people remain imprisoned on politically motivated grounds and no information on their fate and well-being is available.
Independent human rights groups cannot operate openly and requests of numerous UN human rights experts to visit the country have been ignored.The authorities have demolished houses and forcibly evicted residents, failing to ensure fair and adequate compensation.
Turkmenistan is the only Central Asian country with which the EU does not currently have any bilateral PCA.
The full text of briefing paper can be downloaded here.