Turkmenistan has ranked 178th in the Press Freedom Index 2017, complied by analysts of the European non-government organization “Reporters Without Borders”.The authors of the report ranked the Central Asia country at the bottom of the list along with Eritrea and North Korea, whose indictors are the worst in the world, according to REGNUM.
The report (a full text is available here) runs that “despots in such former Soviet republics as Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan perfected their systems of control over mass media and repression”.
“Reporters without Borders” highlight that “In Turkmenistan, the government controls all media and the rare Internet users are able to access only highly-censored online content”.
“But that does not satisfy President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, also known as “Father Protector,” who was re-elected with more than 98% of the vote in February 2017.
Harassment of the few journalists working clandestinely for media outlets based abroad keeps growing.Journalist Saparmamed Nepeskulyev has suffered in prison since July 2015.Fellow journalists have been arrested, tortured, or physically attacked in recent years.
Several Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondents have had to stop working due to constant harassment.The authorities are continuing a campaign of removing satellite dishes, depriving the population of one of the remaining ways to access uncontrolled news coverage”, the document runs.