03/10/2005 Top International Groups Urge the US to Condemn Religious Repression in Turkmenistan
New York, September 30, 2005. A coalition of leading rights groups has called on the United States to single out Turkmenistan for denying religious freedom to its citizens.
In a letter to Secretary Condoleezza Rice, a group of rights and advocacy organizations including Human Rights Watch and the International League for Human Rights, urged the US State Department to designate Turkmenistan as a “country of particular concern” under the statute for severe violations of religious freedom.
"There is no freedom of religion in Turkmenistan," said the letter describing the extent of repression in that strategically important and gas-rich Central Asian country.
The groups said that the government, which is one of the most closed and brutal in the world, terrorizes minority religious communities, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Baptists with police raids on prayer meetings, arbitrary arrests, and beatings. The government, ruled by president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov since Turkmenistan gained independence in 1991, sentenced the country’s former Islamic religious leader, Nasrulla ibn Ibadulla, to 22 years of imprisonment on unknown charges, making him the former Soviet Union’s longest standing religious prisoner of conscience, according to the independent watchdog Forum 18.
The US decision on designation likely will take into account security needs and stability in the region as much as Turkmenistan’s draconian moves to suppress religion. Since Turkmenistan’s authoritarian neighbor, Uzbekistan, in July ordered the US to close down its military base, which was central to American military and humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan, the US has had to reassess its readiness to depend on strategic but autocratic states
Calling the designation "long overdue," the coalition urged the US government to use its influence under the terms of the International Religious Freedom Act, which would open the door to US sanctions against this rogue state. Failure to make the designation, according to the coalition, in the future would "jeopardize the credibility of IRFA’s unique, proven leverage with respect to Turkmenistan and other countries. It would also cast doubt among the citizens of an overwhelmingly Muslim country on the US government’s credibility as a champion of religious freedom."
The full text of the letter can be found at: http://www.ilhr.org/ilhr/regional/centasia/protests/tu_cpc.htm
For further information, please call:
In New York: Peter Zalmayev, International League for Human Rights, +1-212-661-0480, ext.100
In New York: Rachel Denber, Human Rights Watch, mobile +1 917 917 1266.
|
|
