“Turkmenistan has long been a closed country for independent human rights scrutiny. The pattern of persecution of relatives of activists who live abroad shows the lengths to which its government will go to keep the world from knowing the scale of the human rights violations there.”
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The Committee to Protect Journalists has joined human rights organizations in urging the authoritarian leadership of Turkmenistan to end the practice of threatening and harassing exiled journalists' family members and allow all journalists living abroad to return to the country and work in safety.
Turkmen Authorities Slammed For Threatening Relatives Of Exiled Dissidents
May 13, 2021 08:44 GMT
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has carefully constructed a personality cult to himself in the country.
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Four leading human rights groups have criticized the authoritarian leadership of Turkmenistan for threatening the relatives of dissidents living abroad.
In a joint
statement on May 13, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights (TIHR), International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), and Amnesty International said that in early May, Turkmen security officials questioned and threatened a 14-year-old boy in retaliation for the outspoken views of his uncle, Rozybai Jumamuradov, a former correspondent of RFE/RL in Turkmenistan who currently resides in Turkey.