Rights groups welcome UN human rights resolution

Rights groups have welcomed a UN resolution criticising Turkmenistan's human rights record adopted this week. The reclusive Central Asian state has a poor rights record, and watchdog groups have reported a mounting crackdown following an alleged assassination attempt on Turkmen President Saparmyrat Niyazov last November. "We welcome this resolution as it demonstrates increasing international concern," a Central Asia researcher for Amnesty International, Anna Sunder-Plassman, told IRIN from London. She noted that the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe had already taken initiatives to address human rights violations, but said this week's UN resolution demonstrated that the concern was much broader. "We hope Turkmenistan will take the international concern and recommendations seriously," she said. "We think that Turkmenistan's reputation in the world will very much depend on its reaction." Her comments follow the Office of the UN Commission on Human Rights' (OHCHR) adoption on Wednesday of an EU-sponsored resolution expressing concern over the human rights situation in the oil-rich nation. Whereas the resolution expressed appreciation of the government's recent decision to uphold an earlier decision to abolish the death penalty, the OHCHR expressed "grave concern at the persistence of a government policy based on the repression of all political opposition activities, and on the abuse of the legal system through arbitrary detention, imprisonment and surveillance of persons who tried to exercise their freedoms of thought, expression, assembly and association, and harassment of their families." Praising the resolution, Loubna Freih, an associate UN representative for Human Rights Watch, told IRIN from Geneva: "This sends a strong message to Turkmenistan," noting that the issue was now clearly going to be on the agenda on the OHCHR, which she described as the highest body in the international community dealing with the matter. She did, however, express disappointment that the resolution did not include a monitoring mandate. "We were disappointed that the European Union and the US did not go as far as they initially were thinking of doing," Freih observed. "We have been researching the situation for many years now, and we are very worried about what is going on in Turkmenistan. We think it's about time for the international community to start addressing the situation." Sharing her view, Sunder-Plassman, recommended that the head o f the OHCHR request an invitation to visit Turkmenistan, and that independent human rights monitors be allowed access to detention facilities in order to investigate allegations of rights violations. "It is important that the international community should closely follow [up] whether Turkmenistan implements the recommendations," she said, calling on the international community firmly and unambiguously to remind the government of its obligations under international human rights law. Dr Aaron Rhodes, the executive director of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, told IRIN from Vienna that whereas he welcomed the resolution, it really depended on what people did next. "The existence of a resolution isn't likely unto itself to have very much effect," he cautioned, pointing out that the Turkmen government did not really pay much attention to what the world community said or did. "The key to the future of Turkmenistan is in part in the hands of the businesses that are operating there, and with governments that have very strong financial relationships with Turkmenistan - especially Russia," he said. He noted that Russia and Turkmenistan had just concluded a major gas deal, which was combined with a security agreement. "We believe that Russia should be - instead of encouraging the regime of President Niyazov in this regard - it should be helping to encourage the regime to change its policy regarding human rights," he said. "It would be better if such a deal was conditioned on certain kinds of improvements that the Turkmen people could even have the same kinds of rights and freedoms as are enjoyed by Russians." However, he went on to observe that there were many, including French, international companies operating in the country, all of which could play a role in bringing about change if they were to interpret their social responsibilities differently. Meanwhile, the Turkmen authorities have dismissed the wording of the resolution as biased. A UN statement quoted a representative of the country as saying the text of the resolution was harshly worded, based on a one-sided assessment and arbitrary interpretations of decisions taken by the government and judicial bodies, and had been drawn up without any consultation with the Turkmen government, which was struggling to promote human rights.