Rights groups criticise upcoming amnesty

Rights groups have strongly criticised a recent government decision to pardon thousands of convicts in Turkmen prisons this month, while ignoring the plight of scores of political dissidents still incarcerated in the county's overcrowded penitentiary system. "It's a great disappointment for us. It would have been an opportunity for the Turkmen authorities to show that they want to protect the human rights of all their citizens," Amnesty International's researcher for Central Asia, Anna Sunder-Plassman, told IRIN from London on Wednesday. Her comments follow a recent decree by Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov approving an amnesty for more than 7,000 prisoners at the end of the holy month of Ramadan November, a move which has become an annual tradition in the reclusive Central Asian state. And while petty criminals stood a good chance of benefiting from the move, the doors remained closed for those officials convicted of crimes committed while serving the state, political prisoners, and some 100 people, implemented in an alleged plot to assassinate Niyazov last November. Plassman had hoped that prisoners of conscience, many of whose cases had been brought to the attention of the international community, would have been included in the amnesty, calling such a move a step in the right direction. "Of course it is a great disappointment if none of these cases are included, but then the human rights situation in Turkmenistan is so appalling that very fundamental steps are needed to change the situation." Dr Aaron Rhodes, executive director of the Vienna-based International Helsinki Federation (IHF) was more even forthcoming. "I regard the amnesty in Turkmenistan as a cynical ploy that has little if anything to do with human rights. In fact, such an amnesty probably undermines whatever is left of a legal system in the country," he told IRIN. "To release people convicted of petty crimes while maintaining so many political prisoners under unbearable conditions is really an exhibition of disregard for the law. It is another example of the rule of the president rather than the rule of law." Asked how many political opponents or prisoners of conscience were currently incarcerated in the largely desert nation, Plassman said it was hard to say, given the lack of information coming out of the hermit-like, but energy-rich state. "We have some cases that we can discern are just a fraction of all the cases," she claimed. A recent report by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty suggested that the country of five million might have one of the world's highest per-capita prison rates at 490 out of a population of 100,000. But given Niyazov's insistence on maintaining an iron grip on the country, many cannot help but wonder why such amnesties occur at all. According to Vitaliy Ponomarev, head of the Central Asia Programme for the Russian Memorial human rights centre, a group closely following events in Turkmenistan, such amnesties began in 1999 as many prison terms were based on flimsy or fabricated charges, and there was no state mechanism to deal with them. Turkmen courts were notorious for dealing out lengthy terms for minor crimes, crowding the country's jails, Ponomarev told IRIN from Moscow, citing the example of a man who had been sentenced to 12 years in jail for stealing an electricity meter. Such incidents resulted in a barrage of personal appeals to the Turkmen President. In order to take the strain off, and avoid reforming the current legal system, mass amnesties were introduced as a means of emptying the prisons, he added. "It is a very positive step that many people that have been unfairly sentenced are freed. However, the amnesty usually doesn't apply to political prisoners and doesn't eliminate the defects of the Turkmen legal system, which resulted in the emergence of these amnesties," the activist asserted. As for political prisoners not covered by the amnesty, Ponomarev said their fate lay in the hands of the Turkmen president himself. "The orders of imprisoning each of them [political prisoners] and the length of their terms are personally determined by Niyazov. Only he can decide whether to change a prison term or to free this or that man," he explained. In Turkmenistan, there was an absolute centralised system of making decisions [on imprisonment and amnesties]. "There are no analogues in the post-Soviet states," Ponomarev stressed, adding that these amnesties were not eliminating the main problem of the need for radical reforms and humanisation of the country's fledgling legal system. Meanwhile, some Turkmenistan observers believe that the large number of people passing through the country's prisons had actually succeeded in suppressing people by keeping them under constant pressure, thereby breaking their morale and opposition. Regarding a way forward, Plassman said she would like to see Ashgabat significantly improve its human rights record by including the release of all prisoners of conscious in the upcoming amnesty, as well as retrying those individuals allegedly involved in last year's assassination plot. Additionally, she called for the International Red Cross to be given free access to prisoners and any allegations of torture to be fully investigated.