New NGO law leads to confusion and fear

NGOs in authoritarian Turkmenistan remain confused and apprehensive about a new law designed to further restrict their activities. On 18 November, those working in the NGO sector were summoned to the Ministry of Fairness to discuss implementation of the new, draconian "Law on Public Associations", which has since come into effect. Government control of civic society - and some say paranoia - has grown since an alleged assassination attempt on President Saparmurat Niyazov more than a year ago. Most of the 35 people who reportedly attended the meeting at the ministry were connected with NGOs that the Ministry has refused to register for various reasons. "Basically, they [the Turkmen government] don't accept documents [for registration]. They are reportedly working on the package of documents necessary for registration, because there are many strange points in the law that they cannot answer," the coordinator of an unregistered NGO working with Afghan refugees, who requested anonymity, told IRIN from the capital, Ashgabat. The new law criminalises unregistered public associations and puts new legal responsibility on individual members of such organisations. According to an International Crisis Group (ICG) report on Turkmenistan released earlier this year, NGOs are discouraged by the government from fund-raising, conducting awareness campaigns or interacting with similar organisations abroad. "We wanted to hold a sponsored walk to raise money for our activities, but were told this was not allowed," an unpaid project worker running a youth club in the second city of Turkmenabad told IRIN. Those who attended last month's meeting left none the wiser about their legal position. "At the meeting, the NGOs asked ministry officials what the new law stipulated on registration of grants, how and when to submit annual reports, and many other topics. They didn't answer any of these questions," the NGO leader said. The consensus among activists is that the government is playing for time, but that ultimately it wants to extend control over every aspect of Turkmen life, even associations for pet owners and sports enthusiasts. "Basically, we cannot operate, because now there is a law, but nobody, not even the ministry, knows what that law is, so how can we keep on the right side of it?" another NGO worker told IRIN. Optimists hope the current state of limbo will end in the new year, with Ashgabat eventually getting round to re-registering the tiny number of "official" NGOs in January, and maybe in February registering civic groups that have been operating without registration. "All organisations have suspended their activities, because officers from the ministry of interior have called on them, even in their homes if they didn't have offices, demanding to sign a paper where a person was pledging that he wouldn't work," the NGO activist added. "Even before the law actually entered into force, it [the Turkmen government] had already stripped one NGO, the Dashoguz Ecological Club, of its legal registration. The domestic remedies for that are virtually nil," Erika Dailey, the Open Society Institute's Turkmenistan project director, told IRIN last month from Budapest, pointing out that this was the first such incident, with more likely soon to follow. The new law stipulates serious penalties for those contravening it. Those operating unregistered" NGOs may be fined, sentenced to up to one year of "corrective labour" or sent to jail for up to six months, and authorities may confiscate an organisation's equipment and property. Dailey described the new law as a step towards tighter control of civil society. "It seems to be consistent with the larger policy that the government has been conducting to bring the elements of society that were not formally under government control under government control," she asserted. When IRIN visited the justice ministry in Ashgabat, nobody was able to provide updated information on NGO activity. According to the Ashgabat office of the USAID-funded NGO Support Initiative for Central Asia, there are around 150 civic groups operating throughout the country, but most do not enjoy official recognition. This compares very poorly with Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, where the NGO concept has been introduced, and governments are gradually opening up to the benefits that such civic groups can bring. For example, there are over 1,400 foreign-funded NGOs operating in Tajikistan - a country with a population similar to Turkmenistan's. In contrast to life under the Soviet regime, people in the other four Central Asian republics have shown a growing willingness to work through NGOs to solve local problems that the government for various reasons is unable to address. But in Turkmenistan, government bureaucracy and official suspicion continue to hamper the growth of such organisations.