Media freedom in the spotlight as dissident writer awarded

Human rights groups have highlighted the ongoing assault on freedom of speech in autocratic Turkmenistan, following the honouring on Tuesday of Turkmen dissident and novelist, Rakhim Esenov, in New York. “The people of Turkmenistan are being deprived of the fundamental right to receive information and exchange ideas. It consigns the country to a state of isolation and ignorance and future generations will continue to pay the price,” Acacia Shields, Human Rights Watch (HRW) senior researcher on Central Asia, said from New York on Wednesday. “Journalists, human rights activists, anybody who tries to exercise their right of freedom of expression, are being persecuted to the point of being sent to prison where they are at risk of being tortured or ill-treated,” Lydia Aroyo, Amnesty International (AI)’s Europe and Central Asia press officer, told IRIN from London. Esenov was given the 2006 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award by the PEN American Center, an organisation that promotes free speech and is one of the world’s oldest human rights bodies. The 78-year-old writer has not had a book published in his native Turkmenistan since the country gained independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, even though he was a former correspondent in Soviet Turkmenistan and has authored more than 20 books. He continued writing after 1991 and in 1997 his novel “Ventsenosny Skitalets” (The Crowned Wanderer) was banned and denounced as historically inaccurate. In 1994, Esenov was arrested for trying to smuggle copies into the sparsely populated Central Asian state. Turkmen authorities initially banned the writer from leaving the country to collect the award, but he was allowed an exit visa after international pressure from rights groups and diplomats. “HRW is very pleased that Rakhim Esenov was allowed to travel to the US to receive the PEN award. However, it is our position that he never should have been detained by the authorities in the first place,” Shields remarked. “We are also acutely aware that Rakhim Esenov is not the only writer who has suffered persecution at the hands of the Niyazov government.” AI has said that Turkmen authorities have intensified a clampdown on media freedom since an alleged attempt on the life of President Saparmurat Niyazov in 2002. All media outlets are controlled by the state and the Turkmen government uses them as an official press service to promote Niyazov’s personality cult, the rights group said. “By stifling the media, the authorities are attempting to prevent information about human rights violations from leaving the virtually closed country,” Aroyo added.