Corporate Watch's correspondent, Alice Wilson, had spoken to some of the arrested in the preparation of her recent article (ref). Now they are under arrest, and no information is being released as to their condition.

For more information contact Alice Wislon on  alicewilson2006@yahoo.co.uk

She writes:

Between the 16th and 19th of June, seven human rights workers in Turkmenistan were arrested. They are all connected with the Turkmenistan Helsinki Foundation, which has defied the regime by its work to expose local human rights violations. It is thought they are being held at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ashgabat, and there is international concern that they are being tortured.

One member, Annakurban Amanklychev, had explosives and guns planted on him before he was arrested. He has since been accused of being a traitor in foreign pay, and working to foment civil unrest in the country. Amanklychev had been under surveillance for a year before his arrest.

One former member of the human rights group, now working as a journalist with Radio Liberty, was detained at her flat on the 18th of June at 5pm, by two Ashgabat city policemen. No warrant for her arrest was produced. Her family was told they were taking her 'for a conversation'. It is reported that during a phone conversation 'She seemed to have difficulty speaking. What she said was totally incoherent. We think they gave her psychotropic drugs.' That night, after midnight, a secret service officer ordered her daughters Sana and Mural to bring them their mother's computer and fax machine, they refused and were detained the following day, along with their brother.
Elena Ovezova was detained on the 18th of June, again without a warrant. No information has been released to her family. Nor is there any information about Sapardy Khadziev, who was arrested on the 18th of June, in the evening.

Turkmen National Security Minister Geldy Ashirmukhamedov, speaking on television, accused these human rights workers, a French diplomat and an official from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe of involvement in illegal activities. He said that these Turkmen citizens formed the nerve centre of the network which sought to foment unrest in the authoritarian Central Asian state. The country's ruthless dictator, 'Turkmenbashi', asked this official live on television: 'So did you catch everyone?' 'Yes, everyone,' his loyal minister replied. The President continued: 'The Foreign Ministry must summon all the diplomats who were involved in this case. Ask them to their faces to apologise. If they don't, they must be deported.'
Human rights defenders, political dissidents, members of religious minority groups and their families have routinely been subjected to harassment, arbitrary detention, torture or other ill-treatment and imprisonment after unfair trials. Many have been forced into exile in recent years, while thousands are believed to be on a 'blacklist' preventing them from leaving the country. As Turkmenbashi accuses his socially conscious citizens of being traitors, the question arises: who is the real traitor here? A Global Witness report recently exposed the regime's embezzlement of the revenue generated from gas sales. Three quarters of the revenue is spent 'off budget' as the civilian infrastructure has collapsed with public sector wages left unpaid, and pensions dramatically cut.

Healthcare is virtually nonexistent and the life expectancy is on a par with some of the poorest war torn countries in Africa. Female life expectancy is the lowest in the region. Yet in spite of this, as the Global Witness report highlights, the EU is becoming increasingly dependent on Turkmen gas, and on the 21st of March the European parliament's foreign-affairs committee approved a proposal for an interim trade agreement with Turkmenistan, in spite of the well known widespread use of forced labour including child labour, in the Turkmen textile industry. Turkmenbashi's domestic brutality seems to be rewarded with international trade deals. For the people in Turkmenistan, who risk their lives to raise awareness of the conditions there, this too surely is a kind of treachery.

For more information:
 http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=2517
 http://www.globalwitness.org/reports/show.php/en.00088.html
 http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/turkmenistan/index.shtml
 http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/turkmenistan_3522.jsp
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/4440148.stm
 http://www.iwpr.net/?p=trk&s=p&o=-&apc_state=henprca