As the Gundogar website reports, a convention on forced disappearances was launched at the UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Council by France and Argentina jointed in a meeting last Wednesday. This move is likely to irritate numerous global powers, the United States and Russia among them, but against the backdrop of the widely reported recent death of Radio Free Europe reporter Ogulsapar Muradova, it is not hard to see what implications this could hold for the Turkmen government.
Indeed, on the occasion of this latest human rights outrage perpetrated by the government of President Saparmurat Niyazov, the expected chorus of condemnation has been bolstered by calls for thorough investigations from both the French and U.S. governments. On September 15, a representative from the French Foreign Ministry gave assurances that the matter would raised in institutional exchanges at the European Union and the OSCE. The previous day, the U.S. State Department was raising similar objections while calling for a detailed autopsy. More recently, U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, who once authored Congressional legislation calling for closer ties between the United States and countries in former Soviet Central Asia, deplored the circumstances surrounding Muradova’s death according to a Radio Free Europe report:

“Clearly the Turkmen authorities need to allow the family to speak out and speak with the family. This is just a matter of human decency. Here’s a woman who has a family, who has died at a relatively young age and in highly questionable circumstances after a bogus trial. The Turkmen government needs, just as a matter of decency to the family, to allow the family to look into this, to allow the family to have some closure on this matter. We will be pushing the Turkmen government to allow the family these modest rights as a family of a person who has passed away.”

In spite of the objections of Senator Brownback, who is considered in some circles to be a possible Republican candidate for the 2008 presidential race, the Turkmen government seems determined to pursue its line of silencing all further reports on Muradova’s mysterious death. Again according to Radio Free Europe, the phone lines of Muradova’s family have been severed. The journalist’s immediate relatives were reportedly in contact with the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation after viewing Muradova’s body, although they were being subjected to threats by morgue employees even at that juncture. In a statement to Amnesty International, the head of the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation Tajigul Begmedova stated that relatives had testified that signs appearing on Muradova’s face and neck were consistent with beatings and strangulation.
It is also reported that Amnesty International have expressed further concern about the welfare of Turkmen Helsinki Foundation workers Annakurban Amanklychev and Sapardurdy Khajiev, who were also convicted in a recent trial and whose current whereabouts and state is also subject of speculation. Interestingly, one of the accusations levelled at Amanklychev was that of accepting financial assistance from individuals described as foreign operatives, BBC journalist Lucy Ash being among these. In the absence of reliable impartial information regarding the precise activities surrounding the nature of the crimes supposedly committed by these Turkmen reporters and human rights activist, it would be intriguing to hear how much insight the people’s foreign colleagues could offer.