Recently, the State Department announced a potentially significant change in U.S. policy towards Turkmenistan when it was designated a “country of particular concern” (CPC) for particularly severe violations of religious freedom. The move came as a surprise to many Central Asia hands who may have asked “why?”

It’s curious that neither the Afghanistan government nor the international forces in Afghanistan have said anything about this apparent Turkmenistani incursion. Residents quoted by RFE/RL said they are appealing to the Afghanistan government to figure out what is going on and to try to regain access to their land.

The NCACC must, according to legislation regulating conventional arms sales, «avoid transfers of conventional arms to governments that systematically violate or suppress human rights and fundamental freedoms».

Intense, rough banging on the door abruptly wakes us up. We stare at the darkness out of the window and alarmed follow a muted conversation in the yard. ”The police wants to speak to you.’ – shortly explains our host. Distraught we rush to meet a casually dressed man who addresses us in sound English – a privilege in Turkmenistan, we learn later on, held only by the immigration police.

Dozens of people have been forcibly disappeared in Turkmenistan, some for more than a decade, a coalition of human rights groups called the Prove They Are Alive! campaign said today in connection with the International Day of the Disappeared, which is on August 30, 2014. The government of Turkmenistan should immediately inform the relatives of the disappeared of their fate and whereabouts and allow them access to their loved ones.

A rare public protest took place in the Turkmen capital when some 50 people blocked cranes from removing air conditioners from the windows of their apartments. When cranes came on August 23 to remove the air conditioners, several residents blocked the cranes and prevented them from approaching the apartments.

Less than seven weeks after he had imprisoned a Jehovah’s Witness on what his fellow believers insist were fabricated charges, Judge Gaigysyz Orazmuradov of Dashoguz City Court in northern Turkmenistan sentenced another Jehovah’s Witness

State controlled media in Turkmenistan paint a pretty picture of life inside this closed country. But it is a picture that most citizens do not recognise, and they are increasingly challenging it.

Mansur Mingelov (39), a Turkmen national imprisoned for 22 years, went on indefinite ‘dry’ hunger strike in LB/K-11 strict-regime prison colony in the city of Seidi (Lebap province in eastern Turkmenistan). On 19 May he informed the chief of the colony Maj. Batyr Gullyev in writing about his refusal to take food and water. In…