Page 65 - BNE_magazine_10_2020

bne October 2020
Opinion 65
Religious dissidence is treated no less harshly. The Jehovah’s Witnesses this week said that they had received confirmation that an 18-year follower of their faith, Myrat Orazgeldiyev, was sentenced to a term in prison on September 3 for declining to pursue military service duties. A spokesman
for the community said that there are currently 11 Jehovah’s
“Turkmenistan is still clearly struggling with a COVID-19 problem. the closure of mosques and the Awaza tourism zone was extended to October 1 and swimming in the Caspian has been banned since May”
Witnesses in prison in Turkmenistan for conscientious objection. “Young Christians like Myrat would be happy to perform alternative service. Instead, they are thrown into prison, where they are stripped of the opportunity to support the families and community they love,” Jarrod Lopes, spokesman for Jehovah’s Witnesses, said in a statement.
Disdaining military service should, in any case, be a matter of basic common sense as much as principle. Turkmen.news has reported that at least 14 conscripts died as a result of
a September 3 accident near the town of Serhetabat. A truck overloaded with around 40 men was travelling on an uneven road back from a pistachio field, where the conscripts had been used as free harvesting labour, when it flipped over.
Life in the army is not seen in this light in the nether dreamworld inhabited by President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov. The evening news on September 2 used the excuse of a military preparedness drill to trot out another segment on the president’s martial fantasies, which this time included him firing with unerring precision at target practice cutouts. The nadir of the day’s larks was Berdimuhamedov blasting a pile of oil barrels with a machine gun mounted
on a GMC Yukon Denali.
The editing and arrangement of these reports are so absurd as to raise the improbable suspicion that the halls of Turkmen state broadcasters are in fact teeming with subversives. If anything, though, Berdimuhamedov seems to think they don’t go far enough. At a Cabinet meeting on September 4, he instructed the deputy prime minister with the portfolio for culture and media, Myahrijemal Mammedova, who started her job in July, to ensure that state broadcasters
use more “powerful material,” whatever that means.
In another piece of personnel management at the Cabinet
meeting, Deputy Education Minister Merdan Govshudov, who had been given a reprimand on August, was fired for failing to properly acquit his duties. There are evident signs of tumult in the educational sector. Turkmen.news reported on September 5 that the principals of two elite schools in Ashgabat have been detained, likely on corruption charges as admission is often secured by means of bribes. Last month, there were reports that parents at another school had mounted a spontaneous protest after learning that the Russian-language department was to be closed. Schools providing instruction in Russian are deemed particularly desirable and are, therefore, more prone to extortionist practices.
For all the bombastic propaganda, there is no papering over the fact that Turkmenistan is still clearly struggling with
a COVID-19 problem. The latest is that the closure of mosques is being extended to October 1, as is access to the Awaza tourism zone. Restrictions on activities such as swimming in the Caspian have been in place since mid-May.
Police are now enforcing a ban on setting up tents to celebrate events like weddings, birthdays or charity dinners, apparently to prevent the assembly of large groups, Chronicles has reported. What is unclear, though, is whether this is
a COVID-19 measure or one of the many reported heightened security precautions being adopted ahead of a convening of the Khalk Maslahaty, or People's Council, on September 25
to change the constitution.
Another ostensibly important win was claimed last week for the vision of turning the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan- Pakistan-India, or TAPI, gas pipeline from distant fantasy to hard reality. The memorandum of understanding signed on August 31 by Turkmen and Afghan officials envisions the acquisition of the necessary land in Afghanistan. The Afghan Mines and Petroleum Minister Mohammad Haroon Chakhansuri is projecting work to start in Afghanistan by early 2021, once the land acquisition process is completed.
Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov on September 2 discussed progress on the project with the chairman of the Afghan Central Bank, Ajmal Ahmadi, but a Foreign Ministry readout of that exchange provided few useful details. Seeing as Ahmadi has been a reliable presence
at TAPI fund-raising excursions to places like the United Arab Emirates, however, it is probably safe to assume money was high on the agenda.
Akhal-Teke is a weekly Eurasianet column compiling news and analysis from Turkmenistan. This article originally appeared on Eurasianet.
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