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54 I Eurasia bne November 2023
Some of the assailants are said to have carried a “half-dead” Muhammed Mammedov to his apartment and put him to bed. / Instagram
Turkmen stand-up comic beaten to death in Ashgabat after returning home from Turkey
Nizom Khodjayev in Almaty
Anoted Turkmen blogger and stand-up comic has reportedly been beaten to death in Turkmenistan’s capital Ashgabat after returning from a long stay in Turkey.
The killing comes at a time when many Turkmen who were long-term resident in Turkey have been forced
to return to Turkmenistan after the Turkmen and Turkish regimes agreed on a cancellation of Turkey’s visa-free arrangements for Turkmen migrants, though whether this development was a factor in this case is not known.
Thirty-year-old Muhammed Mammedov and his friend were late
at night on October 4 attacked by unknown assailants, according to Turkmen.news. The blogger's friend was
www.bne.eu
said to have sustained minor injuries, but Mammedov himself was severely beaten and died hours later.
The news website reported a source as saying that after the attack, some of the assailants carried “half-dead” Mammedov to his apartment and put him to bed, where he was discovered by his father and young son the next morning.
Turkmen.news wrote: “Colleagues of
the deceased, as well as commentators on social networks, point out several incomprehensible moments in this tragic story. Firstly, how could ordinary hooligans or just passers-by beat a man half to death, and then carry him into his own house?”
It added: ”Secondly, in Ashgabat there are police booths... at literally every step,
where officers are on duty around the clock. How did no one notice anything during such a fight?"
Whether law enforcement agencies have opened a criminal case into the incident is not known because the internal affairs department in Turkmenistan – one of the most closed and repressive nations in the world – does not publish data on crimes, Current Time reported.
October has brought reports of thousands of Turkmen being forced to leave Turkey amid a renewed crackdown by the Turkish authorities on illegal migrants employed as undocumented workers and the Turkish government’s ending, at the request of the Turkmen dictatorship, of visa-free travel for Turkmen citizens.