The UN Committee against Torture (CAT), the body monitoring states’ compliance with the Convention against Torture, will review Turkmenistan’s record on 7 April – 2 May 2025. In its last concluding observations from 2016, CAT raised serious concerns about widespread and systematic human rights violations in Turkmenistan, identifying the following major issues:
Systematic Torture, Arbitrary Detention, and Impunity
- Widespread use of torture and ill-treatment in detention, particularly to extract confessions during arrest and pretrial detention.
- No cases of torture have been investigated or prosecuted, reflecting total impunity.
- Arbitrary arrests, harassment, and torture of human rights defenders, journalists, and their families remain common.
- Activists and journalists such as Gulgeldy Annaniyazov, Annakurban Amanklychev, Sapardurdy Khajiev, and Saparmamed Nepeskuliev continue to be detained despite the United Nations’s calls for their release.
- Deaths in custody due to torture, including journalist Ogulsapar Muradova and activist Altymurad Annamuradov, have not been investigated.
Enforced Disappearances and Incommunicado Detention
- At least 90 individuals held in long-term incommunicado detention, amounting to enforced disappearances.
- Authorities have failed to clarify the fate of high-profile individuals such as Boris and Konstantin Shikhmuradov, Batyr Berdyev, and Rustam Dzhumayev.
Forced Psychiatric Detention for Political Reasons
- Involuntary psychiatric hospitalization used as a tool against non-violent political dissenters, without proper legal safeguards or consent.
Abusive Prison Conditions and Lack of Safeguards Against Torture
- Severe prison conditions, including overcrowding, lack of hygiene, inadequate food, lighting, ventilation, and medical care.
- High mortality rates, especially in prisons like Ovadan-Depe and among prisoners with tuberculosis.
- Prolonged solitary confinement, leading to severe mental health deterioration and suicides.
- Reports of physical and psychological abuse, sexual violence, and rape by prison staff, with no investigations into known cases.
Violence Against Women and Gender-Based Violations
- Domestic and sexual violence not specifically criminalized, leaving women without legal protection.
- Reports of sexual violence against women in detention, with no accountability or investigations.
Absence of Effective Legal and Institutional Protections
- No independent national human rights institution (Ombudsman) in line with international standards.
- No independent complaints mechanism to receive or investigate torture allegations – zero complaints officially recorded, indicating systemic suppression.
- Lack of independent monitoring of detention facilities; access denied to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and UN special rapporteurs.
- The existing monitoring body under the Ministry of Internal Affairs lacks independence.
- Detainees denied prompt access to lawyers, judges, and families; can be held for up to six months or longer without judicial review, violating safeguards.
Use of Torture Evidence in Courts and Lack of Judicial Independence
- Confessions extracted under torture regularly used as evidence in court.
- Judges fail to investigate torture allegations during trials.
- Judicial independence undermined by presidential control – judges appointed and dismissed solely by the President and serve renewable five-year terms, exposing them to political pressure.
Lack of Clear Legal Prohibition of Torture and Enforced Disappearances
- Constitution allows suspension of rights in emergencies without exempting torture, violating international standards.
- No explicit prohibition of amnesties for acts of torture or enforced disappearances, enabling impunity.
Failure to Apply the Convention Against Torture in Domestic Courts
- Although international treaties have primacy in law, the Convention against Torture has never been directly invoked or applied by Turkmenistan’s courts, demonstrating systemic non-compliance.
These critical issues will be the focus of Turkmenistan’s upcoming review before the UN Committee Against Torture in April 2025.
