In honor of Independence Day, President S. Berdymukhamedov signed a Decree on the pardon of 833 prisoners, 4 of them are citizens of foreign countries.
Also, the heads of administrations and other state institutions were ordered to employ people who were released from prisons. In fact, work is provided to a few prisoners for reporting, and all the rest look for work themselves.
According to the ACCA expert, all pardons in Turkmenistan are timed to coincide with significant public holidays.
“All pardons carried out in the country are a PR campaign, because in Turkmenistan they put people in prisons so that the President of the country can show his mercy,” the expert notes.
Turkmen and international human rights activists have repeatedly criticized this practice of the Turkmen authorities, because so far more than 120 people are missing on the lists of the campaign “Prove They Are Alive”. These are politicians, oppositionists, journalists and activists. As practice shows, the authorities of Turkmenistan don’t provide any information about their fate and don’t apply acts of pardon against them.
It’s worth recalling that Turkmenistan ranks third in the world in terms of the number of prisoners per 100,000 people.
