The village of Gyzylgaya (urban community) is located 251 kilometers from the city of Balkanabad. There is a life-long psychiatric hospital in this village. The terminally ill, dissidents fighting with the authorities for their rights and those, from whom the security forces and relatives have taken away their homes, are sent to this hospital.
The most terrible conditions are in this institution. Food is very meagre and, according to our interlocutors, patients are sometimes fed only 2 times a day. There are cockroaches and bedbugs everywhere. All patients are bitten by bedbugs and many of them have large bite wounds. Some patients don’t have sheets or pillowcases and sleep on dirty mattresses. Patients are practically not taken out for a walk and they spend most of their time lying on beds. There are absolutely no medications. The hospital is a waiting place until the patient dies. Sometimes patients are transferred for a short time to the regional psychiatric hospital in the city of Balkanabad, and after a while they are sent back to Gyzylgaya, just making semblance of work.
According to ACCA sources, patients are often physically and sexually abused. Nurses and some doctors are involved in the violence. Nobody pays attention to the complaints of patients. Particularly violent and dissidents are often tied to a bed with wet ropes by the arms and legs. A person can be in this position from several days to several months. So, patients have bedsores and their skin perishes. At the same time, they are given potent psychotropic drugs.
Tied patients are given little food, up to 200 grams of bread and about 300 ml of water are given a day. This is done so that patients empty and urinate less under themselves. Almost all patients have critical underweight. Unquiet patients and dissidents are treated with a specially prepared mixture of vegetable oil and sulfur. The mixture is prepared as follows: sulfur is added to boiling vegetable oil, and this mixture is boiled for several minutes; after cooling, the mixture is injected to patients in the calves, lower back and under the shoulder blades. After that, the patient lies motionlessly, because the slightest movement causes them a hellish pain. Sometimes patients are specially fingered after this procedure in order to cause them a severe pain. In general, this is how the sick, dissidents and those, who disagree with the ruling regime in the country, are punished.
According to our sources, over 30 mentally healthy people have been killed in the psychiatric hospital of Gyzylgaya over the past 10 years. These are mainly dissidents and pensioners, whose apartments were taken away by the security forces. It’s very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to return people from these hospitals back to freedom. For many “patients” this is the last refuge before death.
There are no political dissidents and human rights defenders among them; they are sent to prisons on falsified criminal cases. In Turkmenistan, psychiatry has ceased to be medicine, and since independence, it has become a separate punitive body.
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