Turkmen activist barred from leaving country to get human rights award 

Turkmen authorities have prevented a known activist from leaving the country for Geneva, where she had been invited to receive a human rights award, according to independent reports. 

Soltan Achilova was one of the three winners of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2021. Because of the coronavirus restrictions, the award ceremony was postponed and is taking place this month. 

Achilova and her daughter Mayya were planning to take a flight out of Ashgabat on 17 November, the Amsterdam-based Khronika Turkmenistana website said. 

However, after they were questioned at length and thoroughly searched — their bags were scanned a few times — a border control officer soaked Achilova’s and her daughter’s passports with a wet tissue, then declared that the documents were now unusable and they could not board their flight, the report said. 

While in Switzerland, Achilova was planning to meet representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and others. 

Achilova, who is over 70, is one of only a few Turkmen journalists who openly report on social and human rights issues for news organisations based outside the country – among them the US-based Radio Liberty’s Turkmen service and independent websites run by exiled Turkmen activists and journalists. 

Achilova is persistently pressured by the Turkmen authorities. For some time, she was officially barred from leaving the country. 

“There is no doubt that Soltan Achilova was denied a chance to leave the country on orders from above. It shows the Turkmen authorities’ desire to suppress any criticism of their policies,” the website quoted Farid Tukhbatullin, the head of the Turkmen Human Rights Initiative, as saying. 

“It is yet more evidence of the terrible situation with freedom of speech in Turkmenistan.”  

The Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders is a collaboration among ten leading international human rights organizations. 

Meanwhile, last week, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry held a rare briefing to deny “foreign” reports about violations of women’s rights in the country. 

Rights groups say the Turkmen government has in the past few years been conducting a campaign aimed at keeping women within “the moral tradition”.  

The policy has softened now, reportedly, but at its peak it involved an unofficial driving ban for women, dress-code checks at government institutions, and raids on beauty salons and women wearing “too much” makeup.  

“Our women are free to wear clothes of their own choice in everyday life. The same goes about their external appearance and their visits to beauty salons,” deputy foreign minister Vepa Khajiyev told the briefing, reports said. 

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