On 15 May 2013, the fifth Human Rights Dialogue between the Republic of Turkmenistan and the European Union (EU) took place in Ashgabat to discuss possibilities of cooperation to develop democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in Turkmenistan. In anticipation of the meetings, human rights organizations observing Turkmenistan put out strong statements pressing for change. Freedom Now wrote for eurasianet.org that “the EU must make it clear to the Turkmen government that its failure to meet the human rights benchmarks set by the European Parliament will not be rewarded with further engagement.” Whereas Turkmen officials in their statements to the press “stressed that the protection of human rights and interests invariably remains the priority of Turkmenistan’s state policy,” the country continues to rank at the bottom of nearly all international human rights ratings. The official EU statement used generic language to describe the meetings, mentioning that individual cases were raised for discussion, but without specifying which. It is assumed that the EU responded to repeated appeals by international human rights watchdogs to raise the recent case of the arbitrary detention of RFE/RL Turkmen Service journalist Rovshen Yazmuhamedov.
Turkmenistan received a delegation from the Vatican, headed by Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church McCarrick Theodore Edgar. Turkmenistan’s state controlled media reported that the meeting covered “culture, freedom of conscience, and spiritual values.” And yet, Turkmenistan is known to persecute the religious, as noted in the 2012 International Religions Freedom Report by the US State Department that “restrictive government practices in the treatment of some registered and unregistered groups continued.” The report noted the routine arrests, charges, and imprisonment of Jehovah’s witnesses. Just recently, there have been cases of persecution of Protestants from the eastern Lebap Region. Two members of this Protestant community were fined more than two months wages after police were informed that a church member was reading Christian literature at work, they reported to Forum 18 News Service. State religious affairs officials (including state-appointed imams) and police raided several local Christians' homes, confiscating Bibles and other literature. "They said the Bible was printed in Kiev in Ukraine, and therefore reading it was banned," Protestants told Forum 18. The Judge told one of the fined church members: "If you want to know about God, read the Koran."
Reports of insurgencies in Afghanistan’s Faryab province which borders Turkmenistan, as well as in other regions of Afghanistan bordering Central Asian countries have aroused concern among some analysts, who believe that they may indicate the Taliban’s plans to expand into Central Asia. However, others are skeptical, saying that threats of a Taliban invasion into Central Asia are overplayed by Russian spin doctors, aiming to scare governments of Central Asian countries to turn to Moscow and to justify an increased Russian presence in the region.
In an interview with the Jamestown Foundation Newsletter, Sergei Abashin, the head of the Central Asia department at the Russian Institute of Ethnology, said that on the eve of the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force troops from Afghanistan, “some Central Asian governments are deliberately disseminating rumors about the Afghan threat. By this method, they hope to convince the United States, as well as Russia, to offer them military support.” However, Abashin does not dismiss the Afghan threat altogether. “The fears that Afghan Islamists will be more active in Central Asia after the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force troops has some likelihood. The question relates to the scale of this ‘expansion,’” he said.
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