TURKMENISTAN USCIRF–RECOMMENDED FOR COUNTRIES OF PARTICULAR CONCERN (CPC) KEY FINDINGS I n 2020, religious freedom conditions in Turkmenistan remained among the worst in the world and showed no signs of improvement. Restrictive state policies have “virtually extinguished” the free practice of religion in the country, where the government appoints Muslim clerics, surveils and dictates religious practice, and punishes nonconformity through imprisonment, torture, and administrative harassment. Turkmenistan is an extremely closed society, described as an informational “black hole” with an abysmal record on freedom of the press. Despite the state’s iron grip on the media, in September President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov lashed out at journalists and threatened to demote responsible officials for not adequately reporting “on the country’s successes.” This landscape makes it difficult to chronicle the actual extent of religious freedom abuses in the country, which are certainly more extensive than the limited number of reports indicate. Nevertheless, the available information presents a bleak picture. The government continued to treat all independent religious activity with suspicion, maintaining a large surveillance apparatus that monitors believers at home and abroad. Turkmenistani law requires religious groups to register under intrusive criteria, strictly controls registered groups’ activities, and punishes religious activities by unregistered groups, which are effectively banned. There were reports during the year of the authorities raiding several Protestant meetings and subsequently fingerprinting participants, forcing them to write confessions that they had attended an illegal religious gathering, and threatening them with the loss of their children and their employment. The government accelerated its ongoing persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses for their conscientious objection to military service, sentencing at least five more members to prison in 2020, which brings the current known total to 11. These include two Jehovah’s Witnesses, Vepa Matyakubov and Kamiljan Ergashov, who in January and February, respectively, received sentences of two years imprisonment for their conscientious objection. In August, two brothers, Sanjarbek and Eldor Saburov, received two-year prison sentences for the same charge—their second time to face conviction for this offense, having already served out their first criminal sentences. In September, yet another Jehovah’s Witness, Myrat Orazgeldyev, was imprisoned for “avoiding mandatory military service.” Most conscientious objectors are held at the Seydi Labor Camp, where overcrowding, harsh climatic and health conditions, physical abuse, and a high mortality rate are the norm. Persons accused of criminal religious offenses are often tried in closed-regime courts where sentences remain secret. Convicts are often disappeared in the state’s prison system and presumed to be held without contact with the outside world. The authorities likely hold many religious prisoners at the notorious Ovadan-Depe Prison, located in the remote desert 50 miles north of the capital city of Ashgabat. Ovadan-Depe was built to house high-level political dissidents and enemies of the state, and its prisoners routinely die from harsh conditions that include torture and starvation. RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE U.S. GOVERNMENT • Redesignate Turkmenistan as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), and lift the waiver releasing the administration from taking otherwise legislatively mandated action as a result of the designation; • Take presidential action to limit security assistance to Turkmenistan under IRFA Section 405(a)(22) to hold the government of Turkmenistan accountable for its particularly severe violations of religious freedom; individuals’ assets and/or barring their entry into the United States under human rights-related financial and visa authorities, citing specific religious freedom violations; and • Impose targeted sanc tions on Turkmenistan government agencies and officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those • Urge the government of Turkmenistan to provide a civilian alternative to military service and to release and pardon all those convicted for conscientious objection. KEY USCIRF RESOURCES & ACTIVITIES • Issue Update: The Global Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses • Issue Update: Religious Prisoners in Turkmenistan’s Gulag • Op-Ed: Lift the National Security Waiver on Turkmenistan (in Eurasianet) 50 U S C I R F | A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 2 1