The EU has called on Turkmenistan to protect women’s rights, remove restrictions on the Internet and give the Red Cross access to prisons during the fifteenth round of the annual human rights dialogue between the European Union and Turkmenistan in Brussels.
EU representatives took note of the recommendations of human rights defenders and raised a number of pressing issues during the meeting, calling on the Turkmen government to take effective measures to improve the situation.
Before the meeting the human rights organizations, International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) and the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights (TIPHR) handed over to EU representatives a report on the human rights situation in Turkmenistan with a number of recommendations, and called on the EU to use the dialogue to insist on concrete steps to address problems in Turkmenistan.
In particular, Turkmenistan was recommended to take rapid and decisive steps to combat sexual and gender-based violence, including by criminalizing domestic violence, discrimination against women and girls, as well as representatives of religious minorities, persons with disabilities and LGBT representatives, and to decriminalize consensual homosexual relations.
The members of the EU delegation expressed serious concerns about enforced disappearances and conditions in places of detention, including the torture and ill-treatment of prisoners. Turkmenistan should provide representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) with unhindered access to prisons, the EU stated.
The sides also discussed the issue of the eradication of forced labor in the cotton industry.
Noting the goal of the Government of Turkmenistan to digitalize the country, the EU stressed the importance of freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to information and independent media. The EU stressed the need to ensure Internet access for all citizens, and to remove blocking from websites and social networks.
During the dialogue, EU representatives also raised a number of individual cases of human rights violations and provided a list of cases of concern.
The meeting discussed, among other things, the macroeconomic situation of Turkmenistan and its intention to join the WTO, as well as the issues of gas export strategy and reduction of methane emissions.
