Nizayov Keeps Alive Legacy of Soviet-Style Show Trials in Turkmenistan
The scenes are reminiscent of the Soviet era's show trials, where broken, pale men the fallen members of the political elite read haltingly from prepared texts about their alleged horrible crimes against the Motherland. In crushing the alleged perpetrators of an assassination attempt, Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov is keeping alive the legacy of Soviet-style televised confessions and official media denunciations of opposition convicts.
The crackdown in the wake of the November 25 assassination attempt, including large-scale arrests of suspected conspirators and their family members, has effectively crippled organized opposition against Niyazov's authoritarian government. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archives]. Nevertheless, the Turkmen leader's sense of security may prove fragile.
On December 29, Turkmenistan's Supreme Court sentenced one of Niyazov's most prominent rivals, former Foreign Minister Boris Shikhmuradov, to the maximum sentence of 25 years' imprisonment for his alleged role in the coup attempt. Turkmenistan's rubber-stamp parliament later increased the term to life imprisonment. That same day, Shikhmuradov appeared on television, confessing that "no opposition group existed and a criminal group was created to commit an attack on the president"
"These are the same methods that were used during the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s in the Soviet Union," Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media Freimut Duve said in a statement condemning Shikhmuradov's conviction.
The use of show trials did not end with Stalin. Indeed, Soviet authorities resorted to broadcasting confessions in certain political cases as late as the 1980s. In 1980, for example, Dmitry Dudko, an Orthodox priest, appeared on television to renounce his "anti-Soviet" views; others followed, including Georgian nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who later became that country's president only to be ousted amidst civil conflict.
On Turkmen television, Shikhmuradov characterized Niyazov as "a gift to the people of Turkmenistan from on high." Yet, only five days earlier, on December 24, he released a statement claiming that he was in Ashgabat at the time of the assassination, and believed it was "planned and executed by the Turkmen authorities with a sole purpose of generating a reason to carry out repressions against the opposition members, their friends and families." Shikhmuradov wrote he had returned to his homeland in September to plan street demonstrations, and claimed Niyazov, sensing the forthcoming civil unrest, faked the coup plot.
Shikhmuradov claimed that he turned himself in, "in hope that my surrender will put a stop to the massive arrests and torture of innocent people." He also warned of "physical and psychological torture." Sporadic reports emerging from Turkmenistan indicate the Soviet-era practice of psychiatric abuse has continued. At least one Turkmen journalist said he was detained and dosed with psychotropic drugs in the 1990s, then subsequently reversed his claim, possibly under further pressure.
Political analysts and human rights advocates continue to debate Shikhmuradov's motivation for turning himself in and confessing. Some believe Shikhmuradov was tortured and medicated, effectively forcing him to renounce his struggle for freedom. Another explanation for his behavior, consistent with his gesture of turning himself in, may have involved a deliberate recantation in order to draw attention to himself and to protect others. This is an old technique of underground movements. Gamsakhurdia, for instance, claimed his confession was made deliberately as a "tactical" measure to "save the movement."
Following the Stalinist script for the staging of show trials, public confessions in Turkmenistan have been reinforced with blanket denunciations in the media. In a four-page commentary January 31, the official Turkmen law weekly "Adalat" (Justice) named 57 "traitors," sentenced from five to 25 years. The article described their "crimes against the state" with a mixture of vengeful, mystical hyperbole and communist-style denunciation.
In a quirky twist, the newspaper attempted to whip up sentiment against Shikhmuradov by reminding readers that his father was an officer of Stalin's secret police, the NKVD. "You are the son of an executioner, capable of trampling over corpses," the newspaper commentary said. "Whatever you have been minister or diplomat there is filth in you from your ancestors, from your filthy father. Like father, like son. You have not reformed; you are a traitor and the fruit of depravity."
The article went on to call on the ancestors of another accused conspirator, Yklym Yklymov, "unto the seventh generation" to rise from their graves, and curse him for "going against
Catherine A . Fitzpatrick is the CIS Program Director at the International League for Human Rights.
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