Turkmenistan Cutting “Last Lifeline” with Satellite Seizures – Watchdog
According to rights watchdogs and the crumbs of independent reporting coming out of Turkmenistan, the authoritarian government is busy stripping homes of their satellite receivers, plunging the insulated country further into isolation.
Human Rights Watch reported on April 24:
At the end of March, 2015, local housing authorities in the capital, Ashgabat, and its suburbs started ordering residents of multi-story apartment buildings to take down their satellite dishes, citing simply an “order from above” that allegedly stated the dishes ruined the view of the city. Authorities told residents they could instead get cable television packages through the government or state satellite antennae.
The measure will further sanitize Turkmenistan’s domestic information space in the build-up to presidential elections in two years and keep Turkmen eyes and ears focused on newsreels proclaiming the glories of Turkmen neutrality and dictator Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov.
The government has attempted to phase out satellite dishes before – but HRW claims they are going further this time.
The satellite dishes clinging to apartment blocks all over the capital, Ashgabat, might be unsightly. But the thirst for the dishes is a direct consequence of the government’s boring domestic programing, and policy of making believable news difficult to access.
Writes Bruce Pannier at RFE/RL:
The Turkmen government has always preferred to have a monopoly on the dissemination of information inside Turkmenistan. Access to satellite dishes, which in some cases cost only some $100, has broken the grip Turkmen authorities have tried to keep on information, allowing citizens to watch or listen to programming from many sources, including Azatlyk [the Turkmen service of RFE/RL].
Azatlyk broadcasts in Turkmen and is thus a particular threat in a country where Russian – the former Soviet Union’s lingua franca – is dying a slow death. According to the Civic Solidarity Platform, an online advocacy group, the anti-satellite campaign specifically targets U.S.-government-funded Azatlyk:
[Azatlyk] is the only independent source of information about Turkmenistan and the world in the Turkmen language and is widely listened to in the country. This radio is currently accessible to the Turkmen public through satellite dishes while other channels of independent information about Turkmenistan, including websites of human rights and dissident organizations as well as the website of Radio Azatlyq are blocked.
The government may also be worried as the economy slows. Amid low international prices for oil and natural gas, Ashgabat devalued the manat by around a fifth at the beginning of the year, while reports of job cuts in the key energy sector and the trimming of huge energy subsidies for domestic consumers undermine state propaganda about a so-called “Era of Supreme Happiness of the Stable State,” as Berdymukhamedov has nicknamed his reign.
The Civic Solidarity Platform suggests another possible motive for the attack on satellites. In 2017, Turkmenistan will be the first Central Asian state to host the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, which will feature sporting events in twenty or so categories as well as an Olympic village being built for an estimated $5 billion.
News outlets from around the world will be covering that event. And following media fanfare over problems and corruption in the run-up to the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, Turkmenistan will be keen to ensure that any bad publicity does not make its way back into the country.
Chris Rickleton is a journalist based in Almaty.
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