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Prospects for Civil Society in Post-Niyazov Turkmenistan

  • When
  • February 8, 2007
    10:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m. (EST)
  • Where
  • OSI-Washington, DC

The Open Society Institute's Turkmenistan Project, a division of the Central Eurasia Project, sponsored a discussion on prospects for civil society in post-Niyazov Turkmenistan with Farid Tuhbatullin, director of the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights. Erika Dailey, director of the Turkmenistan Project, served as discussant.

Farid Tuhbatullin is a former political prisoner and currently the Director of the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, based in Vienna. An environmentalist and civic leader from Dashoguz, he was arrested in December 2002 on politically motivated charges and sentenced in an unfair trial to 3 years of imprisonment in Turkmenistan's notorious gulag, but was amnestied under international pressure in 2003. He is now a political refugee in Austria, where he has become one of the leading voices for human rights in Turkmenistan.

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