Skip to main content

Inside One of the World’s Most Notorious Prison Systems

Stanislav Romaschenko
2:08
Alternative Turkmenistan News

A miraculous thing happened last summer at MR-K/16 prison in Turkmenistan. On July 25, Stanislav Romaschenko, a Russian citizen convicted of unarmed robbery, was pardoned and released by the Turkmen authorities. He had served 11 years of his 19-year sentence.

Romaschenko, who was 21 at the time of the 2003 robbery, admits his part in the crime. But his sentencing and incarceration not only violated international law, they flouted the very concept of justice.

First, there was his lengthy sentence, resulting from charges of attempted murder disputed even by Romaschenko’s victimlikely a ploy by authorities to extract a bribe or inflate the importance of their arrest. As a Russian citizen, Romaschenko was also entitled to serve his time in a Russian prison, according to a bilateral treaty. Instead, he was left to languish, with Russian diplomats hesitant to pursue his case because of a geopolitical friendship based on Turkmenistan’s natural gas.

Now a free man, in his country of citizenship away from the Turkmen authorities, Romaschenko is the subject of “Turkmenistan: Life Behind Bars,” a documentary I have produced for my website Alternative Turkmenistan News. As a witness to—and victim of—the pervasively inhumane conditions in Turkmenistan’s prisons, Romaschenko helps us understand a system that has for years denied access to international monitors.

At least 26,500 prisoners are currently serving time in Turkmenistan’s prisons, according to figures kept by the Institute of Prison Studies at the University of Exeter. But the real number is likely much higher. Based on capacity estimates taken from floor plans and Google Earth imagery, the institute’s numbers do not account for the prisons’ stifling overpopulation, reported by Romaschenko as well as numerous sources who cannot go on record. Cells meant to house four inmates often hold six to eight, eyewitnesses say. Those meant for 10 cram in 18 to 20.

Beatings and sexual violence are directed at those who have angered authorities for any reason. Many who have left the prisons say they were beaten daily with everything from batons to plastic bottles filled with water. Some inmates, especially gay men, report being raped by guards and fellow prisoners. Others, like the 61 men suspected of planning a revolt in the Seidi prison in eastern Turkmenistan, say they were forced to perform sexual acts on each other as punishment for insubordination.

The crowding breeds infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis, which thrives in the humidity. Surprisingly, medicines are supplied regularly to the prison hospitals. Yet to access the life-saving medication a prisoner must pay a bribe. Some also suspect prison medical staff of using poison, instead of medicine, to weed out the weak.

In fact, those who have money can live like kings in Turkmenistan’s prisons, and many do, with corruption pervasive throughout the criminal justice process, from trial to sentencing to incarceration. Judges are given wide discretion in sentencing, and routinely impose shorter or longer sentences based on bribes, sometimes asking upwards of $100,000 in a country where monthly salaries average $350. Inside the prisons, everything is for sale, from drugs and alcohol to extra visits to private accommodations, and even personal cooks and servants comprised of fellow inmates.

Romaschenko, a tuberculosis patient with no family in Turkmenistan and no money for bribes, came into conflict with a prison official who initiated an internal trial that landed the young man in a maximum-security colony for two long years. It was during his stay in an isolation cell, where the dank, dark conditions exacerbated his symptoms with every passing hour, that Romaschenko decided to make his story public.

Released as part of a holiday amnesty by President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov—in response, we believe, to the pressure created by our publicity—Romaschenko now lives outside of Penza, Russia, and has plans to marry. For many, including the men whose very rapes can be used to substantiate further charges (because homosexuality is illegal in Turkmenistan), the only way to escape the system is to move abroad. Others keep quiet for fear that attracting attention will result in retribution from the state, as it has in the case of Mansur Mingelov, who was sentenced to 22 years on false charges after disclosing abuse he faced during his initial arrest.

In recent years, some efforts have been made to pressure Turkmenistan to make its prisons more transparent. A campaign called Prove They Are Alive demands that officials provide proof of the life—or death—of political prisoners. For regular inmates, however, the most crucial step would be for local and international monitors to be allowed to visit the prisons and document their conditions.

Given the country’s closed nature and repressive atmosphere, this seems unlikely without greater pressure from international bodies and foreign governments. As Romaschenko says in my film, “Of course it would be better if NGO’s could have access to Turkmenistan’s prisons. In fact, there are not even NGOs that exist there who could do this work.”

Alternative Turkmenistan News is a grantee of the Open Society Foundations.

Subscribe to updates about Open Society’s work around the world

By entering your email address and clicking “Submit,” you agree to receive updates from the Open Society Foundations about our work. To learn more about how we use and protect your personal data, please view our privacy policy.