Ogulsapar Muradova

In the second year of his presidency, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov relaxed some cultural restrictions but took no significant steps to improve press conditions. The strange and repressive legacy of his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, who died in late 2006, continued to dominate...

TURKMENISTAN: New York, June 26, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the abduction, torture, and forcible psychiatric hospitalization of Sazak Durdymuradov, a contributing reporter for the Turkmen Service of the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), in the Western city...

TURKMENISTAN The sudden death of President-for-Life Saparmurat Niyazov in December 2006 marked an end to an eccentric and authoritarian rule, raising modest hopes for social, economic, and political reform. Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, a deputy prime minister and Niyazov loyalist, was named...

Dear Secretary Rice: In advance of your meeting in New York with Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov during the 62nd session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Committee to Protect Journalists draws your attention to the unexplained death of an independent journalist in Turkmenistan.

April 2007 News from the Committee to Protect Journalists...

New York, February 9, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns restrictions on the foreign and domestic journalists covering the Turkmen presidential election on February 11. While voters will cast their ballots for a president for the first time since 1992...

By Anderson CooperSilence. When a journalist is killed, more often than not, there is silence. In Russia, someone followed Anna Politkovskaya home and quietly shot her to death in her apartment building. The killer muffled the sound of the gun...

Getting away with murder in the former Soviet states By Nina Ognianova The assassin in a baseball cap who gunned down Anna Politkovskaya outside her Moscow apartment used a silencer. But reverberations from the contract-style slaying of Russia's icon of...

TURKMENISTAN The December 21 death of Saparmurat Niyazov, the self-proclaimed president-for-life, ended a two-decade rule that plunged Turkmenistan into a dark abyss in which the state maintained absolute control over information. His sudden death from heart failure at age 66...

Majority are murdered; worldwide death toll rises...