IFLA Blasts Turkmenistan Library Closings and Rights Violations
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) called on the government of Turkmenistan April 29 to rescind an order by President Saparmurat Niyazov to close the country’s libraries. The controversial leader declared that libraries are pointless because villagers don’t read, the Prima news agency reported February 11. “Nobody reads books, people don’t go to libraries,” he concluded. “Central and student libraries will remain; the remainder need to close.” Niyazov has also closed down all hospitals outside the capital of Ashgabat, as well as all national parks.
Calling the order “one of the most profound onslaughts on intellectual freedom rights we have witnessed in many years,” IFLA President Kay Raseroka said the action is keeping the “Turkmen population in isolation and ignorance.” IFLA is urging the government to reopen and restock the libraries, provide free internet access, and offer unrestricted access to information in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The IFLA press release noted that the Turkmen National Library escaped closure, but the Open Society Institute in Budapest has confirmed the closure of libraries in the Dashoguz province. “Other analysts report that libraries have been out of favor with the president for a long time,” the federation noted. “The supplies of books at university libraries have not been updated for 10 years, and many works on history, literature, and biology have been removed and destroyed.”
The destruction of books and closing of libraries is apparently a part of Niyazov’s promotion of his own book of moral and philosophical musings, the Rukhnama. The Washington Post reported February 23 that the book is at the center of the president’s cult of personality, and everyone in the country who can read has been ordered to study it and pass examinations on it.
“If the Rukhnama were a benign text, like the memoirs of a U.S. president, this would be harmless,” Open Society Institute Specialist Erika Dailey told the Post, “but the Rukhnama is the principal instrument for indoctrination and brainwashing in Turkmenistan.”
Posted May 6, 2005.
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