Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, May 10
By Huseyn Hasanov – Trend:
The situation of human rights in Turkmenistan has been discussed in the UN, the UN news center reported.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan Vepa Hajiyev made a speech at the UN office in Geneva, where the 30th session of working group of the human Rights Council started its work.
The representative of Ashgabat stated that his country had joined to a number of international treaties, and the accession to the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the International criminal court and the optional Protocol to the Convention against torture, which allows human rights defenders to visit without preconditions the prisons of states being parties to the Protocol, is under consideration now.
Turkmenistan actively grants citizenship to stateless persons and refugees. In the period from 2013 to 2018, 4,827 people received passports of Turkmenistan. Hajiyev said that Turkmenistan is expanding people's access to the Internet.
"To date, the number of mobile and fixed Internet subscribers in our country has exceeded two and a half million," the representative of Turkmenistan said.
It was stressed that in Turkmenistan restrictions on access to the Internet apply only to the sites related to terrorism and extremism. In 2017-2018, six religious organizations were registered in the country.