Human rights commissioner is concerned about situation Russians in Turkmenistan

Human rights commissioner in the Russian Federation Vladimir Lukin is concerned about the situation in which Russians have found themselves in Turkmenistan. He spoke about it on Wednesday at the news conference in RIA Novosti.

"They feel of course absolutely outside the human rights legal field," Lukin said. He reminded that the teaching in the Russian language was sharply cut in that country, Russian television is represented only by some records of the first channel broadcasts.

He said that the Turkmen side deprived its citizens of having a double citizenship and pointed out that in this case Turkmenistan had violated the generally recognised norm according to which the law is not retrospective.

"Turkmenistan has decided that if Russia proposed not to preserve the institution of double citizenship, all those who had double citizenship before must part with it. This contradicts all the existing laws in the world, save some particular countries" Vladimir Lukin underscored.

Russia has its own interests in Turkmenistan, including the interests connected with the gas industry, he pointed out. "But gas and human rights must not be interconnected anyway. Human rights cannot be exchanged for anything," he said.

Vladimir Lukin emphasised that in his official capacity he is not interested in the political system of any country. "Our duty is to create a decent situation for our compatriots in Turkmenistan," he said.