Watchdog

Amnesty International says social activist Valeri Pal has been detained in Turkmenistan.

Amnesty says Pal, 59, is in ill health and is being denied access to urgent medical treatment. He suffered a stroke in 2004 and is partially paralyzed.

Pal''s wife, in a petition to Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, wrote that every day Pal "spends [in detention in those conditions] poses a serious risk to his life."

Pal worked at an oil refinery in the Caspian port city of Turkmenbashi. He was detained by police on February 21, reportedly on suspicion of theft in connection with an incident that happened at his workplace in 2004.

According to Vyacheslav Mamedov, the director in exile of the nongovernmental Democratic Civil Union of Turkmenistan, no charges have yet been brought against Pal.

Mamedov says Pal’s activities as a social activist may be one of the reasons why he was targeted. Pal has been an activist since 1993 and has taken part in protests against the renaming of his town, helped Turkmen citizens with various social problems, and supported other activists and human-rights defenders through his knowledge of information technology.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the European Union should establish human-rights benchmarks for Central Asian governments and make their fulfillment a core objective of the bloc's Central Asia Strategy.

"Setting concrete benchmarks will give the strategy a clear direction," says Holly Cartner, HRW's Europe and Central Asia director. "Central Asia is home to some of the most repressive states of the former Soviet Union, and the EU should seize the opportunity to achieve improvements."

The strategy envisages the promotion of human rights and the rule of law, while simultaneously deepening EU engagement in energy and security issues. However, it avoids setting benchmarks for progress.

Top EU officials are scheduled to meet with Central Asian foreign ministers in Ashgabat on April 9-10 to discuss the strategy, adopted in June 2007.

In its briefing paper, HRW also urges the EU to consult regularly with civil society groups in the region and provide timely updates on the strategy's implementation.

HRW welcomed some human-rights improvements in the region, such as the release from prison of six wrongfully detained human-rights defenders in Uzbekistan and the release of several political prisoners in Turkmenistan. But Cartner noted they "should not eclipse the overall abysmal state of human rights in individual Central Asian countries and in the region as a whole."