Posted on 03/01/2005 12:43:42 PM PST by Lukasz
Reports from Turkmenistan say President Niyazov has ordered the closure of all the hospitals in the country except those in the capital, Ashgabat. The order, announced by a government spokesman, is part of the president's radical health care policies.
Thousands of medical workers have already been sacked under the plan.
Civil rights activists have accused the president of sacrificing public services in favour of vast projects that glorify his regime.
President Niyazov apparently took the decision to close the hospitals at a meeting with local officials on Monday.
"Why do we need such hospitals?" he said. "If people are ill, they can come to Ashgabat."
For the Turkmens, it means the end of a nationwide health service already on its knees.
There are few able doctors and little medicine in rural Turkmen hospitals, and last year President Niyazov sacked 15,000 medical workers, replacing them with army conscripts. However the local hospital was the only place for sick people to go - especially those without the funds to travel to Ashgabat for treatment.
The foreign community will be horrified by the decision.
President Niyazov is well known for his idiosyncratic orders, but it is extraordinary for a head of state to take such a step.
At the same time, the president has also ordered the closure of rural libraries, saying they are pointless because village Turkmens do not read.
Criticism of the president is not allowed in Turkmenistan, but civil rights activists abroad say he has destroyed social services while spending millions of dollars of public money on grand projects, such as gold statues of the leader and a vast marble and gold mosque, one of the biggest in Asia.
Let's see if the lamestream media covers this. Talk about a health care crisis.
I hope we are keeping a distance from this guy.
"The foreign community will be horrified by the decision."
Who's our Ambassador to Turkmenistan? Washington hasn't updated their website since 2000. Your tax dollars at work. *Rolleyes*
http://www.turkmenistanembassy.org/
At least the evil healthcare industry won't make money--we should try this method of strangling those evil capitalists here, right, HRC? ;)
What's he going to do? Institute the 'Barefoot Doctors' fiasco from the Chinese Cultural Revoluttion?
Next he'll declare Swedish the Turkmenistan's official language.
< /Bananas reference>
Let them eat cake!
RE: "I hope we are keeping a distance from this guy."
And how. Niyazov is the loopiest dingbat dictator this side of Kim Jong-Ill. Niyazov has combined the typical propensity of a authoritarian leader towards violence as a means to defeat any oppositiont to his rule with the tendency to exercise his complete power over the lives of the Turkmen in more bizarre, personal ways.
Niyazov has banned, under penalty of "law" (and he controls the courts in Turkmenistan) anything that bothers his personal taste, from gold teeth to certain hairstyles. He renamed the months of the year on the Turkmen calendar for himself and his cronies, even renaming the equivalent of January after his mother! All schoolchildren are forced to read his book "the Book of the Soul"(English translation) his pass to the next grade and the availability of many private and government jobs depends on the applicants knowledge of that propoganda. He has erected dozens of Soviet-style statues to himself throughout the land.
In addition to these little oddities, Niyazov has named himself the President for life and "leader of all Turkmen" (or Turkmenbashi, as all Turkmen mus call him in public). And (of course) he murders and imprisons dissidents at will and has banned religious practices not in accordance with his will and persecuted many Christians for their beliefs in this predominantly Muslim country, though I don't think that he is a Muslim himself.
He's erratic, arbitrary, and completely insane. He goes on the list with Castro, Assad, Jong-Ill, Chavez, Qadaffi (or however you spell that Libya crackpot's name) and Lukashenko for the world's weirdest dictator.
Thanks for the good background info -- that's what I love about FR. Someone needs to take this guy out -- hopefully his own people can pull it off.
There is some even more ridiculous stuff. Teachers have to pass exams about Niyazov and his works to teach in school. According to earlier BBC report, one of questions on the test asked the names of parents of Niyazov's horse. The teacher who didn't know that got fired.
RE: "Thanks for the good background info -- that's what I love about FR."
No prob, man. Exchanging information (and, of course, opinions) is what we're all on here for in the first place.
RE: "According to earlier BBC report, one of questions on the test asked the names of parents of Niyazov's horse. The teacher who didn't know that got fired."
His HORSE's name?! Just when you think that nothing about the guy could possibly surprise you, he calls your bluff. What a whacko.
He used to be a commie, he rules like a king, and that statue of him looks like it's giving the Nazi salute.
He's a veritable cornucopia of tyranny, he is.
It is a pity that this moron has so many natural gas resources under control.
See the photos above
RE: "It is a pity that this moron has so many natural gas resources under control."
Yeah, but there's always something that helps to prop these guys up when they get out of control. Usually it's the support of other, better nations with vested interests in the dictator's natural resources that help to prop them up decade after decade. Usually it's the available oil reserves (examples include the Castro-Chavez and France-Iraq connections) that do it, but I'm sure there are plenty of countries willing to sell the Turkmen citizens down the river for a cheap piece of Turkmenistan's natural gas reserves. Hell, France made war on the Ivory Coast last year just to save their interests in the IC's Cocoa crops. Cocoa!
Russian Gazprom is buying almost all Turkmen gas and reselling to Europe as its own for market price. Although recently Niyazov raised price for gas deliveries and cut this deliveries cause Russians didn’t agreed for new price but it is only temporary problem.
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