A Turkmen blogger and activist Rozegldy Choliyev has been held at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow for a week where he arrived from Istanbul on 2 March.
During this time Cholyev has made several attempts to apply for asylum as envisaged by the Russian law “On refugees”, but the border guards are refusing to accept the document.
Instead, they are threatening to deport him and hand him over to the authorities of Turkmenistan.
Human rights organizations “Memorial”, Human Rights Watch, the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights and International Partnership for Human Rights have prepared an appeal addressed to the First Deputy of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the head of the Border Guard Service under FSB, General Vladimir Kulishov with a request to accept the asylum application from the Turkmen student.
A PDF document is available here.
Copies of the appeal were also addressed to Russia’s Minister of the Interior Vladimir Kolokoltsev and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov.
In the meantime, Choliyev also recorded a video address to the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Rozgeldy Choliyev, a student of Karachayevo-Cherkessk State University, has been posting videos for several months on YouTube criticizing the policy pursued by the Turkmen authorities and President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov.
In December the administration of the University and the Russian Federal Security Service started exerting pressure on the student.
Cholyev has a spouse in Russia, who is doing a course at the same university, and a son, born in May 2020.The post Human rights activists appeal to Russia’s FSB to accept the asylum application from Rozegldy Choliyev first appeared on Chronicles of Turkmenistan.