Gulistan Mammetgeldiyeva of Balkanabat in western Turkmenistan has been trying for two years to get her job back at the children’s home, where she worked for two decades. She was dismissed in reprisal for making a complaint about the director of the children’s home to the president, the education department and prosecutor’s office. In order to get rid of the unwelcome employee the director arranged an inspection of her work at 4.30 in the morning, filming her on his telephone as she had a rest. He must have considered this insufficient grounds for dismissal, so when she went on sick leave, he persuaded the children to say that Gulistan beat them. The woman has nine children of her own and has been awarded the honorary title Ene Mahri for raising a large family. The prosecutor’s office, courts, and local authorities are on the director’s side, and have offered Gulistan other work. She cannot return to her old job, as it has been sold to someone else.
Gulistan’s problems at work began in summer 2022 when she asked the Balkanabat education department to find a temporary job for her daughter who had just finished school. Gulistan has nine children and holds the honorary title Ene Mahri awarded to her by presidential decree in 2018 for raising a large family. She had asked the local authorities about improving her living conditions, but had been told bluntly: You’re not entitled to an apartment. You had your children for yourself, not the state. You shouldn’t have had them. They sent Gulistan to the labor exchange. She signed up her daughter, but no one offered the young woman a job.
Gulistan approached the education department, thinking that since they hadn’t given her an apartment, they might help her daughter find work – at least a temporary job, filling in for someone who had gone on holiday or was off sick, if only on half-pay.
The department initially sent the young woman to a kindergarten for 15 days, then advised her mother to ask at her own workplace – the Balkanabat children’s home. At that time the home had a different director. He accepted his employee’s written request, but was himself suddenly dismissed. The deputy director overseeing education matters, Nazarmammet Arazov, took his place. At first the new director agreed to take on the young woman, as two vacancies had arisen at the children’s home, but then said that he would not allow a mother and daughter to work in the same place.
In Turkmenistan, this practice really isn’t a good one. There’s always the temptation to cut corners, relying on a relative to cover it up. Turkmen.news has written several times that it is forbidden by presidential decree for close relatives to hold top jobs, for example, in the security and law-enforcement agencies, but the decree is not enforced very well. In this case though, first of all, the mother and daughter would not have held senior positions. Gulistan has worked for many years as an ordinary nighttime caregiver. If her daughter had been taken on, she would have been given a similar job. And second, close relatives have always worked in the children’s home, and continue to do so. For example, the Halimovs – the mother works as a caregiver and the son used to be a facilities manager but is now a nighttime caregiver. And they’re far from the only case.
After receiving the refusal from Director Arazov, on August 12 Gulistan wrote a complaint to President Serdar Berdimuhamedov with copies to the Education Ministry and Prosecutor General’s Office. She set out in detail all the instances of rule breaking at the children’s home. Here are just a few examples and they’re not simply rule breaking, but actual crimes:
- Around April 2024 one of the caregivers for the seventh and eighth groups (turkmen.news knows her identity) beat children’s home resident Vadim Sh. with an iron rod, and burnt Sanjar K. and Jahangir P. with an iron – one in the face and the other on the hand. The director is aware of what happened, but covered it up as the caregiver is someone close to him. The events were presented as though the children had hurt themselves, although there is a laundry woman at the children’s home who is responsible for the linen and keeps items such as irons strictly in her room;
- Girls are beaten too at the children’s home. Some of them cannot bear it and run away to men’s apartments and get pregnant. This is the case of two sisters, whose identities are known to turkmen.news. One of them was even beaten by the director of the children’s home together with the resident psychologist and in the presence of a police officer! Gulistan recorded her conversation with the girl in which she talked about all this. When she played the recording in the city prosecutor’s office and the city court, there was no reaction from the representatives of justice. The girl was then summoned to the Prosecutor’s Office and made to write an explanation of events that was very different from what Gulistan described in her statement. The case was swept under the carpet, though in similar situations in the past the caregiver, psychologist, and director were quickly removed from their jobs. This girl ran away from the children’s home to a man’s apartment and got pregnant (the man was convicted). The small, fragile girl, still a child, had an abortion. Her sister, also unable to bear beatings, cut her veins and was placed in a psychiatric hospital. In recent years there have been other cases in the children’s home of underage girls getting pregnant.
- Quite a lot of children from the home are sent to the psychiatric hospital for the sole reason that the children’s home is unable to raise children. Not one of the caregivers has training in education, although it’s a requirement of the Law on Education (Art. 32, part 3 and Art. 47, part 2). Director Nazarmammet Arazov is a mining engineer by profession. Before coming to the children’s home, he worked at the local cement plant, but was dismissed from there. At first they didn’t want to take him on at the children’s home, but the then director Shamyrat Rejepov, an ex-National Security Ministry employee, had a call from his former colleagues, and Arazov was taken on first as deputy director for education. He then became the director, without giving up his position as deputy, and now has a third job as a schoolteacher at the children’s home. So Arazov is receiving three salaries at once.
- Some employees who are close to the director can fail to turn up for work for weeks, but still receive their salary regularly. Others can send complete strangers in their place, but the documentation shows that they supposedly were at work. Some workers can go abroad to work for long periods, for example to Turkey or Poland, leaving their relatives in their old jobs. One employee was deported from Turkey and returned to her job at the children’s home. According to existing procedures, vacancies should be passed to the labor exchange, which will send candidates, but this isn’t followed at the children’s home. Jobs are bought and sold.
- The management of the children’s home keeps no account at all of humanitarian aid received from state organizations or private entrepreneurs.
In a genuinely law-governed state any one of the aforementioned points would be cause for a thorough inspection by an independent inspector, while the manager would be suspended from duties for the duration of the inspection. But there was no reaction from Ashgabat to her complaint.
But on the evening of September 2 Gulistan saw children’s home director Nazarmammet Arazov going to the city prosecutor’s office for some reason, and the very next day a strange incident occurred at work that seemed very much like a set-up.
At 4.30 in the morning three men, led by director Arazov, went up to the third floor of the children’s home and walked straight into the staff room. It was the small hours, so Gulistan had decided to lie down for a while. The door to the room wasn’t locked, which can be seen on the security camera footage. Arazov turned on the light, saw that Gulistan was lying down, and pointedly asked the employee who had jumped up from the divan if it was OK to sleep, and then left. He filmed everything on his cell phone and later took the footage to the prosecutor’s office.
A few days later the director brought together several employees and delivered Gulistan Mammetgeldiyeva a reprimand. He secretly recorded the whole conversation, hiding the telephone behind a plant pot (turkmen.news has a copy of the recording). His conclusions were: the employee did not have the right to be in the staff room and sleep there. Gulistan replied that, first, there was no such ban and workers had the right to rest. And second, she had not been asleep, but lying down in the dead of night, not long before dawn, when all the children under her care were fast asleep. Third, Arazov had never conducted such inspections in all his years of work. If a spot check of the whole children’s home was being carried out (the director himself had said this), then why did he go straight to her group, missing out the first two floors? Why did he not stand in front of her, if she was supposedly asleep, and record how long she slept? Gulistan said that she considered this deliberate persecution of her after the statement she had written about the director.
But the punishment remained unchanged. The next day, September 6, Gulistan went on long-term sick leave, and on the 14th was summoned to the prosecutor’s office about the complaint she had written to the president in August. Investigating officer Gulnazar Sopyyev asked for a statement from Gulistan explaining to whom she had written and why. But she was not told anything about her complaint and the response to it. At the end of the conversation Sopyyev said, as though in passing, that material was being gathered against her – Gulistan had allegedly beaten five children with an iron rod!
Why didn’t the director say anything about the beatings when he delivered a reprimand for having a rest in the middle of the night? And where is the evidence of these alleged beatings, for example, footage from the security cameras that record every step in the children’s home? Where is the record in the shift handover log? When caregiver Guljan Mammetberdiyeva took over in the morning, why didn’t she make a note of the beatings following the in-house procedure? Why was nurse Bayramsoltan Meretgylyjeva not present at the shift handover (she is legally obliged to be present but is never there)? Looking ahead, we can say that later when the director needed nurses’ signatures for the court that the beating had allegedly occurred, he asked other medics for this, from other groups, though they did not take over the group on that day or examine the children. They signed the papers under pressure from the director. This is what one of the medics actually said later at the prosecutor’s office and added they should be careful who they listened to, as children can be made to believe anything, they can be blackmailed…
Of course, the only evidence of the beatings was the bogus document of the children’s home medics and the testimony of the children themselves. But on September 26 the prosecutor’s office sent a suggestion to the education department that they remove Gulistan Mammetgeldiyeva from her post.
Gulistan found out about this on October 13, when she returned from her long-term sick leave. She was not allowed onto the nightshift. On the instructions of the director the daytime caregiver refused to pass the group into her charge. Nazarmammet Arazov soon popped up, and not alone but accompanied by police. He demanded to see the sick note, saying that the worker might have some infectious illness and he was supposedly concerned about the children’s health. Though he was well aware of Gulistan’s diagnosis and had even sent an enquiry about it to the health department. Where were his concern, where he himself and his cell phone were, when the girls ran away from the children’s home and got pregnant? Why didn’t a single caregiver receive even a reprimand for this and similar things?
Gulistan did not have her sick note with her, as usually none of the managers are at work in the evening. But the lack of the sick note was just an excuse. Director Arazov needed a reason not to let her enter the building and talk to the children. In her absence he had put pressure on five children and recorded their “testimony” on his phone and photographed the alleged marks from the beatings inflicted by the nighttime caregiver. The director said that he had a suggestion from the prosecutor’s office about dismissing her from her job. They escorted Gulistan from the premises without showing her the paper.
The next day, October 14, the head of the personnel department and ex officio chair of the trade union committee, Mahri Orazova, called a meeting at which she announced that Gulistan Mammetgeldiyeva had been dismissed from work at the demand of “a body or official with powers to do this” (Art. 38, part 9 of the Labor Code). On October 17, at the suggestion of the prosecutor’s office, children’s home director Nazarmammet Arazov signed an order dismissing Gulistan “for the commission of an immoral offense by an employee performing caregiving functions, which is incompatible with the continuation of this work” (Art. 43, part 4 of the Labor Code). They should have given Gulistan her labor record book and a copy of the order terminating her labor contract, but didn’t do so.
Gulistan decided not to take this lying down. City court judge Dayanch Saparov – the same judge that fined a drunk driver for killing someone in an accident but sent two doctors to prison – did not even hear Gulistan’s testimony. When the defense lawyer at the trial asked if anyone had seen his defendant beating the children, the judge suddenly announced a break before the children’s home director could reply. Moreover, for some reason the key witness who took over responsibility for the children from Gulistan had not appeared in court that day. She could have said if she had seen traces of the beatings or if anyone had complained about the nighttime caregiver. Three caregivers came in her place who had nothing to do with that group of children. They literally mumbled that they had seen something or other, some kind of traces…
The court refused to reinstate Gulistan in her job or to pay compensation for her enforced absence. After the sitting Gulistan asked judge Dayanch Saparov if he wanted to see children who really had been beaten and showed him numerous photographs and video recordings. The judge said the pictures were photoshopped, while the collegium of judges of the Balkanabat regional court, to whom Gulistan had sent an appeal, devoted precisely 15 minutes to her before sending her back to the prosecutor’s office.
Gulistan has been trying to get justice for the last two years. Once she went with all nine children to Ashgabat directly to the presidential palace. They were quickly taken out of the city. Law-enforcement officers from Balkanabat soon arrived, bundled them all in a car and took them back to Balkanabat, claiming they would solve her problem there. Gulistan made several trips to the capital to visit Parliament, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Court and the Ombudsman’s office during their reception hours. Everywhere she went she showed discs with photos of children who really had been beaten and asked for just one thing – to be shown on what basis the Balkanabat city prosecutor’s office had issued a suggestion about her dismissal. But none of the institutions heard her out or reacted to the evidence of crimes and rule- breaking in the children’s home.
This is how a mother’s request to find work for one of her many children turned into her own illegal dismissal, the revelation of many infringements at work, and total disinterest from the local law-enforcement agencies, judicial bodies, and top officials in Ashgabat. It is extremely sad that children left without the love and care of parents, and there are some 300 in the children’s home, are growing up in an atmosphere of lies, abuse of power, and impunity. Before their very eyes they see plotting, collusion, and crimes, some of them committed against themselves. What will they be like when they grow up? What baggage will they carry into adult life?
Instead of tackling these problems they offer Gulistan other work, for example, in a construction department in the local authorities or at an asphalt and concrete plant, or in private firms. But not only does Gulistan love children and her work, to which she has devoted 20 years of her life and for which she received a certificate of merit from the Balkan region trade union in 2017, she also wants to defend her honor. Gulistan insists that she did not beat the children and was fired illegally.
After every letter to Ashgabat, after every threat to appeal to the president via the Internet, Gulistan faces constant summonses to the police, where serious people bluntly advise her to think about the future of her own children. And their threats are already coming true. In May this year, Gulistan’s 15-year-old son was picked up on the street by criminal investigation officers, and his mother was told later that he had supposedly raped a girl. For three months Gulistan and her son were dragged to the prosecutor’s office, the police station and back again, went through a host of tests, but no evidence was found of the teen’s involvement in the crime. It emerged later that the girl has a learning difficulty and does not go to school as she is taught at home
But Gulistan is continuing to fight for her rights. She wants justice and thinks that only President Serdar Berdimuhamedov can help her, though he is carefully protected from that type of appeal by numerous officials.
Lest anyone should have the impression that turkmen.news is protecting yet another mother of many children who keeps demanding an apartment or a job from the state for herself and her children, we want to say that Gulistan is not in this category at all. She is proactive and takes part in the country’s public life. In 2022, Balkanabat’s main department for sport and youth affairs together with the regional branch of Turkmenistan’s Council of Youth Organization held a sports competition for young families under the slogan “Healthy Family – Healthy Generation”. The Bagtyyar team, which consisted of the Mammetgeldiyev family, competed and won, for which the children and their mother were awarded an honorary certificate and were shown on TV.
From turkmen.news:
We are aware of the danger for Gulistan Mammetgeldiyeva in publishing this story. Since she is in the country she is also aware of the risks to herself and her children. Turkmenistan’s special services have shown many times what happens to those who have failed to obtain justice in their own country and look for help beyond its borders. The law-enforcement bodies, courts, and officials in Ashgabat have simply left her with no other choice.
After publication Gulistan will probably be deprived of contact with the outside world, and they will try to “punish” her; for example, set her up, find someone to whom she supposedly owes money, whom she supposedly insulted, or even beat. The Turkmen special services are well known for all these methods. Nevertheless, we will find out whatever happens to her in future. Only the special services will bear responsibility for this – their task is to prevent at any cost this kind of information leaking beyond the country’s borders.
Source: Turkmen.news
