Turkmenistan regime orders children to give family details, 3 generations

[Bengal_Tiger]

Turkmen First Graders Required To Give Family Information

First graders must provide details about family members that include ethnicity, places of birth and criminal records.

September 07, 2011
School children in Turkmenistan are being required to fill out a form that gives information on immediate family members going back three generations, RFE/RL's Turkmen Service reports.

Children entering the first grade must for the first time provide details about siblings, parents, and grandparents that includes ethnicity, birthdates, places of birth, occupations, residency, and criminal records.

Turkmen authorities have not offered any explanation for the new requirement.

Under former President Saparmurat Niyazov, who died in 2006, anyone applying for a government position had to fill out a similar form about relatives that in some cases went back seven generations.

At that time, the purpose was clear because the government had announced it wanted only ethnic Turkmen working in official posts.

Ashyr Geldiyev, a resident of the capital Ashgabat, told RFE/RL that the new regulation constitutes "government interference into the personal lives of its citizens."

Others say they are concerned the information could be used against them by the security forces in the future.

http://www.rferl.org/content/turkmen.../24321252.html

[Bengal_Tiger]

Kim Il Sung's North Korea.

Gaddafi's Libya.

Stalin's USSR.

None of them did anything as extreme and outrageous as this. It shows how insecure the regime is.

Sometimes if you fear something - even something which is not an actual threat - it may just happen, you may bring it upon yourself.

I hope this regime goes, or the ruthless ways change.

[faye]

didn't they? i thought some of them do and did more extreme things. aren't north koreans starving? i read that even the army are going hungry.

[Bengal_Tiger]

They were brutal regimes worse than the Turkmenistani one, but in this particular issue. The issue of revealing not just personal details about yourself or your parents or siblings but three generations, none of them did anything quite like this.

[faye]

it is only an issue if the government are going to use it for negative purposes. all of my history would already be on government record in autralia, going back generations. perhaps they haven't been recording these things before and are just starting to.

[Bengal_Tiger]

As someone who grew up in the UK, what the Turkmen regime is doing is something Orwellian.

[faye]

what, the uk government wouldn't have records of peoples family histories? i heard the government there is spying on phone and computer use.

[Bengal_Tiger]

London has the most CCTVs in the world for one city, around 1.8 million (or some ridiculous figure unless I'm wrong) in the whole country.

The UK government has people's information there is no denying that, but they do it indirectly and through covert means. That is different to forcing someone to giving personal information and penalizing them if they don't as the Turkmen regime wants to do. It's a complete invasion of privacy from this neo-communist government which under their previous leader had one of the worst personality cults in the world.

We in the UK have the data protection act, no ID cards etc...but covertly intelligence organizations can find out anything about you.

[faye]

so how are they penalising them? i didn't see that in the article. are they going to mass murder them in the mode of stalin?