Turkmenistan: – President thinks corona bluffs

It is almost two years since the first case of corona was discovered in Wuhan in December 2019. Since then, the whole world has been affected by the deadly virus, which has so far killed over 4.7 million lives, according to figures from John Hopkins University.

Well, almost the whole world.

One country that still claims not to have experienced a single case of the coronavirus is Turkmenistan. At least according to President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov. He has been acting president in the country since 2006, when he only took over temporarily after the death of former President Saparmurad Nijazov. Berdimuhamedov was subsequently elected as Turkmenistan’s second president in 2007.

The former Soviet republic, with almost six million inhabitants, is one of five countries that claim not to have discovered a single case of corona. The others are three isolated islands in the Pacific and North Korea, according to research by Johns Hopkins University and the World Health Organization.

Claiming his innocence

The incumbent president should have previously denied all charges on cases of covid-19. According to CNN In a speech to the UN on Tuesday 21 September, he said that the response to the pandemic should not be “politicized”, which means contributing to seemingly apolitical issues gaining political character or content.

Although the country claims its innocence, independent journalists now believe that this does not correspond to reality at all. They say that the country is fighting a third wave and that the hospitals are struggling to keep the death toll down.

Furthermore, they fear that the development will go in the wrong direction, precisely because the president refuses to admit infection figures so as not to lose face, CNN writes on Sunday.

One of them is Ruslan Myatiev, editor of the Dutch independent news organization Turkmen News, who firmly believes that the authorities are lying.

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“We consider it a crime. The Turkmen authorities are directly responsible for hundreds of deaths due to the virus. We have managed to identify 55 people who died of covid, something approx. a dozen more relatives have confirmed in a personal conversation, but for their own safety they refuse to publish information about the relatives’ death “, it says in an article on the website.

Describes overcrowded hospitals

In a 44-page report published by Myatiev, they have created a timeline of every single corona – related incident in the country from January 30, 2020, until May 2021.

In addition, they have published an overview of all deaths in the country, as a result of the pandemic. A total of 55 people, 47 people in 2020 and 8 people in 2021.

Last week wrote the BBC about an anonymous man in the country who received a positive response to the corona test. Although the clinic where he did the test called to confirm the result, the man never received any public evidence from the authorities.