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Experts cite repressiveness of Turkmenistan, worsening rights in Kazakhstan; urge conditional engagement
Summary
Panelists at the Tom Lantos briefing presented Freedom House rankings (Kazakhstan 23/100; Turkmenistan 1/100), documented enforced disappearances and environmental harms, and recommended maintaining sanctions and tying cooperation to public, measurable human-rights benchmarks.
Kate Waters, introduced by the staff director as affiliated with Crude Accountability, summarized country-by-country human-rights conditions and urged the U.S. to sustain pressure while supporting civil society. "Turkmenistan is by far the most repressive government in Central Asia on par with North Korea," Waters said, and she cited a documentation campaign that has confirmed at least 162 cases of enforced disappearance there.
Waters noted Kazakhstan's Freedom House 2025 score (23 out of 100) and described environmental threats at the Kokshinde oil field, calling attention to alleged contamination of local aquifers and exceedances of permissible concentrations. She recommended maintaining sanctions, supporting civil society across the five Central Asian countries, and insisting that improvements in rights precede or accompany further openings in bilateral relationships and investment.
Panelists said conditioning trade and security cooperation on publicly measurable human-rights benchmarks would help prevent U.S. engagement from simply legitimizing repression. They urged high-level U.S. officials to raise these issues publicly and regularly, not only behind closed doors.
