Dibs

Turkmenistan is the source of our book-news today, as its president Saparmurat Niyazov inaugurates a massive building shaped like an open book, dedicated to democracy in the media. It’s a very attractive building in that old Iron Curtain style: pale and huge, with a door at the top of steps, above which a massive concrete open book is backed by the pale desert sky. It’s ironic because there is no privately owned media in the Central Asian nation, and all four state TV channels broadcast only poems and statements written by Niyazov. “The House of Free Creativity aims to create a comfortable environment for journalists, the government says,” according to the BBC. “But a building devoted to press freedom is an irony in a country where journalism is state-controlled. Turkmenistan has no private or foreign media, and the internet is inaccessible for most people.” Niyazov’s other recent extravagant projects include the building of an ice palace and a ski resort in a desert and the planting of a cypress forest designed to change the country’s climate. “The new building, which glitters in the dark, features high-tech libraries and archives, fountains and state-of-the-art air conditioning and heating systems … to create a comfortable environment for the journalists who work for the state controlled press.” Last month in Turkmenistan, a dissident reporter died in a high-security prison. According to the BBC, 58-year-old Ogulsapar Muradova had been jailed for “anti-state activities.” Her official cause of death was natural causes, “but eyewitnesses said her body bore clear marks of torture.” Read and write on, you poor Turkmenistanites. Someday maybe you will be free.