jimbabwe Gazeta.ru
July 18, 2011
The website “Chronicles of Turkmenistan,” the first to publish information about the explosions at military warehouses in the city of Abadan, was hacked after a statement from human rights activists that there were almost 1400 fatalities as a result of the explosions. This information is according to Yuri Dzhibladze, the President of the Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights, in a statement to Gazeta.ru.
The website (www.chrono-tm.org) is published by the Turkmenistan Initiative for Human Rights, which is located in Vienna and organized by dissident-human rights activists who were forced to emigrate.
“The site was hacked earlier after appeals by President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov to do away with ‘slanderous fabricators about our country,’ but the situation is more disturbing now—the site was not only hacked, but the hackers accessed data about subscribers and authors of commentary,” according to Dzhibladze’s statement.
“This is precisely the new kind of repression in Turkmenistan,” noted Dzhibladze.
He connected the hack with the incidents in Abadan because “Chronicles of Turkmenistan” was the only source providing information about the explosions, on the number of victims and the fact that the authorities were silent about the scale of the tragedy. The site also published rare photos—and video—by local residents who witnessed the event.
“The site is currently not accessible,” added Dzhibladze.
He also added that the addresses of subscribershas already been published on the Internet.
Translation by Crude Accountability