AKIPRESS.COM - On the one year anniversary of the imprisonment of Saparmamed Nepeskuliyev, a contributor to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Turkmen Service and other independent news outlets, RFE/RL joined a chorus of international organizations calling for his freedom.

Little is known about the whereabouts and well-being of Nepeskuliyev, who boldly produced video reports for RFE/RL's Turkmen Service documenting decrepit infrastructure, financial hardship, economic inequality, and depressed schools in the country's western region. He disappeared on July 7, 2015 in Turkmenistan's Caspian Sea resort city of Avaza, and was held incommunicado before a Turkmen court, in a closed session on August 31, 2015, sentenced him to three years in prison on narcotics charges that rights groups believe were fabricated in retaliation for his reporting.

RFE/RL President Thomas Kent called Nepeskuliyev's imprisonment "outrageous and thoroughly inhumane," and said: "Authorities obviously believe they can act with impunity to silence, without any due process whatsoever, a journalist who is reporting honestly about the society he lives in."

U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Daniel Baer expressed concern about Nepeskuliyev's ongoing detention in a tweet, calling on Turkmenistan to "respect shared OSCE MediaFreedom commitments."

U.S. Congressman Adam B. Schiff, who co-chairs the House Freedom of the Press Caucus, is leading a congressional appeal to Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov calling for Nepeskuliyev's immediate release.

In late June, RFE/RL and twelve other media and human rights organizations signed a joint letter to President Berdymuhamedov calling for "an end to [Nepeskuliyev's] wrongful imprisonment" and urging his immediate release. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found Nepeskuliyev's detention "arbitrary" and lacking due process in December 2015.

Because of prohibitive political conditions, RFE/RL's Turkmen Service has no presence inside Turkmenistan, but it works through a local network of contributors to provide the country's only Turkmen-language alternative to state-controlled media. In the year prior to Nepeskuliyev's arrest, six of the Turkmen Service's nine correspondents were forced to resign from their jobs in response to government pressure.