Ashgabat, 24 January 2017 (nCa) — OMCT (World Organization Against Torture) has issued an appeal to the EBRD to refuse a bank loan to CMI Offshore for expansion of its operations in Turkmenistan.
In an open letter published on 20 January 2017, OMCT has attempted to make a weak and dubious case against the grant of EBRD loan to CMI Offshore.
The complete text of the OMCT letter can be found here: http://www.omct.org/monitoring-protection-mechanisms/urgent-interventions/turkmenistan/2017/01/d24186/
The signatories of the letter, mostly from the CIS and Eastern Europe, have tried to build their case on two points: 1. The grant of loan would be harmful for the Caspian ecosystem; and 2. The loan would ultimately help the extractive activity.
CMI Offshore is a marine transportation and logistics company. It has applied for EBRD loan of USD 30 million, which would be used for acquiring new vessels for its operations in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.
CMI Offshore website: http://cmioffshore.com/
It needs a particularly huge bend of imagination to call a few more vessels into the Caspian traffic as any kind of threat. Nevertheless, this OMCT appeal is similar in drift to many other appeals from OMCT – pulling unrelated things into its orbit and making improbable cases for potential torture situations.
Appealing against the extractive activity is tantamount to appealing against the economic wellbeing of the people of Turkmenistan. /// nCa