Schwarzenegger enlisted to mock leader’s macho video
Turkmenistan’s authoritarian leader sought to burnish his strongman credentials this week by appearing in a propaganda video that portrays him as a sharpshooting, knife-wielding, military man of action. He’s a former dentist. Guess what happened next.
In the video broadcast on state media, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov wears commando gear and dark sunglasses and sports a steely, determined look. He is seen expertly firing a rifle, throwing knives and calling in an air strike to blow things up. Admiring men in fatigues applaud nearby.
The point of the exercise, according to Berdymukhammedov’s government, which released a statement after the video was broadcast, was to demonstrate the president’s ‘‘high level of military training’’ and ‘‘mastery of target shooting’’.
However, an exiled opposition publication saw it as an opportunity for mockery, and produced an edited version that channels the 1985 movie Commando, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, who plays a retired special forces commander. The theme tune to the movie plays in the parody version.
Like Russian President Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian leaders from North Korea to the Philippines, Berdymukhammedov appears to enjoy showmanship. Putin has released images and video of himself assisting in polar bear research, hunting Siberian tigers and riding horses – sometimes bare-chested – across remote Russian tundra.
Berdymukhammedov is by all accounts a talented man. As well as being president of the gas-rich Central Asian nation since 2006, he DJs, plays guitar and sings emotionally charged ballads, and is pretty good at basketball, too.
Still, Turkmenistan has one of the world’s most repressive governments, according to United States-based research and advocacy group Human Rights Watch. News media have dubbed Berdymukhammedov the ‘‘Tyrant of Turkmenistan’’.
‘‘Berdymukhammedov, his relatives and their associates control all aspects of public life. The government thoroughly denies freedoms of association, expression and religion, and the country is closed to independent scrutiny,’’ Human Rights Watch says.
‘‘The fate of dozens of people imprisoned during waves of arrests in the late 1990s and early 2000s remains unknown even to their relatives, and several deaths of victims of enforced disappearance have been reported.’’