TURKMENISTAN: Saparmurat Niyazov styles himself as the Father of All Turkmens but, as Dan McLaughlin reports from Moscow, he is in fact a ruthless dictator
In Turkmenistan, a swathe of central Asian desert and outpost of the legendary Silk Road, 2003 has just been renamed. It will now be known as Gurbansoltan, after the woman described by Turkmen media as "the mother of the First and Eternal President of Turkmenistan".
Her loving son, Saparmurat, has already ordained that streets, cinemas, a perfume and the month that used to April be named after her.
Opposite the presidential palace in the centre of the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, stands a monument to the 1948 earthquake which killed Gurbansoltan and about 100,000 others. The monument shows a woman, falling, holding aloft a golden baby.
The 5 million or so who live in Turkmenistan know full well that this represents Mr Niyazov: the same man whose 40 ft golden effigy gazes over Ashgabat, turning all the while so as to constantly face the sun; the man who has declared himself Turkmenbashi - "Father of All the Turkmens" - and whose puppet parliament has named him president for life.
Thousands of miles away in northern Sweden, a former Turkmen government minister has gone on hunger strike to protest against a human rights situation in his homeland which he said "was worse than that in Iraq or North Korea".
The exiled Sapar Yklymov is one of three men named by the 62- year-old Mr Niyazov as the ringleaders of an alleged attempt on his life last November. Mr Niyazov's motorcade was riddled with bullets but the president escaped unharmed. He immediately blamed prominent opposition activists for the incident.
One of Mr Yklymov's alleged accomplices, Boris Shikhmuradov, was sentenced in Ashgabat before Christmas after a hearing which democracy watchdog, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, called reminiscent of "the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s Soviet Union."
The transcript of the trial quotes a member of the public standing up and demanding the accused be "put to agonising death". But Mr Niyazov, presiding over the trial, showed mercy: Mr Shikhmuradov was declared a "traitor to the fatherland" and sentenced to life imprisonment "with no acts of amnesty or mercy to be applied".
Mr Yklymov and a third alleged conspirator received the same verdict in absentia.
Human rights groups have said Turkmen trials are a sham and that torture is used to elicit confessions. On New Year's Eve, the US State Department said it had "credible reports of torture and abuse of suspects" in Turkmenistan.
Thirty-two people were eventually accused of playing a part in the assassination attempt. Announcing their trial, Mr Niyazov also announced their sentences, outlining how many would go to jail and how many would be exiled to a remote desert region.
Last week the leaders of Russia's two main liberal parties issued a joint statement denouncing "the mass political persecution aimed at wiping out the political opponents of Saparmurat Niyazov and all those who disagree with the regime of personal power he has established".
In its recent report on the country, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says Mr Niyazov should not be regarded merely as a "bizarre eccentric", saying that Turkmenistan has become a drugs transit state and citing reports of Taliban fighters from neighbouring Afghanistan finding refuge on its territory.
Amid all the international ire, the state-controlled Turkmenistan press reported great things for the economy last week.
One newspaper said gross domestic product and industrial production increased by more than 20 per cent year-on-year in 2002, with oil extraction up 12 per cent.
Mineral wealth is crucial to Mr Niyazov. His country sits on the world's third largest reserves of natural gas and is banking for future prosperity on a freshly signed $5 billion plan for a pipeline to transport it across Afghanistan to huge potential markets in Pakistan and later, India.
However little of the current or future wealth is likely to trickle down to Turkmenistan's people, critics insist.
They say that much of it goes into the foreign bank accounts of Mr Niyazov's inner circle or on more extravagant building projects to celebrate the continuation of his 28-year rule.
In the meantime, it is still unclear whether the alleged assassination attempt was an official stunt or a sign that discontent may be reaching boiling point.