FORUM 18 NEWS SERVICE, Oslo, Norway
The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one’s belief or religion
The right to join together and express one’s belief
===============================================Monday 9 August 2004
TURKMENISTAN: WHY REGISTER WHEN PERSECUTION CONTINUES?
Despite gaining state registration under the much-trumpeted
“liberalisation” of the religion law, secret police raids and
threats against a Baptist congregation in Turkmenistan have not stopped,
Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Last Wednesday (4 August), NSM secret
police raided a meeting for prayer and bible study, arrested participants
for three hours, confiscated bibles and hymn books, and threatened a
“big problem” if meetings continued. Another state registered
community, the Hare Krsihnas, have been told by state officials that they
do not know whether the community should be allowed to operate. A wide
range of religious communities have either been unsuccessful with
registration applications, or do not want to apply because of the harsh
controls they would be subjected to. Asked about making a registration
application, one Jehovah’s Witness said to Forum 18 “Why should we
when persecution continues?”
TURKMENISTAN: WHY REGISTER WHEN PERSECUTION CONTINUES?
By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service
State registration as a religious community has not halted secret police
raids on and threats against a Baptist congregation. On the evening of 4
August, six National Security Ministry (NSM) secret police officers raided
a private flat in the town of Abadan (formerly Bezmein), near the capital
Ashgabad, where a small group of Baptists were meeting to pray and read the
Bible, reliable Protestant sources have told Forum 18 News Service. After
holding them for three hours and confiscating their Bibles and hymnbooks,
the secret police threatened that any attempt to meet again in Abadan would
cause a “big problem” for Pastor Vasili Korobov and other local
Baptists.
The meeting, led by Pastor Korobov from Ashgabad, had only just begun at 9
pm when six NSM secret policemen raided the apartment owned by Irina
Nazarova. The Baptists reported that they were initially “very
aggressive”, ordering Pastor Korobov and the group not to undertake
any religious activities in the town. Pastor Korobov pointed out that the
Baptists have received state registration from the Justice Ministry
(certificate number 0012, date of registration 25 June 2004), and told the
secret police that he could show them the registration documents the
following day. However, contradicting public official statements, secret
police officers Saparov and Ishanov (first names unknown) both said that,
even if religious communities have registration, they still need 500
members to be able to meet.
The secret police officers held the whole group until just after midnight
and confiscated all Bibles and hymnbooks. The Baptists reported that Pastor
Korobov told one secret police officer that he should not confiscate the
books, to no effect.
Abadan is a particular religious freedom blackspot, with local police in
June repeatedly warning Svetlana Gurkina, a member of a different Baptist
church in the town, that she would be imprisoned and her flat confiscated
if she continued to host religious meetings (see F18News 1 July 2004
). She was also told by
the town’s deputy police chief that “in Turkmenistan only two faiths
are allowed, Islam and Orthodoxy, while the rest are banned.” A group
of non-denominational Christians were fined there in June 2003, chief mufti
Kakageldy Vepaev taking part in at least four secret police raids (see
F18News 3 June and 6 June
2003 ).
Under the much-trumpeted “liberalisation” of the harsh law on
religion earlier this year, which reduced the theoretical threshold for
religious communities to gain registration from 500 adult citizens to five,
only the Baptists, Hare Krishna community and Adventists have been able to
gain registration (see F18News 3 June 2004
). Registration fees are
high by Turkmen standards: the Hare Krishna community had to pay 2,500,000
manats (roughly 100 US dollars [679 Norwegian Kroner, or 82 Euros] at the
black market exchange rate). Average salaries are roughly 1/3rd of this
amount. Contrary to international human rights agreements, unregistered
religious activity remains illegal and punishable by fines.
A wide range of religious communities would like state registration, in
order to try to function legally in the eyes of the government –
including the Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Armenian
Apostolic Church, Pentecostals, New Apostolic Church and Shia Muslims. But
all have either been unsuccessful with their registration applications, or
have declined to apply as they are unhappy with the harsh controls they
would be subjected to. (See F18News 28 June
and 13 May 2004
=320).
A Jehovah’s Witness elder from Ashgabad, asked by Forum 18 on 2 August
about his community applying for registration, said “Why should we
when persecution continues? They asked for lists of all our members –
they’ll just summon them one by one. Why should we register and go through
all this persecution? We’re not criminals.” He said that Jehovah’s
Witness congregations cannot meet, as “the police have warned those
who were fined earlier for hosting meetings not to allow more than three
believers to meet together.”
Although fines for religious activity seem to have eased in recent months,
life for religious communities is still difficult. “Our church is in a
desperate situation,” one Protestant pastor who preferred not to be
named told Forum 18 from the Caspian port of Turkmenbashi
[Türkmenbashy] (formerly Krasnovodsk) on 14 July. “The
authorities have more than once and very brutally resisted our earnest
desire to meet and preach the Gospel among the population. Our brothers and
sisters have repeatedly been interrogated and threatened by the secret
police, while many brothers and sisters have been kicked out of their jobs
for their faith.”
Other religious communities, as well as the Baptists, who have been able to
gain registration have also suffered difficulties. One Hare Krishna told
Forum 18 that although the community now has state registration, state
officials do not know whether the community should be allowed to operate.
The Hare Krishna’s have not yet been able to hold open, public religious
meetings, and are still being forced to meet privately in homes.
There also seems to be no change in the government’s strongly expressed
hostility to any form of religious freedom. The exiled Turkmenistan
Helsinki Initiative reported on 5 August that, last week, officials of the
government’s Gengeshi (Council) for Religious Affairs visited the
administrations in all the velayats (regions) of the country to meet
state-approved religious activists, heads of ideological organisations, and
elders to warn them of the threat to Islam posed by officially registered
“non-traditional” religious movements. In particular, Gangeshi
officials singled out the Jehovah’s Witnesses, even though they do not have
official registration.
According to a participant at the meeting held in the hyakimlik (town
administration) of the Mary velayat, in eastern Turkmenistan,
Turkmenistan’s central Gengeshi deputy chairman, Murad Karriyev from the
capital Ashgabad, said that representatives of other religions are far more
active in public activities than followers of Islam. Karriyev complained of
what he described as the greed of many imams, citing the case of an unnamed
prominent imam who was visited one night by a young man who had just stolen
a girl, asking the imam to conduct a religious wedding ceremony for them.
The imam tried to refuse stating that it was late, but when the young man
offered him money, the imam allegedly agreed. According to Karriyev, imams
do not regard working with the people as a priority, unlike the leaders of
the Jehovah’s Witness, Baha’i and Adventist communities who regard
“ideological and agitational activities” among the people as very
important.
In Karriyev’s emphatically expressed view, the worst aspect of this is that
many Muslims are being converted to other religions, and become such devout
followers of the religions they convert to that little can alter their
views. In one case cited at the meeting, a previously devout Muslim became
a Jehovah’s Witness and is now successfully recruiting Muslims. Officials
complained at the meeting that the ability of leaders of non-traditional
religions to convince others is hard to surpass; they successfully did that
“from the underground”. With official registration, they will now
be even more active, which therefore means more successful. Karriyev called
on imams to be more active, and to be aware of other religions which will
operate legally with state registration.
Meanwhile, intermittent protests have continued against the enforced
imposition of President Saparmurat Niyazov’s “spiritual
writings”, the Ruhnama (Book of the Soul), on mosques. Vitali
Ponomarev of the Moscow-based Memorial human rights group reported on 14
July that anonymous anti-government leaflets circulating in Ashgabad in
early July contained calls for Muslims not to go to mosques where the
Ruhnama is cited together with the Koran. Both imams and Russian Orthodox
priests are compelled to make approving references to this book in sermons,
and a mosque has been closed down by the NSM secret police for not putting
the Ruhnama on the same reading stand as the Koran (see F18News 19 November
2003 ).
For more background, see Forum 18’s Turkmenistan religious freedom survey
at
A printer-friendly map of Turkmenistan is available at
tml?Parent=asia&Rootmap=turkme
(END)
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