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

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Tuesday 23 May 2006
TURKMENISTAN: DEMOLITION OF PLACES OF WORSHIP CONTINUES

In large-scale demolition projects in Turkmenistan, those expelled from
their home get no compensation and often nowhere to live. Amongst the
buildings demolished are religious communities’ places of worship. The
last surviving pre-revolutionary Armenian Apostolic church and a
family-owned Sunni mosque in the eastern port of Turkmenbashi have been
destroyed, Forum 18 News Service has been told. Exiled human rights
activist Vyacheslav Mamedov told Forum 18 that the mosque “was used on
Muslim festivals and for family events like weddings, funerals and sadakas
[commemorations of the dead].” The former Armenian church “was a very
beautiful building,” Mamedov recalled. He told Forum 18 that there is
widespread anger and fear over the destruction of the town’s historic
centre. Amongst places of worship in Turkmenistan, known to Forum 18 to
have been demolished in the past, are mosques, an Adventist church, and a
Hare Krishna temple.

TURKMENISTAN: DEMOLITION OF PLACES OF WORSHIP CONTINUES

By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service <;

The demolition of historic 19th century buildings in the central part of
the Caspian port town of Turkmenbashi [Türkmenbashy, formerly
Krasnovodsk], including the last surviving pre-revolutionary Armenian
Apostolic Church in Turkmenistan, has been completed this month on the
orders of President Saparmurat Niyazov. The authorities completed
demolition of the church in February 2005, having previously refused to
hand it back to the local Armenian community for worship.

The Armenian embassy in the capital Ashgabad [Ashgabat] confirmed to Forum
18 News Service that it had been informed about the destruction of the
historic church in Turkmenbashi, but the ambassador Aram Grigoryan was out
of the country on 22 May and unable to comment on the destruction. No-one
was available for immediate comment at the Armenian Foreign Ministry in
Yerevan on 22 May, or at the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church
in Echmiadzin near the Armenian capital.

Also demolished amid the wholesale destruction of the century-old heart of
Turkmenbashi, which began in 2004, was a family-owned Sunni Muslim mosque.
Human rights activist Vyacheslav Mamedov told Forum 18 on 22 May that the
local Etrekov family started building the mosque on their own land, near
the Turkmenbashi Hotel, in 1993 and began using it for prayers in 2001 as
it neared completion. “Until its demolition in July 2005, it was used on
Muslim festivals and for family events like weddings, funerals and sadakas
[commemorations of the dead],” Mamedov told Forum 18. He himself left
Turkmenbashi in 2004, as the campaign was beginning, and is now a refugee
in western Europe.

The former Armenian church, built a century ago and consecrated by the
then Catholicos (head of the Armenian Apostolic Church) in 1904, was
confiscated by the Soviet authorities and turned into a warehouse. In
1993, Mamedov – as a local journalist and human rights activist – had
supported attempts by the local Armenian community to form a cultural and
religious centre in the town and regain possession of the church. He said
the authorities consistently refused to register the community or allow it
to function. “It was a very beautiful building,” Mamedov recalls. “When we
were trying to get it back in 1993, I remember looking inside and it was
just used as a store for the local administration’s old furniture and car
parts.”

Mamedov – who has obtained a copy of a secret local administration order
from November 2005 detailing which streets are to be destroyed – said
there is widespread anger and fear in Turkmenbashi over the destruction of
the town’s historic centre, reactions confirmed by the exile Turkmenistan
Helsinki Foundation. But Mamedov said the town’s main Sunni Muslim mosque
and the Russian Orthodox church are located close together in the newer
parts of the town and are not in immediate danger of demolition.

In massive construction redevelopments in Ashgabad and elsewhere in
Turkmenistan, those expelled from their homes ahead of demolition get no
compensation and often nowhere else to live. Among places of worship
bulldozed in Ashgabad was the Seventh-day Adventist church, built in the
1990s and which was destroyed in 1999 at only one week’s notice. The
authorities claimed the land was needed for a road-widening programme, but
for some years the site was derelict. The Adventists have never been given
any compensation and are not allowed to build a new church to replace the
one destroyed. Shortly before Ashgabad’s Adventist Church was demolished,
in August 1999 a Hare Krishna temple outside the eastern town of Mary was
demolished.

A mosque was among buildings in an entire settlement, Darvasa in the
central Kara-Kum desert, which was destroyed in autumn 2004 after
President Niyazov flew over in a helicopter and regarded the settlement as
unattractive. Darvasa’s mainly ethnic Uzbek residents were given just two
hours to leave. One visitor to the settlement before its destruction told
Forum 18 that the mosque had only just been completed when it was
destroyed.

Other mosques in Turkmenistan have also been destroyed, apparently in some
cases for failure to honour the President Niyazov’s books of alleged
“spiritual writings” (see F18News 4 January 2005
< e_id=481> and 19 November 2003
< e_id=187>). (END)

For a personal commentary by a Protestant within Turkmenistan, on the
fiction – despite government claims – of religious freedom in the country,
and how religious communities and the international community should
respond to this, see < 728>

For more background, see Forum 18’s Turkmenistan religious freedom survey
at < 672>

A printer-friendly map of Turkmenistan is available at
< s/atlas/index.html?Parent=asia&Rootmap=turkme& gt;
(END)

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