Ashgabad, Turkmenistan - Back in February, the Armenian Apostolic Church community in Turkmenistan's capital Ashgabad [Ashgabat] lodged an application for state registration. "Although three months have gone by the Justice Ministry has made no response," an Armenian who preferred not to be identified told Forum 18 News Service from Ashgabad on 22 May. "This is the third or fourth application the community has lodged."
No-one at the Registration Department of the Adalat (Fairness or Justice) Ministry was available to explain to Forum 18 why the application by Ashgabad's Armenian community has not been processed. Reached on 22 May, Maysa Sariyeva, who is head of the International Legal Affairs and Registration of Public and Religious Organisations Department, put the phone down as soon as Forum 18 explained who was calling. Subsequent calls went unanswered. Also not answering his telephone on 22 and 23 May was Serdar Valiev, who reports to Sariyeva and has responsibility for registering religious communities.
The Armenian ambassador, Aram Grigoryan, was out of the country on 22 May and no-one at the Embassy was able to comment on the stalled registration application from the Ashgabad Armenian community. Nor was anyone available for 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.
The registration application was lodged exactly one year after the authorities destroyed the last surviving pre-revolutionary Armenian Apostolic church in the country, in the Caspian port town of Turkmenbashi [Türkmenbashy, formerly Krasnovodsk], on the orders of President Saparmurat Niyazov. The authorities had previously refused to hand it back to the local Armenian community for worship.
In the absence of any Armenian Apostolic church in Turkmenistan, Armenian Christians who wished to worship have had to attend Russian Orthodox churches (although the Armenian Church is of the Oriental, not the Orthodox family of Churches). An estimated one sixth of parishioners at Turkmenistan's Russian Orthodox churches are ethnic Armenians.
Meanwhile, other religious communities which have been considering lodging registration applications – including Protestant Christians, the Catholic parish in Ashgabad and the Jehovah's Witnesses – have not yet done so.
Forum 18 has learnt that several Protestant congregations are preparing registration applications, but many are sceptical that the Adalat Ministry will grant it. "All the churches wanting to get registration are made up of ethnic Turkmens and it is not so easy," one Protestant told Forum 18 on 22 May. "The authorities don't like this." The Protestant said that the Protestant congregations the Adalat Ministry was forced to register under international pressure from 2004 – including the Adventists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Greater Grace, Light of the East and the Church of Christ - were all made up of ethnic Russians. "When the persecution was at its worst five or six years ago, ethnic Russian churches suffered, but Turkmen believers suffered the worst."
Even today, the Protestant added, every time officials interrogate any ethnic Turkmen Protestants they tell them they should report everything that happens in their churches to the authorities. "You have to do this if you're registered."
The Jehovah's Witnesses remain cautious. "Nothing has moved on the registration issue," one Jehovah's Witness told Forum 18 on 22 May. "The authorities show no real desire to register us. There's still the very important question: what will registration give us? Others have got registration and it hasn't helped them." Contacts in 2005 with the Adalat Ministry were "not very encouraging", the source added. However, the Jehovah's Witnesses have not ruled out trying to get registration and are still working on preparing the necessary documentation.
Ashgabad's Catholic parish has not yet applied for registration, as it remains unhappy with the terms of the Religion Law and has not been able to meet Adalat Ministry officials to discuss the wording of the statute. "We want to explain to the Ministry the absolute impossibility for the parish to be led by a local citizen," one Catholic familiar with the process told Forum 18 on 23 May. "The authorities have to allow us to build up a community and only with time will there perhaps be a local priest who could lead the community. We want to discuss this point with the Ministry and we hope they'll understand it."
The Catholic said the community is grateful that the Turkmen authorities have allowed two Polish priests to serve the community. Mass is currently held on Vatican diplomatic territory in the Nunciature in Ashgabad. Eventually the Catholics would like to build a church to replace the one destroyed by an earthquake in Soviet times. "But the church is the community, not the building," the Catholic stressed to Forum 18.
Other religious communities registered since May 2004 are the Baha'is, the Hare Krishna community and the New Apostolic Church. Already registered were about a hundred Sunni Muslim mosques. Shia Muslim mosques are unofficially barred from registering. Most of the country's 12 Russian Orthodox churches were finally re-registered in November 2005, though the Dashoguz [Dashhowuz] parish was stripped of registration in 2003 and has been unable to regain it. The parish has also been prevented from completing building work on its church.
Conditions that have been imposed on registered communities are highly restrictive, including bans on meeting for worship, including in private homes, and on printing and importing religious literature, tight financial restrictions and a ban on foreign citizens leading religious communities. Many religious believers in Turkmenistan strongly object to these conditions, describing religious freedom in the country as "fictitious".
Among the problems communities have experienced since registering are that nationally registered communities have had their regional communities' registration denied by officials in police raids; and unwritten extra-legal obstacles have been placed in the way of unregistered communities registering, or registered communities meeting. Registered congregations are also pressured to subscribe to the cult of personality around President Niyazov, and the Ruhnama, his alleged "spiritual writings".
Unregistered religious activity remains illegal.
Although extreme harassment of religious communities has eased off recently, incidents are still occurring. Among recent incidents, two teachers of the Koran in the village of Kongur near the south-eastern town of Mary were summoned by the Ministry of State Security (MSS) secret police early in the year and banned from teaching the Koran, Jumadurdy Ovezov, a correspondent for Radio Free Europe's Turkmen Service told Forum 18 from Mary on 15 May.
Jehovah's Witnesses told Forum 18 that in March, one of their members was detained in Ashgabad while he was on his way to visit a fellow-believer. A police officer hit him on the head several times, forced him to get into a car and took him to the police station. There he was interrogated and had his Bible and other religious books confiscated, but was released later that day. In April, two female Jehovah's Witnesses were coming out of a block of flats in Turkmenbashi when they were detained by police. They were taken by car to the local police station where they were searched and interrogated. "Officers used the usual crude words during the interrogation," one Jehovah's Witness told Forum 18. The two were forced to write statements before being freed.
Protestants have complained that some are still being prevented from travelling abroad for religious purposes, including a group who had visas but were not handed their pre-paid tickets ahead of their planned departure from Ashgabad airport in April. "We don't know why this happened," one Protestant told Forum 18. "The travel company and all the other people at the airport kept putting the blame on each other."
Hare Krishna devotee Cheper Annaniyazova is still in jail, on a seven year jail term believed within Turkmenistan to have been inspired by the MSS secret police to intimidate the Hare Krishna community.