A lawyer serving a four year sentence – apparently imposed
in retaliation for helping her fellow Jehovah's Witnesses – was freed early
from the women's labour camp in Tashauz
in the north of the country on 20 September, the Jehovah's Witness centre in
the Russian city of St Petersburg told Forum 18 News Service. Oguljan Jumanazarova, who is 41,
began a four year sentence in July 2001 and had therefore not been due for
release until July 2005. "She was taken from the camp and placed on the
train, apparently to make sure she would not talk to anyone on the way home.
Nothing more is known about the terms of her release – only that she has been
freed," a Jehovah's Witness spokesman told Forum 18. "She is said to
be in good spirits."
Jumanazarova, who became a Jehovah's Witness in 1999,
worked for a public attorneys' association in the town of Seydi
close to Turkmenistan's north-eastern border with Uzbekistan. She began to face
pressure after helping fellow-believers with their legal problems. In 1999, the
authorities tried to confine her in a psychiatric hospital, which she managed
to avoid by temporarily fleeing from the town. She was arrested in July 2001,
tried and sentenced. The Jehovah's Witnesses say her sentence, on accusations
of fraud, was based on fabricated evidence. Her sister took care of her
daughter while she served her sentence.
Although Jumanazarova has been freed, five other Jehovah's
Witnesses are reported to remain imprisoned, four of them for refusing
compulsory military service on grounds of religious conscience. Three of the
four prisoners – whose names remain unknown - were sentenced in August to one
and a half years' imprisonment, while the fourth conscientious objector,
Nikolai Shelekhov, completes his one and a half year
sentence (his second) next January (see F18News 2 October 2003). The other
prisoner is believed to be Kurban Zakirov,
sentenced to eight years' imprisonment in 2000 and believed to be held in a labour camp in the Caspian port of Turkmenbashi.
President Saparmurat Niyazov
periodically decrees prisoner amnesties – the next scheduled amnesty is to mark
the Muslim holy night at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan (in Turkmen, Gydyr gijesi), which this year
falls on 21-22 November. However, Jehovah's Witnesses and other religious
prisoners have never been freed under such amnesties, as they refuse to repent
of their "crime" and swear the required oath of loyalty to the
president on the Koran and the president's spiritual book, the Ruhnama.
The Jehovah's Witnesses – like all non-Sunni Muslim and non-Russian Orthodox
communities – have been denied registration and are treated as illegal. Members
have been sacked from their jobs, had their homes confiscated in punishment for
using them for meetings and been fined.