A Baptist church in the eastern city of Turkmenabad
(formerly Charjou) has become the tenth religious community known to have been
raided by the authorities since the latest crackdown on religious minorities
began in early May. On 13 June, 11 officials, including two in army uniform,
raided a prayer meeting being held in an apartment belonging to church member
Yeldash Roziev, local Baptists reported in a 14 June statement reaching Forum
18 News Service. Two of the Baptists were threatened with twelve-year prison
sentences.
"All the believers were taken outside and were escorted by the soldiers to
a strong point, the police station," church members reported. "After
several hours of questioning and threats some believers were released, leaving
Aleksandr Frolov, Yeldash Roziev, Aleksei Zasedatelev and Yelgiz Ilyasov still
in custody." The Baptists say Frolov and Roziev were threatened during the
questioning, with officers warning them: "We have been on your tracks for
three months now, and we'll put you away for 12 years." The two were also
threatened with being exiled from Turkmenistan.
Officers also tried to recruit Roziev as a spy within the church. "They
tried to talk Yeldash into co-operating with them, hoping for information about
the internal life of the church," the Baptists reported. "The
brothers were released at around 2 o'clock in the morning, but their passports
were retained and they were told that they should report to the police
department on the morning of 14 June for further questioning." It is not
yet known whether further action was taken against the church members on 14
June.
Reached by telephone on 17 June, the procurator of Turkmenabad, Nurmukhamed
Nurmamedov, admitted to Forum 18 that the Baptists had been detained and
questioned, but refused to make "any comment" until he received a
written request.
The head of the city police, Alaverdy Khudoberdiev, strongly defended the
police action, telling Forum 18 that there was nothing unlawful in what they
had done because under Turkmen law "the activity of unregistered
organisations is forbidden". (Turkmenistan's religion law does not in fact
forbid the activity of unregistered religious organisations.) Khudoberdiev
refused to give any information about the 14 June questioning of the Baptists.
Forum 18 had an even more peculiar conversation with Yagshimurat Atamuradov,
head of the government's Gengeshi (Committee) for Religious Affairs in the
capital Ashgabad, who is answerable to the country's president. Atamuradov
recognised the voice of Forum 18's correspondent and immediately hung up.
Turkmenistan has the harshest religious policy of all the former Soviet
republics. No faiths except for the officially-sanctioned Muslim Board and the
Russian Orthodox Church have been allowed to register any communities. The
government treats all unregistered religious activity as illegal. Baptists,
Pentecostals, Adventists and other Protestants, as well as the Armenian
Apostolic Church, the Lutherans, the Jews, Hare Krishna communities, Jehovah's
Witnesses, Baha'is and others are thus denied the opportunity of worshipping
legally.
Since May, pressure on religious minorities has intensified with a series of
raids in six different locations on various communities, including Baptist and
Pentecostal churches, as well as Hare Krishna communities (see F18News 10 June
2003). In all these cases, the police burst into private apartments where
representatives of religious minorities had gathered, and took them to the
police station. The fact that these police actions took place in various parts
of the country at one and same time gives reason to think that they had been
planned earlier by Ashgabad.
Dieter Matthei, political officer at the Organisation for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) centre in Ashgabad, told Forum 18 on 18 June that
the centre had "no information" about the latest raid on the Baptist
church in Balkanabad. He said it was difficult following up reports of such
incidents. "Our possibilities are limited by manpower, resources and other
factors," he declared.