Subject: [CivilSoc] Turkmenistan Crushes Religious Minorities--Keston
From: Center for Civil Society International (ccsi@u.washington.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 25 2001 - 13:55:52 EST
The following item from the Keston News Service was distributed today
by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Newsline (an e-mail news
service) whose address is <newsline@list.rferl.org>
______________________________________________________________
RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 5, No. 17, Part I, 25 January 2001
A daily report of developments in Eastern and Southeastern
Europe, Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia prepared by the
staff of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
TURKMENISTAN CRUSHES RELIGIOUS MINORITIES
By Felix Corley
Their faith may be the only thing sustaining Christians
in Turkmenistan this year, a community which--with the
exception of 12 Russian Orthodox parishes--has now been
almost completely crushed.
All other Christian groups there have had their legal
status revoked since 1997, when all the country's religious
communities were barred from retaining legal status under
harsh amendments to the religion law, except for Muslim
communities aligned with the Sunni Muslim Board and the
Russian Orthodox.
In 1999 the authorities in the capital Ashgabad spent a
week destroying the newly-built Adventist church with
bulldozers while Western ambassadors looked on helplessly. To this
day a pile of rubble is all that remains. Officials
insisted the site was needed for a new road, but it has never
been built.
This month saw a court order the confiscation of
Ashgabat's Pentecostal church, a ruling its pastor Viktor
Makrousov is now desperately challenging.
The Turkmen authorities have done nothing to mask their
policy of destroying the country's religious minorities, at
least from the locals (they have consistently refused to
justify their policy to outsiders). When raiding the Ashgabad
Baptist church in 1999, one of the Committee for National
Security (KNB, formerly KGB) officers openly announced,
"First, we'll deport all foreign missionaries, then we'll
strangle the remaining Christians in the country."
During a raid in December 1999 on the home of Vyacheslav
Shulgin, a Baptist in Mary, senior lieutenant Davlet
Yazykuliev of the Mary KNB told him: "We will hang you."
Shulgin and his family escaped this fate: they were instead
deported to Russia.
This past year saw the Turkmen authorities complete
their self-imposed task of expelling all foreigners known to
have been engaged in religious activity. Hundreds of Iranian
Islamic preachers and dozens of Westerners (mainly
Protestants) were forced to leave the country, as well as
numerous citizens of other CIS states. In August 1999 the
Hare Krishna leader Aleksandr Prinkur was expelled to
Uzbekistan, while in December of that year Ramil Galimov, a
member of a Jehovah's Witness group in Kyzyl-arbat who held
dual Russian-Turkmen citizenship, was summarily deported. Six
Baptist missionary families were deported between December
1999 and May 2000, mostly to Russia.
With the expulsions completed, the Turkmen authorities
are close to completing their second goal: crushing all
religious minority activity. Two believers are known to be
serving four-year prison terms for their faith--Shagildy
Atakov, a Baptist, and Yazmammed Annamamedov, a Jehovah's
Witness. Several Jehovah's Witness conscientious objectors
are also imprisoned.
Those isolated believers who remain live in a state of
fear. Believers of many faiths have been expelled from their
jobs, condemning them to poverty in a country where the state
dominates the economy. Four Protestants, led by Pastor
Shokhrat Piriev, were detained in November 2000, tortured
with electric shocks and beaten. They were freed after being
fined one month's average wages and being forced to make over
their homes as "gifts to President Niyazov". Piriev's home in
a village near Ashgabad was seized on 9 December.
Officials at all levels--whether in the KNB, the
police, local administrations or the Council for Religious
Affairs--repeatedly declare that only Islam and Orthodoxy
are allowed in the country, despite the fact that nowhere is
this stated in law. The Turkmen constitution guarantees
religious freedom, and the country has signed a range of
human rights conventions, including the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. As a member of the
OSCE it is also committed to respect human rights.
Turkmenistan's violations of religious liberty have been
carefully documented by a range of institutions, including
the Moscow-based human rights group Memorial, Keston
Institute based in Oxford, UK, and Amnesty International.
The world is beginning to take notice. OSCE chairwoman
in office Benita Ferrero-Waldner called on President
Saparmurat Niyazov to free Atakov when she visited Ashgabad
last May, but her appeal fell on deaf ears. In December 2000,
Amnesty International chose Atakov as a featured prisoner,
while campaigning group Christian Solidarity's Austrian
branch also focused on Turkmenistan. The World Evangelical
Fellowship has also campaigned on the country. Adventists
throughout Russia and Central Asia observed a day of prayer
and fasting on 23 December "in response to ongoing
persecution of Adventists and other religious groups in
Turkmenistan".
But only pressure from the United States is likely to
lead to greater success. Although in September 2000
Turkmenistan escaped being labelled one of the US State
Department's "countries of particular concern," the U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom is urging that
Turkmenistan be designated as such. The Commission likens the
Niyazov regime to Stalin's.
Many believe the illusion that the situation in the
region is improving should be dispelled. "We look at the year
2000 as the decisive turning-back point--the point at which
it should be clear to everyone around the world that these
countries are not engaged in democratic transition," declares
Cassandra Cavanaugh, a researcher on Central Asia for Human
Rights Watch. "They are engaged in a transition to
authoritarianism."
Some say Turkmenistan's move to authoritarianism
requires drastic action, such as expulsion from the OSCE. But
Gerard Stoudmann, director of the OSCE's Office for
Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, argues that
expelling any member for failing to meet up to its human
rights commitments would not help. "You can't solve these
problems by closing the door on a state's ability to
participate in the Organization," he reasoned
For Turkmenistan's religious minorities, this
authoritarianism has brought them to the brink of official
extinction. Baptist, Pentecostal, Lutheran and Armenian
Christians cannot legally meet. Bahais, Jehovah's Witnesses
and Jews are likewise denied the right to meet to practice
their faith peacefully.
Felix Corley is editor of Keston News Service
(www.keston.org)
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