freed before the end of his four-year prison sentence, Keston News Service (KNS) reported Thursday, January 10. KNS, part of the respected Keston Institute which monitors religious persecution, quoted two organizations with close ties to the region as saying that Atakov (39) was released from a jail in the Caspian port city of Turkmenbashi early Tuesday, January 8.
The US-based Russian Evangelistic Ministries and Germany’s Friedensstimme Mission told KNS that the Baptist was re-united with his family, after more than 3 years in labour camps and prisons, where he was forcibly treated with psychotropic drugs.
CHRISTMAS GIFT
"Jesus has given me a Christmas gift," Atakov was quoted as saying, referring to the Orthodox Christmas that was celebrated around the time of his release. KNS reported that he has returned to his wife Artygul and their five children in the town of Kaakhka close to Turkmenistan’s southern border with Iran.
However human rights activists have expressed their doubts about the sincerity of the authorities in Turkmenistan, a mainly Islam nation of four million people with a feared religious police. The terms of Atakov’s release have not been made clear, and he has received neither a release certificate nor his identity papers.
KNS points out that the Turkmen authorities continue to put pressure on Baptist congregations, whose activity the government regards as illegal. In recent weeks several Baptist church services were raided by police, and Christians have been forced to appear in front of courts.
MYSTERIOUS DEATH
Local Baptists are also concerned by the circumstances surrounding the death on December 22 of Mikhail Kozlov, a leading figure in the Ashgabad Baptist congregation, who reportedly received several dead threats from the KNB.
Kozlov was driving alone from Turkmenbashi to Ashgabad on 21 December when he came off the road, and was taken unconscious to hospital where the Baptist failed to regain consciousness and died the following day.
IRON RULE
Experts say the religious situation in the country has been made worse by a constitution that Turkmenistan adopted in 1992, a year after it became independent. It allows the setting up of political parties, providing that they were not ethnic or religious in character.
But analysts suggest that this has effectively lead to a one-party state with an iron rule. The authorities allow Mosques and traditional Orthodox Church congregations to be registered, but they are persecuting all other religious groups, including free churches.
Believers of unregistered faiths have been beaten, fined, imprisoned and deported, and places of worship have been confiscated and, in several cases, demolished. Private homes used for unsanctioned religious meetings have been confiscated, KNS said.
