ongoing crack-down against non registered churches in the republic and across the ex-Soviet Union, reports said Friday May 23.
"What’s the point in talking to them, they should be put in a bus and shot!" Baptists in the western town of Balkanabad quoted one police officer as telling them in a statement published by Forum 18 News (F18News), which monitors religious persecution.
The Baptists claimed the police began to apply "physical force, even on children" to turn everyone out of the building, "paying no attention to the cries and screams of the children". However officials have denied a campaign is underway to end church life in the mainly Muslim nation.
"We are not conducting any special campaign against Baptists," the chairman of the government’s Gengeshi (Committee) for Religious Affairs, Yagshimurat Atamuradov, told F18News.
"The law forbids the activity of unregistered religious communities. Let them collect the 500 signatures they need for registration and be registered, and then they can meet," he was quoted as saying.
During the Sunday raid on May 11 in Balkanabad, police forced everyone present in the church to go to the police station, while other law enforcement officers also stormed the Baptist service in the Caspian port city of Turkmenbashi, F18News reported.
SECRET SERVICE
In the past, the secret service also raided other congregations and arrested several Christian leaders. Meanwhile in Kazakstan, another former Soviet republic, a criminal case has been launched against a Baptist pastor who refused to comply with a court- ordered ban on holding services, church officials said.
Pastor Sergei Nizhegorodtsev of Georgievka in Eastern Kazakhstan region was told on May 12 that he faces a criminal case for refusing to comply with the ban, reported Baptists in a statement published by F18News.
Several Baptist and other evangelical churches have refused to register themselves with governments, arguing saying that only God is their highest authority.
"FAITH IN ACTION"
In Moscow, Russia, the "Faith in Action" Bible College learned this week it should be closed down for conducting religious education without a state license.
Its defense lawyer told F18News that the college’s parent church, the Church of the Living God, could "now be pressured by the regional authorities for conducting unlicensed professional education activity."
Human rights watch-dogs and analysts have linked the measures taken by authorities to fear that traditional institutions will lose their influence.
While the government in Moscow seems to protect the Russian Orthodox Church values, in republics like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan Islamic organizations fulfill prominent roles in society.
