sacked" from jobs in at least two central Asian republics which were part of the Soviet Union, BosNewsLife learned Tuesday, October 14.
The developments come amid growing international fears that radical Islamist groups in Central Asia increase their influence in countries ruled by a Soviet style leadership with little or no opposition.
"In the town of Balkanabad in western Turkmenistan, Baptists are now seeing their fines doubled for participating in "illegal religious meetings", said local church members in a statement released via the Forum 18 News Service (F18News).
"At present the local authorities (of Balkanabad) are prohibiting the Baptists from meeting for worship, in violation of the rights guaranteed in Turkmenistan’s Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," the Baptists said.
PERSECUTION
F18News, which monitors religious persecution for human rights watch-dog Forum 18, said each member already received nearly $50 in fines this summer, nearly a monthly wage in the impoverished Islamic country, and that heavier fines are now imposed.
Prosecutors have reportedly defended the policy saying the Balkanabad church refused to register with the state authorities. The congregation belongs to the Council of Churches (or unregistered Baptists), which split from the All-Union Council of Baptists in 1961 when further state-sponsored controls were introduced by the then Baptist leadership.
It has refused state registration ever since in all the post-Soviet republics where it operates. According to one of its pastors in Moscow, it has 3,705 congregations throughout the former Soviet Union, F18News said.
RAIDS
"The Balkanabad church – most of whose members are people surviving on invalidity benefits – has seen a wave of raids and threats this year, beginning in the spring," explained F18News.
Analysts have linked the crack-down to one of the harshest systems of state control over religious life of any of the former Soviet republics. Real power is concentrated in the hands of President Saparmyrat Niyazov, whom the parliament has granted presidency for life.
Human rights activists and journalists say he has developed a personality cult unrivalled in Central Asia, by forcing the main opposition activists out of the country.
NO OPPOSITION
The republic of nearly 5 million people is now effectively a one part state as the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, which comprises mostly former communists, faces no opposition.
In neighbouring Uzbekistan, free Baptists and other unregistered Protestant churches have also complained about a police crack-down as the mainly Islamic authorities increase their power base, reports said.
Security forces are reportedly preventing at least one active local Baptist church from meeting for worship in the village of Khalkabad in Namangan region.
"We are doing this at the request of the Baptists’ parents, who are unhappy that their children have changed their faith," F18News qouted a local police officer as saying.
IMPRISONED
"Police officers come to virtually every meeting we hold," added Aleksandr Tyan – one of five church members imprisoned for ten days in August.
Anti-terrorist police officer Alisher Kurbanov, who banned an unregistered Baptist church in Navoi from meeting for worship, has dismissed Baptist complaints about these kind of practises. "This is not a church at all, just a religious mob," he told F18News.
"Under Uzbek laws a church is not allowed to operate without registration, but the Baptists refuse to register." The ban came after Kurbanov confiscated books from a mobile Baptist street library on September 27 and threatened library organiser Nikolai Nikulin with criminal prosecution.
Nikulin has already served a ten-day prison sentence for his work with the church. The ban on the Navoi Baptist church is seen as the latest move to forbid the activity of unregistered Protestant churches in Uzbekistan.
CRACK-DOWN
It has been linked to an anti religious crack-down that followed the 1999 bomb blasts in the capital that left over a dozen people dead. The leadership blamed "Islamic extremists," accusing them of seeking to kill President Islam Abduganiyevich Karimov and destabilize the country.
With nearly 25 million people his republic is the most populous Central Asian country with the largest army and no real internal opposition, as the media is tightly controlled by the state.
A United Nations report has described the use of torture in Uzbekistan as ‘systemic’, the British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring Service reported recently.
Following the September 11 attacks on the United States, President Karimov won favour with Washington by allowing its forces a base in Uzbekistan affording ready access across the Afghan border.
Human rights watchers fear that the U.S. need to seek allies in the war on terror will make it difficult to focus world attention on many reported cases of abuse and torture as well as the crack-down against Christians in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and other former Soviet republics.
