The same day that officials broke up a Baptist Sunday
morning service in the Caspian port city of Turkmenbashi (see F18News 15 May
2003), the service of a Baptist church in the western town of Balkanabad was
also broken up. About a dozen law enforcement officers "burst into" a
private apartment in Balkanabad where the service was being held on 11 May,
local Baptists reported in a 15 May statement reaching Forum 18 News Service.
The Baptists were detained by force in police headquarters where they claim
they were subjected to insults and threats. Balkanabad's public prosecutor
refused to tell Forum 18 why the service had been raided, while Turkmenistan's
senior religious affairs official denied that the authorities were conducting a
campaign against the Baptists.
"Between ten and 12 people in uniform and in civilian clothes literally
burst into the room and ordered us to leave the building," the Baptists
reported. "The service was still under way, but the law enforcement
officers ordered that it stop." The Baptists claimed that 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".
All those present at the service were taken to police headquarters, where they
had to give their names, work and home addresses and nationality. They were
then photographed without any option to refuse. "A sister with four
children refused to be photographed, but was told that she would not be allowed
home unless she consented. They threatened her 10-year-old daughter, who was
born in Russia, with deportation to Russia on her own."
The Baptists claim that senior police lieutenant Govkher Kurbanova went so far
as to voice her "true feelings" for the Baptists: "What's the
point in talking to them, they should be put in a bus and shot!" She also
voiced the "slanderous fabrication" that Baptists practise child
sacrifice, an echo of Soviet propaganda against Protestants.
"We don't want to believe that the attitude of the local authorities to
believers represents the view of the state as a whole," the Baptists wrote
in their 15 May letter of complaint to Turkmen president Saparmurat Niyazov.
Reached by telephone on 22 May, Balkanabad public prosecutor Nogai Tashliyev
refused to discuss the case. "If you want us to answer your questions
about the Baptist incident, then send us your questions in writing and we will
look at them and maybe then we will reply," he told Forum 18 and then hung
up without warning.