DASOGUZ, Turkmenistan — On Aug. 14, anti-terrorist police raided the worship service of a registered Baptist church in the northern Turkmenistan city of Dasoguz and questioned church members, confiscating all Turkmen-language Bibles and hymnbooks, according to Forum 18 news service. The police took particular interest in children at the service but could not find any who were there without parental permission.
The next day, church leaders were summoned for “more thorough interrogation,” and told that the Baptist church’s national state registration is “not valid for northern Turkmenistan.” This claim has been made elsewhere in the country and Baptists strongly dispute it. Police pressured church leaders to sign a declaration that the church will not meet until it has state registration.
“We met for worship before ‘your registration’ existed, and will continue to meet,” church leaders told police. “Now we have registration, even if you did not recognize it. And we will continue to meet in (the) future as our faith does not depend on registration.”
Two weeks earlier, plain-clothes police, from the “department for the struggle with terrorism and organized crime,” broke up the July 31 morning worship service of the registered Baptist church in the eastern Turkmenistan town of Mary. All those present were subjected to separate filmed interrogations, starting with the women and children.
Area sources said the police made statements in the interrogations such as “we know you’re a nonbeliever and just come for the money, you get money from Americans, write that you won’t come here again, your meetings are unauthorized, you are law-breakers, registration doesn’t cover you.”
Local Baptists insisted their state registration certificate is for the “Church of Evangelical Christians and Baptists of Turkmenistan” and therefore covers congregations across the country.
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