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A.C.N - Aid to the Church in Need Italian Office |
Religious Freedom in
the Majority Islamic Countries |
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Turkmenistan Population:
4,695,000
The Constitution affirms religious liberty as a principle. Religious organisations must be registered by the government, as must all mass meetings. Only the Islamic and Greek Orthodox places of worship are not subject to these controls. Turkmenistan is ruled autocratically by President Niyazov, who was already in power at the time of Gorbachev and who, with the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, simply changed the name of his party and had himself re-elected until the year 2002. He has the entire Muslim hierarchy behind him. An issue of Menschenrechte of November/December 1997 recalls that Turkmenistan was the only country of the former Soviet Union where they still persisted in interning people for questions of public order. With power securely in the hands of President Niyazov since July 27 1996, all the mass media and all news reporting are subject to censorship. The new obligation on religious communities to register exempts only the Islamic and Greek Orthodox parishes. Psychological pressure has been exerted upon the believers of unregistered religious communities. At the end of June 1997, the police searched a house of prayer in the town of Kransnowdsk, where they discovered and confiscated 1,700 Bibles. At the beginning of September the police confiscated around a hundred Bibles from the street traders. But even the Orthodox churches are now concerned at the new religious law, because they are conscious of the pressure that is being put on Christians in the majority Islamic countries of Central Asia. The OMI missionaries (Oblates of Mary Immaculate) have managed to bring back the Church in the Karakum desert. From 1996 onwards, the Holy See had established diplomatic relations with the country and in September 1997 it established a missio sui iuris here, and Father Andrzej Madei and his confrere Zmitrowicz began their adventure. The Christian presence in this area goes back to the 2nd century and developed gradually up to the 13th century when, under the government of Tamerlane, the Christians were forced to convert to Islam on pain of death. A Catholic presence returned with Tsarist Russia, but the communist authorities and a number of natural disasters have contributed powerfully to eliminating their presence here again. Today the missionaries are striving to establish contact with the people, and with Orthodox and Muslim groups too. Describing the situation, Father Madej states that "six years ago the country became independent, but for a Church body to establish a legal presence means collecting 500 signatures in a single town. We celebrate Mass for the foreigners who are working here, and we have tried to identify the families that were of Catholic origin. Some have come closer to us, and we are making contact with the Orthodox and the Protestants. We meet the Muslims on various occasions, and many people are praying for us. One woman said that we are a seed from which a tree will grow. We are confident that one day these words will come true." The five Catholic churches in Turkmenistan were destroyed by the soviet regime. Father Madej and two other priests are working to improve the situation. Nonetheless the Catholic Church cannot engage in missionary work at Ashkhabad, where the construction of the largest mosque in the world is now in progress. But they will be the shepherds of little flocks. |
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