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It's not an islamic regime imposing Shari'ah law. It's not a communist dictatorship outlawing all religion. It's not a Hindu nationalist movement hostile to minority faiths.

Turkmenistan is a former Soviet state now run by a "president for life" who governs the Muslim-majority nation with command-style rule. And there's a twist: President Saparmurat Niyazov has styled himself a prophet. He's written a holy book—Rukhanama (Spirituality)—and has given it authority equal to that of the Qur'an. It was on Niyazov's Rukhanama that seven Protestant Christians, under threats from authorities last May, swore an oath renouncing the Bible and their faith in Christ.

When three other believers in the same village (Deinau) refused to deny their faith, they were expelled from their homes by police and agents of the KNB (National Security Committee, the former KGB), according to Keston News Service. Murad Djumanazarov, Jamilya Boltaeva, and Nurmurad (his last name is unknown) went into hiding after the knb issued an order to hunt them down.

On paper, Turkmenistan guarantees religious and other freedoms. The one-party government, however, invokes a constitutional article overruling such rights in the interests of "national security."

"In practice, Turkmenistan is perhaps the most repressive of the former Soviet republics in terms of religious freedom or any other human right," states Freedom House's Religious Freedom in the World. Niyazov is trying to strangle Christianity through intimidation, closing churches, confiscating property, and torture, rights organizations say.

The Russian Orthodox Church and Sunni Islam are effectively the only legal religions. Members of other faiths are subject to criminal fines, beatings, and imprisonment.

Including the dominant Russian Orthodox, Christians make up 2.66 percent of the population, compared with the 91.8 percent (largely nominal) Muslim majority, according to Operation World.

In the past few years, the government has expelled all known foreign Christians. The former foreign minister, Boris Shikhmuradov, told Keston News Service that Niyazov restricts Islam and has practically crushed Christianity.

Last November police arrested four Protestants for possession of Christian videos dubbed into the Turkmen language. Under interrogation they suffered beatings, electric shocks, partial suffocation, and other forms of torture for three days, according to World Evangelical Fellowship's Religious Liberty Commission.

On November 24 they went free in exchange for the confiscation of all their possessions—which they were forced to declare as a voluntary gift to the president of Turkmenistan.

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August 5 2002, Vol. 46, No. 9