In an unprecedented interview with an independent journalist, an official of Turkmenistan’s Council for Religious Affairs (CRA) said he believed that Adventists are “peaceful people” whose activities do not threaten the Turkmen state, reports Keston News Service.  The comment comes after more months of government crackdowns on Protestant Christian churches in Turkmenistan during which the state has expelled Baptist pastors, disbanded Pentecostal churches and bull-dozed a Seventh-day Adventist Church in the capital Ashgabat.  (See ANN reports November 16, 1999.)

CRA official Mered Chariyarov confirmed during the July 11 interview that Baptists, Adventists and Pentecostal Christians used to be officially registered in Turkmenistan but that under 1996 amendments to the republic’s law on religion they lost their registration because they lacked the necessary number of members’ signatures to gain official recognition.  He said that these groups have now “ushli” (“gone away”), but “perhaps they are meeting quietly somewhere.”

Previously a communist state, Turkmenistan repressed all religious activity and promoted atheism until it gained independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991.  Under the new regime, religious free exercise is allowed only to the members of the two officially recognized religions in Turkmenistan-Sunni Muslims and the Russian Orthodox Church.