MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

For peaceful purposes …

Qur’an Sura 8:12b, “… terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an.”

By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service – “Police in the Turkmen city of Mary have resumed pressure on relatives, friends and members of the Protestant congregation led by former religious prisoner of conscience Pastor Ilmurad Nurliev. One police officer threatened to ‘tear off’ the head of one of his relatives if she adopted ‘their faith’, Pastor Nurliev told Forum 18 News Service from Mary on 17 September. ‘We’ve got no peace,’ his wife Maya added. Officials are interrogating all those they can find who signed the church’s rejected 2007 registration application.

Denied state registration, Pastor Nurliev’s community – Light to the World Church – has been unable to meet for worship in recent years ‘because of the circumstances’, he lamented to Forum 18.

The interrogations, threats and insults come as Turkmenistan has adopted a new Code of Administrative Offences which will come into force on 1 January 2014. The new Code prescribes new punishments for religious activity in defiance of Turkmenistan’s claims to the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council in Geneva (see below).

Numerous religious communities have been raided and individuals have faced fines under the current Code of Administrative Offences for exercising the right to freedom of religion or belief. These include the leader of a Baptist children’s summer camp in Mary raided in late June …

The most recent trouble for Pastor Nurliev, his relatives and church members began on Sunday 15 September, he told Forum 18. ‘Yesterday [16 September] I was summoned to the Criminal Investigation Department, where I was questioned by officer Rahman Rahmanov.’

Many of his relatives, his wife’s relatives, and all those they could find of the dozen or so church members who signed the 2007 registration application have been summoned, had their fingerprints and photos taken, been forced to write statements and been subjected to threats and insults, he said. ‘They told me it was because of people like us that Syria is facing conflict.’

Pastor Nurliev said police even wanted to know about people on the registration application who had died or moved away or no longer had contact with the church.

Maya Nurlieva, the pastor’s wife, was summoned to the local police station on 16 September, where Captain Sapar Atabayev interrogated her for three hours. ‘He threatened, insulted and shouted at me for all that time,’ she told Forum 18. She had to provide a written account of her life, including information on when she became a Christian.” Read more.

Flashback: Churches Raided, Crosses Burnt, Fathers Arrested: ‘Arab Spring’ In The Caucasus And Central Asia Spelling Doom For Local Christians – “Mirroring what is happening in the world, there is an Islamic revival in the Caucasus and Central Asia, with all that it means for local Christians… The fall of dictatorship, in a pattern similar to that of post-war Iraq and the ‘Arab Spring’ in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, seems to have ‘liberated’ the radical elements within the Muslim communities…Uzbekistan (just under 30 million people), Kazakhstan (16-17 million), Tajikistan (7-8 million), Kyrgyzstan (5-6 million), which is particularly topical now because it is where the family of the Boston bombings suspects lived for a time, and Turkmenistan (just over 5 million), for a total population of 64.7 million in 2012, the vast majority of whom are Muslim.” Read more.