Turkmenistan: Baptist forced to leave homeland

Embattled Baptist pastor Vyacheslav Kalataevsky – freed from detention in early November after eight months in prison – has been denied permission to remain in his native town of Turkmenbashi [Türkmenbashy, formerly Krasnovodsk]. A Ukrainian citizen, his application for a visa to remain with his wife and family has been rejected by the Migration Service and he will have to leave the country, as he told Forum 18 News Service from the town on 3 December. Meanwhile, mystery surrounds the fate of a mullah reported by a fellow prisoner to have been forcibly held in a psychiatric hospital in the north-eastern Lebap Region in late 2006. "Police were very harsh towards him and prevented him from speaking at length to others being held there," Kakabai Tejenov told Forum 18 from exile in Russia on 3 December. "If he is still being detained, I want him to be freed." Forum 18 has been unable to find out from any official if the mullah is still being held.

The telephone of Nurmukhamed Gurbanov, Deputy Chair of the government's Gengeshi (Council) for Religious Affairs, went unanswered when Forum 18 called on 3 and 4 December.

Kalataevsky, who leads a small independent Baptist congregation in Turkmenbashi, said the Migration Service in the town had on 26 November verbally rejected his application for a visa and residence permit to remain in Turkmenistan. "Nothing was given in writing," he told Forum 18. "Nor did they give a reason – by law they are not required to. But of course it is linked to my activity as a believer. Everything that has happened to me since 2001 is related to that."

Kalataevsky was summarily deported in 2001 to punish him for leading his congregation. He soon returned to Turkmenistan, where his family remained. When he tried to regularise his situation earlier this year he was arrested, tried and found guilty of "illegally crossing the border". His three-year labour camp sentence was cut short when he was amnestied in October, but he was not finally freed until 6 November. Within a week of returning home to Turkmenbashi he was warned not to meet for worship with his fellow-Baptists.

By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service

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