Passion and Pain

In December 2001, an elderly, blind Baptist woman was threatened with eviction from her apartment in Khazar after holding a Baptist service that had been raided by secret police earlier in the week. Also in 2001, a small Protestant congregation made up of seven adults and four small children fled Turkmenistan on account of religious persecution. The young pastor suffered from a damaged eye, torn eardrum, and other injuries inflicted after secret police found members of his congregation in possession of outlawed Turkmen videos of ―The Jesus Film‖. One of his congregants suffered severe damage to both his eardrums during the beatings, and another developed ongoing heart problems.

Over the last several years, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has repeatedly recommended to US Secretaries of State Madeline Albright and Colin Powell that Turkmenistan be designated a country of particular concern under the International Religious Freedom Act for its particularly severe violations of religious freedom.

Throughout the former Soviet Union, from Chechnya and Georgia to Turkmenistan and Belarus, the transition from Communist totalitarianism to societies where basic religious and political freedoms are guaranteed remains an enormous challenge.

Prayer Points: * Please pray for the protection and deliverance of Christians throughout the former Soviet Union; that they will be strengthened in their faith and comforted in their suffering; that God in His mercy will spare them from further unspeakable horror, and raise up intercessors and advocates to lighten their heavy burdens. * Please pray particularly for Turkmenistan‘s Christians; for an end to the Government‘s official policy against Christians, which includes harassment, detention, arrests, beatings, torture, deportation, imprisonment, denial of food and water, and forced renunciation of faith, in addition to raiding and destroying private homes, and confiscating religious literature. * Please pray that Turkmenistan‘s Government will cease its crackdown against Christian house-church members and leaders, and release those who have been imprisoned for their faith. * Please pray too, that each successor state of the former Soviet Union will respect and protect the human rights and religious freedom of its citizens.