Felix Corley

OSLO, Norway (BP)--Bulgarian police have forcibly expelled members of an alternative Orthodox synod from some 250 parish churches they have been using for more than 10 years, Forum 18 News Service reported July 23.

OSLO, Norway (BP)--Despite legal changes in March that -- at least theoretically -– allow minority religious communities to register for the first time since 1997, Turkmenistan retains one of the harshest systems of state control over religious life of any of the former Soviet republics, according to a report by Forum 18 News Service.

OSLO, Norway (BP)--Authorities have moved to crush a Baptist street library in the city of Bendery in the unrecognized republic of Transdniester in eastern Moldova, Forum 18 News Service reported April 29.

OSLO, Norway (BP)--Officers of the secret police in Turkmenistan have ordered children of Baptist parents to be taken from their school classes and interrogated about "internal church life and their Christian education in their families" in the Central Asian country, according to a Forum 18 News Service report April 11.

LONDON (BP)--Despite assertions by the Belarus government's Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs that a "mass" religious meeting requiring state approval is one with at least 100 people, a senior official has declared that if more than 10 people gather for a religious meeting without official permission they would be committing a crime, Keston News Service reported Dec. 13.

LONDON (BP)--Freed religious prisoner Shageldy Atakov has been warned not to associate with his fellow Baptists and remains under close surveillance by the country's political police, the KNB (former KGB), Keston News Service has learned.

LONDON (BP)--Turkmenistan's most prominent religious prisoner, Baptist leader Shageldy Atakov, has been freed before the end of his four-year sentence, Keston News Service reported Jan. 10.

LONDON (BP)--Boris Shikhmuradov, the senior-most official to abandon Turkmenistan's authoritarian regime, has launched an attack on the repression of religious believers in the Central Asian country.

LONDON (BP)--Two young men who lead a small Baptist church in Kulsary, Kazakhstan, have protested against an illegal order by the district prosecutor banning the church, Keston News Service reported May 16.

OXFORD, England (BP)--The wife and children of Baptist prisoner Shageldy Atakov in Turkmenistan have been told by the local mullah, administration officials and officers of the country's political police, the KNB (former KGB), that they may not believe in Jesus Christ and must convert to Islam. According to a statement from local Baptists -- passed on to Keston News Service by the German-based Friedensstimme mission -- officials in the town of Kaakhka, close to Turkmenistan's southern border with Iran, also warned Atakov's wife, Artygyul, that the family home would be confiscated if Christians continue to meet there.