President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov, a former bureaucrat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, dominated Turkmenistan from 1985, when he grew to become head of the Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR, until his demise in 2006. He retained absolute management over the country after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On 28 December 1999, Niyazov was declared President for Life of Turkmenistan by the Mejlis (parliament), which itself had taken workplace every week earlier in elections that included only candidates hand-picked by President Niyazov.

In 2012, a court docket dominated that Islam has no ethnic-primarily based divisions and, consequently, there may be no particularly Azeri mosques. This pressured the closure of Almaty’s Azeri Shiite mosqueand might pose a risk to different unofficial Shiite locations of worship. A 2014 United Nations survey on religious freedom found that the nation’s 2011 Religion Law outlawed “unofficial” mosques. The country is difficult to access, even when the federal government will allow you to in. The EU would not let Turkmenistan Airlines into its air space for eight months this 12 months over safety concerns, only lifting the ban on October eleven.

The Turkmen of Turkmenistan, like their kin in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Iran are predominantly Muslims. According to the CIA World Factbook, Turkmenistan is 89% Muslim and 10% Eastern Orthodox. A 2009 Pew Research Center report signifies a higher percentage of Muslims with 93.1% of Turkmenistan’s population adhering to Islam.

Because of excessive irrigation, Turkmen agriculture contributes to the steady drawdown of sea ranges. In turn, the Aral Sea’s desiccation, which had shrunk that physique of water by an estimated 59,000 sq. kilometers by 1994, profoundly affects economic productivity and the health of the population of the republic. Besides the cost of ameliorating damaged areas and the loss of at least a part of the initial funding in them, salinization and chemicalization of land have decreased agricultural productiveness in Central Asia by an estimated 20 to 25%. Poor ingesting water is the main health threat posed by such environmental degradation.

Moreover, the Shiite demographics in Central Asia are markedly totally different from those in Iraq, where the Islamic State was able to benefit from sturdy existing anti-Shiite sentiment among the many Sunni majority. And only one % of Central Asians are Shiite, compared to some 30 p.c of Iraqis. Pamiris, the smallest group, comprise an ethnic minority (round three % of the inhabitants) in Tajikistan.

On April 19, 2007, officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Sixth Department raided a department of the registered Evangelical Baptist Church of Turkmenistan in Turkmenbashy. The authorities got here to a worship service, and took Bibles and hymnals from the congregation. That night, police summoned two women to an area official’s workplace and fined them roughly $90 (2.5 million manat), threatening further harassment if the ladies did not pay. The police gave no particular purpose for the harassment, but instructed that the women ought to be attending a Russian Orthodox Church.

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In response to international stress, a 2004 presidential decree lifted criminal penalties. The remaining civil law continues to permit the Government to manage religious life and to restrict the actions of all religious teams. The 2003 regulation did not codify religious actions in localities aside from where a bunch was registered. In October 2005 the Government announced a temporary process for the registration of spiritual teams’ regional branches by issuing powers of legal professional.

The Turkmens are Sunni Muslims however they, like many of the area’s nomads, adhere to Islam somewhat loosely and mix Islam with pre-Islamic animist spirituality. The Turkmens do indeed tend to be spiritual however are by no means militantly non secular.

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The threat of imprisonment has led many journalists to choose exile somewhat than risk arrest. Eritrea is Africa’s worst jailer of journalists, with at least 23 behind bars-none of whom has been tried in courtroom or even charged with against the law. Area of current-day Turkmenistan incorporated into Russian Turkestan after Battle of Gok Tepe. 6th century BC – Area of what is now Turkmenistan types a part of the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great. Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has dominated Turkmenistan since 2007 when he succeeded life-long president Saparmyrat Niyazov.

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Ethnic Turkmen who choose to convert from Islam to different religious groups are viewed with suspicion and typically ostracized. The authorities-appointed Council on Religious Affairs (CRA) stories to the president and ostensibly acts as an middleman between the government forms and registered spiritual organizations. It contains Sunni Muslim imams and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as authorities representatives, but no representatives of minority spiritual teams.

After 69 years as part of the Soviet Union (including sixty seven years as a union republic), Turkmenistan declared its independence on 27 October 1991. Turkmenistan’s mountains embody 600 km of the northern reaches of the Kopet Dag Range, which it shares with Iran. The Kopet Dag Range is a area characterized by foothills, dry and sandy slopes, mountain plateaus, and steep ravines; Mount Şahşah (2,912 m), also called turkmen women Mount Rizeh, southwest of Ashgabat, is the very best elevation of the Kopet Dag Range in Turkmenistan. The Kopet Dag is undergoing tectonic transformation, which means that the region is threatened by earthquakes such as the one that destroyed Ashgabat in 1948.

Afghanistan

In April 2007, President Berdimuhammedov visited Saudi Arabia and carried out umrah (minor pilgrimage) rituals in Mecca, recalling former President Niyazov’s 1992 umrah. The Constitution supplies for freedom of religion and doesn’t establish a state faith; however, in practice the Government imposes legal restrictions on all forms of religious expression. All teams should register in order to achieve legal standing; unregistered religious activity is against the law and may be punished by administrative fines.

Turkmenistan has a chilly desert local weather that is severely continental. Summers are long (from May through September), sizzling, and dry, while winters generally are delicate and dry, though often cold and damp in the north.

After the Russian Revolution, Soviet management was established by 1921, and in 1924 Turkmenistan turned Soviet Socialistic Republic. The population of people with descent from Afghanistan in Canada is forty eight,090 based on Canada’s 2006 Census.

In Vietnam, many bloggers are put under surveillance in an try to prevent them from attending and reporting on news occasions. In Iran, journalists’ relations have been summoned by authorities and advised that they might lose their jobs and pensions due to the journalists’ work. And in Cuba, which has made some progress, together with resuming diplomatic relations with the U.S. and proposing an finish to Castro rule by 2018, the few independent journalists making an attempt to report in the nation are still topic to harassment and brief-time period detention.