Turkmenistan: Regime forces Muslims to drink vodka and shave beards

According to a report by Asia News on 27 January 2021, police in the province of Lebap are monitoring and repressing citizens who observe Islamic traditions, forcing them to drink alcohol and shave their beards to prove they are not "terrorists" or Wahhabi radicals. The fight against "religious extremists" also involves arresting people who pray at home, whereby the police act on reports supplied by watchful neighbors. Rolf Zeegers, persecution analyst at World Watch Research (WWR), comments: "This report about police behaviour shows the dictatorial nature of the authorities: Muslims are being forced to do things that are against their religion. The regime has absolutely no respect at all for the religious sensitivities of citizens, which is also what Christians in Turkmenistan are experiencing (as outlined in WWR"s country dossier, December 2020). Such extreme actions are typical for the way the government creates its own version of reality, rather like North Korea, with which the‚  country is often compared. Another example is the fact that President Berdymukhammedov still claims that the COVID-19 virus has not entered the country. It does not seem to be of interest to the regime that such stubbornness can endanger the health of the whole population."