The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one’s belief or religion
The right to join together and express one’s belief
20 September 2004
CHINA: Religious freedom in Xinjiang
Religious freedom in China's north-western Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region of north-western China (previously known as Eastern Turkestan), Forum 18 News Service has found, is dominated by pervasive state control. This affects both the indigenous Muslims, who make up about half the local population, and religious minorities. Control is enacted through national-religious committees, part of the administration of every city, which enforce compulsory registration and approve the appointment of all religious leaders. They must come to meetings of such committees. Forum 18 learnt that at such a meeting in Ghulja in August, officials threatened to dismiss a Patriotic Catholic priest if he preached again against abortion. Children under 18 are officially banned from attending places of worship, though Forum 18 observed that this rule is widely ignored. "We believe that children need to finish their education and develop their personalities before they can make an informed decision as to whether they are believers or atheists," an official of Urumqi's national-religious committee told Forum 18. Contact with fellow-believers abroad remains restricted, leaving smaller religious communities isolated.
16 September 2004
AZERBAIJAN: Imam barred from travel to OSCE conference
Forum 18 News Service has been unable to discover from the Azerbaijani authorities why on 12 September border guards at Baku airport prevented religious freedom activist and imam Ilgar Ibrahimoglu Allahverdiev from travelling to Brussels to take part in an OSCE conference on racism and discrimination. Ibrahimoglu told Forum 18 he was not allowed to board his Lufthansa flight despite having checked in and passed through customs. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not have any information on this issue," the ministry's chief spokesperson Metin Mirza told Forum 18. "The ban imposed upon me to visit the OSCE conference is the latest arbitrary action against me," Ibrahimoglu complained.
16 September 2004
UZBEKISTAN: Medical institute expels Protestant students
After pressure earlier in the year on Protestant students in Nukus in the autonomous region of Karakalpakstan [Qoraqalpoghiston], two students were expelled from the town's medical institute in early September for membership of an "illegal" Protestant church, the Church of Christ. Protestant sources told Forum 18 News Service that the two - Aliya Sherimbetova and Shirin Artykbayeva – were told that a further reason for their expulsion was that their cases had been reported on the internet, an apparent reference to Forum 18's coverage. Six other local Protestant students have been harassed in Nukus this year. It is almost impossible for Christian churches of any denomination to gain official registration in Karakalpakstan and therefore to meet legally for worship.
15 September 2004
CHINA: Xinjiang - Imams and mosque education under state control
The imam of the central mosque in the town of Turpan, north east of China's Xinjiang region, admitted to Forum 18 News Service in early September that the Chinese authorities name all imams to local mosques. Imams also have to attend regular meetings of the national religious committees at their town administration, where they are told what they can do and are ordered to preach peace and condemn terrorism in their sermons. Local adult Muslims, mainly ethnic Uighurs, can learn about their faith only in certain mosques where the imam has gained special approval, while children are banned. "The authorities instruct us to tell parents that their children must complete their education before they can start to attend mosque," the imam reported, though Forum 18 observed some children in Turpan's mosques at Friday prayers.
14 September 2004
RUSSIA: Increasing crackdown on Muslim "extremist" books
Muslims have complained to Forum 18 News Service of increased scrutiny of their literature, often by "specialists" who know nothing of Islam. Among reasons given for banning an eighteenth century book by the Arabian founder of Wahhabism, a Moscow court ruled in April that it "disputes the truth" of atheism, Sufism and monasticism. After confiscating religious literature from two Muslim communities in the Urals in 2002, officials "didn't find anything which would form the basis of a criminal case - they were prayer books, introductions to Islam and commentaries on the Koran," one leader told Forum 18. Accusations that a Muslim community is "extremist" – and therefore liable for banning under Russia's 2002 extremism law – reportedly often originate from rival Muslim jurisdictions, and are taken up by the FSB secret police and prosecutors. "The law is very frequently used by officials as a convenient instrument for exerting pressure on Muslims," Sheikh Nafigulla Ashirov of the Spiritual Directorate of Muslims of Asian Russia told Forum 18.
13 September 2004
CHINA: Xinjiang - Mongolian minority isolated from fellow-Buddhists abroad
While ethnic Mongolian Buddhists in China's Xinjiang-Uighur autonomous region say they can generally practise their faith without serious government pressure, some told Forum 18 News Service in the Bortala-Mongolian autonomous prefecture that maintaining contact with fellow Buddhists abroad is almost impossible. They said all visits by lamas from Mongolia require special permission, while they cannot visit foreign Buddhist centres. They added that portraits of the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, are banned in temples.
10 September 2004
TURKMENISTAN: Baptists raided and Jehovah's Witnesses reject presidential portraits
In the third known set of raids on religious communities in August, police interrogated and threatened members of a Baptist church in the western town of Balkanabad, warning Nikolai Matsenko that any further unregistered services in his home will lead to fines. Meanwhile a Jehovah's Witness elder told Forum 18 News Service from the capital Ashgabad that if his faith gets registration, it will reject official demands made of other faiths to hang the country's flag and a portrait of the president where it worships. "These are unacceptable demands," he declared. Forum 18 has been unable to get confirmation of a 5 September report that President Saparmurat Niyazov ordered the registration procedure for religious organisations to be tightened up once more.
9 September 2004
CHINA: Xinjiang - Security service investigation followed Orthodox priest's deportation
Kazakhstan-based Russian Orthodox priest Fr Vianor Ivanov had visited China's north-western Xinjiang region to serve the local Orthodox who have no priests, but in December 2003 was detained by Chinese customs, was interrogated for a week, had his religious literature confiscated and was deported. "They questioned me for five hours a day. The special services representatives proved to be amazingly well-informed," Fr Ivanov told Forum 18 News Service. Local Orthodox told Forum 18 in Xinjiang in early September that virtually all the Orthodox believers in the city of Ghulja were questioned by the security services about Fr Ivanov's activity. In Ghulja the Orthodox can at least meet for prayers in church without a priest, but in another Xinjiang town, Tacheng, local Russian Orthodox have had no success so far in applying to rebuild their church.
7 September 2004
BELARUS: Was Baptist fine an "exception"?
Although unregistered religious communities still face intermittent fines for religious activities, Protestants in Belarus have told Forum 18 News Service that a fine imposed in January on Baptist Union member Yuri Denishchik for holding a religious meeting in a private home was an "exception". They say that ahead of October's parliamentary elections, the authorities are not currently interfering in services, open-air evangelistic meetings and youth camps held by registered Protestant communities. "There are a lot of active Protestants in Belarus and President Lukashenko can't afford to alienate them right now," one source told Forum 18. He assumed there to be "some kind of instruction not to touch Protestants at the moment". But senior Baptist pastor Gennadi Brutsky told Forum 18 that problems persist, though so far they have been solved through compromises.
2 September 2004
BELARUS: Baptists to lose property after Easter hospital visit
Two Baptists are set to have personal property confiscated - in one case a car - while a third is having his pay docked after the three visited a hospital at Easter to sing hymns and hand out New Testaments, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Local regional religious affairs official Vladimir Klevtsov told Forum 18 that the Baptists had broken the law because - amongst other violations - they did not get the hospital authorities' permission to hold "a mass event with music and give out literature". Their other offences included the fact that two of the Baptists are from Brest, which is outside the region where the hospital is located, and that they do not belong to a registered church. Asked by Forum 18 what the legal position is for individual Belarusian believers wishing to visit or give religious literature to hospital patients, Klevtsov said that he knew of no such precedent, as "we normally get requests only from registered religious organisations."
2 September 2004
COMMENTARY: Away with legal discrimination - Serbia shouldn't follow Austria
The Serbian draft law on religion follows Austria's hastily passed 1998 law in dividing religious communities into different categories with differing legal rights, thus institutionalising religious discrimination, comments Dr. Reinhard Kohlhofer, an Austrian lawyer specialising in religious freedom, in this personal commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. The Austrian law is a bad example for Serbia to follow, Dr. Kohlhofer argues, having been severely criticised by international lawyers, and also being the subject of a European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case, with a decision expected in the next few months. In a 1993 case involving Greece, the ECtHR ruled that "freedom of thought, conscience and religion is one of the foundations of a democratic society" and that "the pluralism indissociable from a democratic society .. depends on it." Dr. Kohlhofer goes on to state that there is no justification for states to legally discriminate between or against religious communities, and that democracy demands nothing less than the elimination of all forms of legal discrimination.
30 August 2004
UZBEKISTAN: Is headscarf ban "enlightened" Islam?
Insisting that all women who wear a Muslim headscarf (the hijab) have links with terrorists, the authorities in Lagman, part of Karshi in southern Uzbekistan, have banned the public wearing of the hijab, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. City authorities have claimed to Forum 18 that "anyone in Uzbekistan can wear whatever they consider appropriate," even though Uzbekistan's religion law bans the public wearing of undefined "religious clothing", which attacks both Muslims and Hare Krishna devotees. Abdurakhman Erkayev, head of the city's secretariat for social and economic issues went on to tell Forum 18 that "We have asked the mahalla authorities to explain to people that the essence of Islam in Uzbekistan has never been distinguished by fanaticism and extremism. We feel that it is very important to promote this form of "enlightened" Islam."