TURKMENISTAN: State officials' dual role as clergy to suppress freedom of religion or belief

Some state officials in Turkmenistan's Gengesh (Council) for Religious Affairs, which restricts freedom of religion or belief for all, have a dual role as clergy within religious communities. This was most recently demonstrated in late September 2009, Forum 18 News Service notes. Most if not all the senior Muslim clergy given new appointments then were also officials in the Gengesh. The new Chief Mufti, Gurban Haitliev, has a staff position at the central Gengesh, and was previously head of the Lebap regional Gengesh as well as the region's Chief Imam. Four of the officials appointed to head regional branches of the Gengesh were also appointed as new regional Chief Imams, officials have told Forum 18. In their dual role as Gengesh officials and religious community leaders they work with other state agencies such as the MSS secret police. Meanwhile, residents of the capital Ashgabat have told Forum 18 that the University's [Islamic] Theology Department building has been demolished without warning. Gengesh Deputy Chair Nurmukhamed Gurbanov told Forum 18 that "there are no problems in Turkmenistan."

8 October 2009

KAZAKHSTAN: Restrictive laws recycled

Kazakhstan's proposed new Administrative Code – which continues existing punishments for exercising freedom of religion or belief – has reached the country's Parliament today (8 October), Forum 18 News Service has found. Also, the new National Human Rights Action Plan has revealed the authorities' intent to introduce in 2011 a Law "on the introduction of amendments and additions to legislation on the guarantee of freedom of thought, conscience and religion". This is a similar title to a highly restrictive 2008-9 draft Law condemned by many Kazakh and international human rights defenders, and an OSCE Legal Opinion. Ninel Fokina of the Almaty Helsinki Committee told Forum 18 that "I believe they will draw on the previous text – this text is not dead, it's just sleeping at the moment." Vera Tkachenko of the Legal Policy Research Centre told Forum 18 that it was important for civil society to monitor the Government's legislative plans and engage in constructive dialogue.

6 October 2009

KAZAKHSTAN: Why do the authorities want to close a rehabilitation centre?

Kazakhstan has ordered that a rehabilitation centre for people suffering from drug and alcohol addiction be permanently closed, and has fined its Protestant Christian founder, Sergei Mironov, Forum 18 News Service has learned. The Centre, whose residents attended it voluntarily and could leave when they wished, was raided by 25 officials carrying sub-machine guns from the ordinary police, KNB secret police, and the Sanitary-Epidemiological Service. During the raid one resident was found by police handcuffed in a cellar, and both administrative and criminal charges were brought. Mironov, as well as then current and visiting former residents during the raid, strongly dispute that the resident was handcuffed and placed in the cellar by the Centre. They state that "literally minutes before the police came to our building" the man had breakfast with residents. Despite the seriousness of the criminal charge - "deprivation of liberty" - brought against Mironov, an official of the Regional Prosecutor's Office played down the seriousness of the case. "Mironov may be just fined, and go free," he told Forum 18.

30 September 2009

TURKMENISTAN: Two more Jehovah's Witness conscientious objectors imprisoned

Two young Jehovah's Witnesses have joined two other Jehovah's Witnesses already incarcerated in the labour camp in Seydi after being sentenced in July for refusing compulsory military service on grounds of religious conscience, Jehovah's Witnesses told Forum 18 News Service. Shadurdi Uchetov, who is 21, received the maximum two-year term, while 19-year-old Akmurat Egendurdiev received an 18-month term. Both had their appeals rejected in their absence. Jehovah's Witnesses complain three of the four have been obstructed from lodging further appeals. Egendurdiev was tried after being summoned to Dashoguz town administration, where "three elderly men tried to persuade him to change his mind" about his refusal to serve in the army, Jehovah's Witnesses told Forum 18. Vyacheslav Kalataevsky, a former Baptist inmate of the Seydi camp, told Forum 18 it is in the desert and close to several chemical works, and conditions are not easy. "It is like something from the Middle Ages."

29 September 2009

KAZAKHSTAN: Officials who raid religious communities "merely fulfilling their duty"

Murad Ashkhayanov, an officer of the Police's Department for the Struggle with Terrorism in Semey, defended the police raid on the town's Ahmadi Muslim community in which he participated. However, he refused to tell Forum 18 News Service why the community was twice raided, and members asked when and why they joined the community and how their beliefs differ from those of other Muslims. Likewise officials who took part in raiding two Baptist churches in Kostanai Region rejected suggestions these were raids, despite police questioning of participants, filming against their wishes, searches of the premises and pressure to write statements. Talgat Nagumanov of the Kostanai Regional Justice Department told Forum 18 he and his colleagues "were merely fulfilling their duty". One of the pastors was today (29 September) fined the equivalent of two months' average wages locally "if you didn't spend anything on food or clothes for your family".

28 September 2009

TAJIKISTAN: "It seems that reading the Bible together is now a criminal offence"

Hamzaali Pulodov, the religious affairs official in the northern town of Khujand, has defended the criminal cases against up to 17 Jehovah's Witnesses on charges of inciting inter-religious hatred, which carry a sentence of between five and nine years' imprisonment. "When people break the law they are prosecuted," he told Forum 18 News Service. He says books confiscated during a June raid on a flat where they were meeting had "propagandised against the Constitution and incited enmity between citizens", but admitted he has not read them. Prosecutors and the NSC secret police refused to say how many Jehovah's Witnesses face criminal charges and when cases will go to court. Zafar Rakhimov, who is among those facing prosecution, told Forum 18 he believes two or three of their leaders will be brought to court. "Prosecutor Muzaffarov told me that the accusation is based on the fact that we interpret the Bible differently from Protestants. It seems that reading the Bible together is now a criminal offence." Jehovah's Witnesses are banned in Tajikistan.

24 September 2009

UZBEKISTAN: "They can drink tea – that's not forbidden"

Following 15-day jail terms handed down to two Baha'is in Tashkent, one of the two, Timur Chekparbayev, who was subsequently expelled from Uzbekistan, told Forum 18 News Service that he harbours no ill feelings. "I don't want to complain – I don't blame anyone." The authorities accused the two of missionary activity and proselytism, following a police raid on a meeting for teenage Baha'is. Chekparbayev stated that these claims are unfounded, and pointed out that the meeting was a regular activity which took place with the permission of both the authorities and the parents of the young people involved. Asked whether religious communities have to inform the authorities when they hold any religious event or drink a cup of tea together, Akram Nematov of the Justice Ministry told Forum 18 that "They can drink tea – that's not forbidden, but they must inform the Department when they hold religious education with young people." The Baha'i community is shocked and mystified by the raid and the detentions.

23 September 2009

KAZAKHSTAN: Religious freedom survey, September 2009

In its survey analysis of freedom of religion or belief in Kazakhstan, Forum 18 News Service finds continuing violations of human rights commitments. The country will be 2010 Chairperson-in-Office of the OSCE, and faces the UN Universal Periodic Review process in February 2010. Serious violations Forum 18 has documented include: attacks on religious freedom by officials ranging from President Nursultan Nazarbaev down to local officials; literature censorship; state-sponsored encouragement of religious intolerance; legal restrictions on freedom of religion or belief; raids, interrogations, threats and fines affecting both registered and unregistered religious communities and individuals; unfair trials; the jailing of a few particularly disfavoured religious believers; restrictions on the social and charitable work of religious communities; close police and KNB secret police surveillance of religious communities; and attempts to deprive religious communities of their property. These violations interlock with violations of other fundamental human rights, such as freedom of expression and of association.

17 September 2009

UZBEKISTAN: Muslim and Christian worship attacked

Uzbekistan continues to take action against peaceful meetings for worship, Forum 18 News Service has learned. Children in Namangan Region are banned from attending night prayers in mosques during Ramadan, the Deputy Hokim telling Forum 18 that "children of school age should not attend religious meetings at all." In Bukhara region, an imam confirmed to Forum 18 that women are banned from attending Friday prayers in mosques, claiming that "women are not to attend mosques according to Hanafi teachings". Raids continue on Protestant worship, with prosecutions of some congregation members and church leaders. After one such raid, police claimed that they had confiscated Muslim and Jehovah's Witness literature, but the Protestants maintain to Forum 18 that police invented this claim. Senior Lieutenant Farrukh Abduganiyev, Inspector of Crime Prevention in Almalyk, and Major Shavkat Aminov, Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, were among 18 officers who took part in this raid. Six of the Church's members are due to be tried for unregistered religious activity tomorrow (18 September).

10 September 2009

UZBEKISTAN: Baptist leader and colleagues face up to three years' imprisonment

Pavel Peichev, the head of Uzbekistan's Baptist Union, and two colleagues face up to three years in prison each when they go on trial under criminal charges of tax evasion and teaching children Christianity against their and their parents' will at a Baptist-run summer camp. The three have rejected the accusations against them, according to the indictment seen by Forum 18 News Service. One of the accused, Dmitri Pitirimov, told Forum 18 that as a religious organisation the Union is exempt from tax. As the leader of the Joy children's camp, he insists that two parents cited in the indictment testifying against them knew "perfectly well" that they were sending their children to a Baptist camp, where the children would be taught the Bible, and signed documents to confirm their children's attendance. He said one boy cited in the indictment had decided not to come this year as the Prosecutor's Office had warned him it was an "illegal" camp. Begzod Kodyrov of the state Religious Affairs Committee refused to discuss the case with Forum 18, as did officials at Tashkent City Prosecutor's Office. The trial date has not been announced.

7 September 2009

KYRGYZSTAN: New Law to introduce sweeping controls on religious education?

The draft text of a proposed new Law on Religious Education and Educational Institutions seen by Forum 18 News Service would impose sweeping controls on who can open religious educational institutions, would ban all but approved and licensed institutions and ban individuals from seeking religious education abroad without state approval. Yet Kanybek Osmonaliev, Head of the State Agency for Religious Affairs, and his deputy, Kanatbek Murzakhalilov, adamantly denied that if adopted it would restrict religious education. "The Law will not be restrictive but promote orderliness in the sphere of religious education," Osmonaliev told Forum 18. Two Muslim leaders declined to comment on the draft, or on Osmonaliev's claims that there are "too many" Islamic schools in Kyrgyzstan and the number needs to be reduced. Baptists, Lutherans, Ahmadiyya Muslims and Baha'is expressed concerns over the draft Law's provisions.

31 August 2009

UZBEKISTAN: Sentenced "only for practising religion outside the framework" of state-controlled Islam

Two mass trials which ended in July have brought to 47 the number of followers of the late Turkish Muslim theologian Said Nursi known by Forum 18 News Service to have been sentenced to long prison terms under various articles of the Criminal Code in Uzbekistan in 2009. A total of 21 men – all in their twenties and thirties - received sentences of between eleven and five years' imprisonment at separate trials in Samarkand and Khorezm. Human rights activist Surat Ikramov told Forum 18 the men in Samarkand were brutally beaten by the secret police in pre-trial detention. Officials refused to discuss with Forum 18 why they were sentenced. "An analysis of the indictments and the verdicts on these cases shows that the guilt of the accused is not proven and that they are sentenced for religious extremism only for practising religion outside the framework of the traditional stream of Islam propagated and controlled by the state," two human rights groups noted.