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
9 July 2003
OSCE COMMITMENTS: OSCE MEETING ON FREEDOM OF RELIGION - A REGIONAL SURVEY
Before the OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting on Freedom of Religion or Belief on 17-18 July 2003, Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org/ surveys some of the more serious abuses of religious freedom that persist in some countries of the 55-member OSCE. Despite their binding OSCE commitments to religious freedom, in some OSCE member states believers are still fined, imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of their faith, religious services are broken up, places of worship confiscated and even destroyed, religious literature censored and religious communities denied registration.
2 July 2003
SLOVAKIA: Why can't smaller Protestant Churches or Muslims gain legal status?
Leaders of smaller Protestant Churches, Muslims and Hare Krishna devotees have complained about a bizarre provision of the country's law that renders new religious communities with fewer than 20,000 members ineligible to gain legal status as religious communities. "Unregistered communities have no legal status and cannot build places of worship," Jan Juran, director of the Culture Ministry's church affairs office, explained to Forum 18 News Service. "We want to register. This is not freedom," Pastor Gabriel Minarik, leader of the Christian Fellowships, told Forum 18. Bratislava imam Mohamad Safwan Hasna complained that the denial of registration and the inability of the community to build mosques is "very humiliating".