RUSSIA: Kaliningrad Muslim "extremist" ?

Amir Abuev, a resident of Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, is the latest Muslim to face a criminal case on "extremism"-related charges, after an 11 February FSB security service raid on his flat where local Muslims had gathered to pray the namaz (prayers). Participants told Forum 18 News Service they were questioned all night, while Abuev – a reader of the works of the late Turkish Muslim theologian Said Nursi - was detained for about 48 hours. Abuev's friends expressed concern that he – like other Muslims who read Nursi's works – could be imprisoned on "fabricated charges". FSB officers told the media Abuev belongs to the banned Nurdzhular movement. Like other Muslims who read Nursi's works, Abuev denied to Forum 18 that such a movement exists. The FSB security service investigator leading the case, Lieutenant Artyom Voychenko, declined to discuss the case. "I won't give you any information," he told Forum 18. The FSB security service also confiscated all Abuev's literature and DVDs with religious material in an illegal way.

29 February 2012

KAZAKHSTAN: "Illegal use" of property, meetings for worship stopped, independent mosque pressured

Kazakhstan has started moves to close down an independent mosque, Forum 18 News Service has learned. State officials have also re-started using claims of allegedly "illegal use" of property to harass religious communities the authorities dislike. For example the mosque of the Ahmadi Muslim Community in the Medeu District of Almaty, and the church of Grace Presbyterian Church in a suburb of Turkestan in South Kazakhstan Region, are both facing challenges from local Prosecutor's Offices as to whether they can be used as places of worship. The action against Grace Church was initiated by the KNB secret police. The leaders of both communities have been told by both regional Departments of the Agency of Religious Affairs (ARA) and Prosecutor's Office officials to stop worship in the buildings while investigations are conducted. Officials have stated – contrary to the Religion Law - that homes may not be used for worship, and have also used the Land Code to argue that communities' own places of worship are not places of worship. No official Forum 18 has spoken to could say how the authorities will interpret the concept of place of worship in the Religion Law. Almaty's Ahmadi Muslim community has also been targeted by the state-controlled mass media, and the ARA has also been supporting the establishment of more so-called "anti-sect centres".

27 February 2012

BELARUS: Raids, threats, warnings for religious meetings

Religious communities in various parts of Belarus have faced visits, threats and warnings for holding meetings for worship which officials regard as illegal. On one Sunday in January, officials visited three Pentecostal services in separate villages. Pastor Vasili Raptsevich – who led worship in a church-owned house in a village in Brest Region for about ten disabled church members unable to travel to the main congregation in a nearby town - was summoned to the police station. There he was told that he had violated the law by conducting a religious service away from its legal address without permission from the Regional Executive Committee. Police threatened him with court proceedings and threatened to strip his Pentecostal church of state registration, he told Forum 18 News Service. In February, police in the capital Minsk – among them masked riot police - launched a mass raid on a cultural meeting being held in a Pentecostal pastor's home. 34 participants were taken to a police station, but were released two hours later without any explanation and without any official record being drawn up. Police refused to comment to Forum 18.

22 February 2012

KAZAKHSTAN: Small religious communities "banned under new Law"

Kazakhstan's senior state religious affairs official, Kairat Lama Sharif, has described the 13 per cent fall in the number of registered religious communities as a "positive dynamic" after 579 small religious groups (with fewer than 50 adult citizen members) were stripped of registration. He said the number of registered communities "will probably" fall further following the new Religion Law. In a letter seen by Forum 18 News Service, Akmola Region's senior state religious affairs official wrote to District officials that "the activity of small religious groups in the territory of Kazakhstan is now banned since there is no such form of religious association of citizens". Regional officials of the state Agency of Religious Affairs are now warning such groups that they must stop any activity. Imams of independent mosques and Grace, Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist leaders have been summoned to be stripped of registration and warned not to meet. "Now our believers are afraid each time they gather for worship," one church leader told Forum 18.

21 February 2012

BELARUS: Why is state Financial Investigation Committee investigating a priest?

A Belarusian regional state Financial Investigation Committee is examining the activities of Fr Vyacheslav Barok, a Catholic priest in the northern Vitebsk Region. Committee officials have told him that he is suspected of evading tax on alleged earnings of about 1,000,000 Euros from pilgrimages he and a number of volunteers organise – but they will not put the allegations in writing to Fr Barok, or clarify them to Forum 18 News Service. Fr Barok strongly denies the allegations, which were made on the basis of an anonymous letter officials claim they were sent. The Financial Investigation Committee has also been questioning some of the pilgrims. One pilgrim questioned – who had been on two foreign pilgrimages – told Forum 18 that she was asked if Fr Barok made her donate money for the church or demanded extra money during the trips. "It was silly to assume such things, they are not true," the pilgrim indignantly stated. Forum 18 contacted one local tourist agency, and found that they charged about twice as much for a tour similar to a pilgrimage organised by Fr Barok.

20 February 2012

TURKMENISTAN: Pastor freed, other religious prisoners of conscience remain jailed

Nearly 18 months after his August 2010 arrest in Turkmenistan, Protestant pastor Ilmurad Nurliev was among a group of about 230 prisoners freed under amnesty on 18 February from a labour camp. "He and the other prisoners were brought by special police train to Mary, and we rushed to the station to meet him," his wife Maya told Forum 18 News Service. "His release was so unexpected we forgot to get flowers. It is such a joy I can't tell you." He was given a four-year prison sentence in October 2010 on charges of swindling, which members of his congregation insist were fabricated to punish him for leading his unregistered church. Pastor Nurliev only learnt he would be amnestied on the previous evening. "I want to thank you and everyone else who supported me and helped my release", he told Forum 18. He will have to live under restrictions, reporting weekly to the police. It appears that none of the six Jehovah's Witness prisoners or the two Jehovah's Witnesses serving suspended sentences were included in the amnesty. Pastor Nurliev expressed concern over several Muslim prisoners in Seydi who might have been imprisoned for their faith.

16 February 2012

TURKMENISTAN: "Show trial" for conscientious objector

At the trial of the latest Jehovah's Witness conscientious objector Akmurad Nurjanov in a courtroom in Turkmenistan's capital Ashgabad, senior school students were present to witness his one-year suspended prison sentence being handed down. "Taking them to the trial appears to have been designed as a warning of what will happen to the young men if they refuse military service," one Jehovah's Witness told Forum 18 News Service, calling the event a "show trial". It remains unknown what restrictions Nurjanov will have to live under during his sentence. Five other Jehovah's Witnesses are serving labour camp sentences of between 18 months and two years for refusing compulsory military service. The day after Nurjanov's sentence, another Ashgabad court rejected fellow Jehovah's Witness Vladimir Nuryllayev's appeal in his absence against his four-year prison term on charges of "spreading pornography". Community members say the charges were fabricated to punish him for his faith. The judge screamed at his fellow believers to leave the court house, Jehovah's Witnesses told Forum 18.

15 February 2012

TURKEY: "Denigrating religious values" - A way to silence critics of religion?

The prosecutions of - among others - a cartoonist, a contributor to a website, and the publisher of a diary have raised concerns about how the complementary human rights of freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief can be exercised in Turkey, including the religious freedom right not to believe. All the prosecutions relate to questioning or criticism of all religions, or Islam specifically, from an atheist perspective. Article 216 (3) of the Criminal Code ("Denigrating the religious values of a group") is the legal basis of the prosecutions. The manner in which Article 216 (3) is applied is of great importance in enabling Turkey to implement its international human rights obligations, Forum 18 News Service notes. Restrictions must not be applied "recklessly", as human rights lawyer Orhan Kemal Cengiz puts it. For this silences critics of religions or beliefs, and the right to make such criticism is an integral part of the right to freedom of religion or belief.

14 February 2012

KAZAKHSTAN: First known use of harsh new punishments

In Kazakhstan's first known use of expanded and increased punishments for exercising freedom of religion or belief, a Baptist in eastern Kazakhstan has been fined what local people estimate to be a year and a half's average local wages for leading an unregistered religious organisation. Shoe-repairer and father of ten Aleksei Asetov was fined 485,400 Tenge (18,725 Norwegian Kroner, 2,486 Euros or 3,273 US Dollars), for leading the small congregation that meets in a fellow church member's home, under a provision introduced in new Amending and Religion Laws local Baptists told Forum 18 News Service. The judge also banned the congregation. Elsewhere, a Pentecostal church in Petropavl in North Kazakhstan has twice been raided by the police Department for the Fight against Extremism, Separatism and Terrorism and a local official of the Agency of Religious Affairs (ARA). They confiscated New Testaments, other books, and DVDs for censorship, and want the Church punished for leaving the books on a table about ten metres (10 yards) from the entrance to a hall they rent for worship. Other fines for exercising religious freedom without state permission continue, one Baptist having been fined for unregistered worship meetings following a police operation called "Operation Legal Order".

13 February 2012

UZBEKISTAN: "We treat everybody equally"

The day after a "brutal" raid by Uzbekistan's ordinary police and NSS secret police on two homes of Jehovah's Witnesses in the capital Tashkent, three Jehovah's Witness men were each given 15-day prison terms and fined. Jehovah's Witnesses noted to Forum 18 News Service that this is the first time people have been both given short-term prison sentences and fined in the same case. Four women detained in the raids were each given heavy fines. Also, police and the NSS secret police raided the Sunday morning service of a Baptist congregation in Chirchik. Charges are being prepared against some Baptists. Mahalla Chair Nurmina Askarova, who took part in the raid, told Forum 18 that "we told them to attend another church in Chirchik, which is registered." She also claimed that "we treat everybody equally, both Christians and Muslims", stating that "we closed a mosque in our mahalla, for instance, and asked worshippers to attend a mosque which is both bigger and registered in the neighbouring district".

10 February 2012

UZBEKISTAN: Renounce your beliefs or you won't be released

Two Jehovah's Witness prisoners of conscience near the end of their jail sentences in Uzbekistan, Olim Turaev and Sergei Ivanov, are due to face new criminal trials "possibly within days". If convicted, they could remain in prison for up to a further five years each, Jehovah's Witnesses told Forum 18 News Service. On 7 or 8 February prosecutors completed the cases against them on charges of disobeying orders while in Tashkent Region's Tavaksay Prison, which under the law gives a court 15 days to begin the trials. The two – jailed in 2008 for four and three and a half years respectively - began their sentences in open labour camps. But in 2009 they were both moved to "more punitive general regime prison" in Tavaksay after they asked the authorities to be amnestied. While serving their sentences, the two – along with another Jehovah's Witness prisoner of conscience - were in summer 2011 "visited by a prison official and told that they would not be released at the end of their terms unless they renounced their faith", Forum 18 was told. Officials have refused to discuss the cases with Forum 18.

8 February 2012

TURKMENISTAN: Is publishing religious poetry a crime?

After Protestant Begjan Shirmedov tried to print copies of a small book of his religious poetry, a local religious affairs official waiting for him at the printing shop took him to the Police 6th Department, responsible for counter-terrorism and organised crime work. There the 74-year-old poet was questioned for six hours, forced to write a statement and banned from travelling outside his home region of Dashoguz in northern Turkmenistan while his case is investigated, Protestants told Forum 18. Separately, other local Protestants in Dashoguz have been questioned over printing religious materials. It remains unclear if any will face charges. Turkmenistan imposes strict censorship on religious literature. Meanwhile, the appeal of Jehovah's Witness Vladimir Nuryllayev against his four-year prison sentence is due at Ashgabad City Court on 14 February. His fellow Jehovah's Witnesses vigorously deny charges he was "distributing pornography" and insist he is being punished for his faith. Seven other religious prisoners of conscience are known to be held.