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 October 2003
UZBEKISTAN: Perpetual raids on village Baptist church
Almost two months after eight church members were sentenced for their activity with the church, Forum 18 has been unable to find out from officials why they are still preventing a local Baptist church from meeting for worship in the village of Khalkabad in Namangan region. "We are doing this at the request of the Baptists' parents, who are unhappy that their children have changed their faith," local police officer Bahtier (who refused to give his full name) claimed to Forum 18 News Service. "Police officers come to virtually every meeting we hold," Aleksandr Tyan – one of five church members imprisoned for ten days in August - told Forum 18.
8 October 2003
BELARUS: Obstacles to obtaining new or old worship buildings
Religious communities often face difficulties building new places of worship or recovering those confiscated during the Soviet period, Forum 18 News Service has learnt as part of an extensive investigation into how religious communities function under restrictive laws and regulations. With ten Full Gospel churches unable to meet for worship in the capital Minsk, church leader Aleksandr Sakovich planned to build a social centre where services could also be held. "But in May 2002 – at the very last minute – we were refused permission," he told Forum 18 News Service. The 20,000 US dollars the church had spent on plans were not returned. Greek Catholics in Brest were forced to build a church as a private house, only turning it into a church as it was finished. "If we had proceeded according to the law, we wouldn't have got anywhere," Fr Igor Kondrasev told Forum 18.
8 October 2003
BELARUS: Obstacles to religious events outside the home
With all outdoor religious events requiring advance permission from the local authorities, some regions allow them while others are hostile. "If our relations are OK with the local authority we write a request for permission to perform an outdoor baptism," Pentecostal assistant bishop of Grodno region Naum Sakhanchuk told Forum 18 News Service. If not, he added, there was no point in writing. "I'll be refused – they'll say that the river is polluted, or that swimming is prohibited in the lake." Since being banned in the capital Minsk in 2000, the Catholics' annual Corpus Christi procession has to take place away from main streets "to make sure it is not seen", yet in Grodno region the Catholics report no difficulties obtaining permission for such processions. The difficulty of renting public venues varies – in 2002 all cinemas in Grodno were banned from renting to religious groups.
7 October 2003
BELARUS: Home worship by registered groups illegal
With the law banning registered religious communities from using residential properties as their legal addresses without specific authorisation, the many such communities that meet in private homes now face the risk of failing to gain re-registration or even being liquidated by court order, especially as transferring property from residential to non-residential use is very difficult. Forum 18 News Service has learnt that Minsk City Council warned Mount Tabor Baptist Church in January that failure to change its legal address from a residential property might result in the church being liquidated through the courts. Aleksandr Sakovich, head of the charismatic Full Gospel Church, told Forum 18 its ten registered churches in the capital – with an estimated 5,000 people – are unable to worship all together and have to meet in many smaller units in private flats. He said there have been no cases of these groups being prosecuted for doing so - "yet".
7 October 2003
BELARUS: Is home worship in small groups illegal?
Officials have given differing views of whether religious activity by groups with fewer members than the threshold of 20 required for registration is illegal. Such activity appears illegal in law and Article 193 of the Administrative Code punishes creation or leadership of an unregistered religious body. Yet Pentecostal assistant bishop Naum Sakhanchuk told Forum 18 News Service that two church members fined this summer in Brest region after being accused of leading unregistered worship have had their fines overturned. The religious affairs official in Brest region, Vasili Marchenko, told Forum 18 it was "OK" for such small unregistered religious communities to meet "as long as they don't disturb the public order". But his counterpart in Vitebsk region, Nikolai Stepanenko, maintained that it was permissible only for between three and six months prior to registration, but no longer.
6 October 2003
UZBEKISTAN: Baptist "mob" banned from worshipping
Anti-terrorist police officer Alisher Kurbanov, who banned an unregistered Baptist church in Navoi from meeting for worship, has dismissed Baptist complaints about the move. "This is not a church at all, just a religious mob," he told Forum 18 News Service. "Under Uzbek laws a church is not allowed to operate without registration, but the Baptists refuse to register." The ban came after Kurbanov confiscated books from a mobile Baptist street library on 27 September and threatened library organiser Nikolai Nikulin with criminal prosecution. Nikulin has already served a ten-day prison sentence for his work with the church. The ban on the Navoi Baptist church is the latest move to forbid the activity of unregistered Protestant churches in Uzbekistan.
3 October 2003
UZBEKISTAN: No peace for Peace Church
For the fourth time since the Peace Protestant church in Nukus in Karakalpakstan had its registration stripped from it in August 2000, the church was raided by the police during Sunday worship on 24 August and two if its leaders subsequently fined five times the minimum monthly wage. "This is not the first time that I have fined the Peace church's leaders," judge Oibek Tureyev told Forum 18 News Service. "I can only repeat to you once again that under Uzbek laws registration is compulsory." One of the two leaders fined, Khym-Mun Kim, told Forum 18 the church has repeatedly tried to regain its registration. "We are law-abiding citizens and we want to be registered but the authorities are forcing us to operate illegally."
2 October 2003
TURKMENISTAN: Religious freedom survey, October 2003
In its survey analysis of the religious freedom situation in Turkmenistan, Forum 18 News Service reports on the complete lack of freedom to practice any faith except for Sunni Islam and Russian Orthodox Christianity in a limited number of registered places of worship. All other communities - Baptist, Pentecostal, Adventist, Lutheran and other Protestants, as well as Shia Muslim, Armenian Apostolic, Jewish, Baha'i, Jehovah's Witness and Hare Krishna – are de facto banned and their activity punishable under the administrative or criminal law. Religious meetings have been broken up (with a spate of raids on Protestants and Hare Krishnas since May), believers have been threatened, detained, beaten, fined and sacked from their jobs, while homes used for worship and religious literature have been confiscated. Religious activity is overseen by the secret police's department for work with social organisations and religious groups, which recruits spies in religious communities.
2 October 2003
UZBEKISTAN: Fines to follow Protestant church closure
The deputy head of the Upper Chirchik district administration, Shukhrat Tursunbayev, has insisted he did nothing wrong in closing down an unregistered Protestant church in the village of Ahmad Yassavy on the outskirts of Tashkent. "We were acting within the law," he told Forum 18 News Service. "According to the Uzbek law on religion the activity of an unregistered religious community is forbidden." Police officers and local officials burst into the Sunday service of the Friendship Church on 7 September, took down the names of all those present, sealed the church and warned the Protestants they will be prosecuted under the Code of Administrative Offences.
1 October 2003
BELARUS: Indigenous believers resist state contact
As well as dealing with often elderly members of his parishes trying to cope with the compulsory re-registration applications, the head of the priestless Pomorye Old Orthodox Church in Belarus is facing long-standing suspicion within his Church of contact with the state. Petr Orlov cited the parish in Gomel, which refuses to submit detailed personal information required for re-registration. "They are worried that their relatives might lose their jobs as city councillors, collective farm workers or teachers," he told Forum 18 News Service. "There could be more repression and the authorities will say that we submitted those names voluntarily." Officials dislike religious groups that refuse to register. "It is very bad that they haven't decided to switch to civilised forms of performing religious rites," the senior religious official in Brest region complained of Baptists belonging to the Council of Churches, who refuse to register on principle.
1 October 2003
BELARUS: Old Believers cry SOS
As religious organisations across Belarus face compulsory re-registration under last year's restrictive new religion law, the head of the 50,000-strong priestless Old Believer Church has complained that the whole procedure is unnecessary and unduly burdensome. "Who needs this? We don't," Petr Orlov told Forum 18 News Service in Polotsk. He must now compile a new charter for his Church and arrange a synod to approve it, before submitting the final re-registration application to the State Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs in Minsk. Many of the 38 priestless Old Believer parishes are dominated by people in their 70s or 80s, and Orlov fears many will be unable to complete the necessary paperwork. "There's no one to write their charters."
30 September 2003
UZBEKISTAN: "Protestants cannot work as teachers," ideology official declares
An ideology official in the town administration of Muinak in the autonomous Karakalpakstan republic who helped have a Protestant sacked as a sports teacher in a local school last July after he refused to renounce his faith has explained why. "I am convinced that a Protestant may not work as a school teacher in Uzbekistan," Jalgas Saidmuratov told Forum 18 News Service. "Our state is moving towards Islam." The sacking of Lepesbai Omarov violates Uzbekistan's constitution and religion law, which proclaim Uzbekistan a secular state and outlaw discrimination on religious grounds. Karakalpakstan is a religious freedom black spot, with only one non-Islamic religious community that has been able to gain registration.