UZBEKISTAN: Almost incommunicado in Investigation Prison

Relatives of Tajik citizen Zuboyd Mirzorakhimov have told Forum 18 News Service that he remains almost incommunicado in an isolation cell in Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent. A meeting with his wife in January – which would have been the first since his September 2013 arrest – was blocked, the day after his 38th birthday. Although she had travelled from Tajikistan, prison officials refused to explain why she could not meet him. Hopes Mirzorakhimov would be amnestied from a five-year jail sentence appear to have been dashed. His "crime" was to have had Muslim sermons in his mobile phone. Another prisoner given the same term on similar grounds - Zoirjon Mirzayev – has been allowed a visit from relatives in prison in Karshi. And another person accused of entering Uzbekistan with "illegal" religious material in his phone, Uzbek citizen Ikhtiyor Yagmurov, has been punished instead under the Administrative Code with a fine. Serious concerns remain over both the torture of Muslim prisoners of conscience and health of Muslim and Christian prisoners of conscience jailed for exercising their freedom of religion or belief.

4 July 2014

UZBEKISTAN: "Legally" preventing human rights

Uzbekistan is formalising harsher restriction than those which formally already exist, Forum 18 News Service notes. A new Prevention Law, which enters into legal force on 15 August, automatically places people convicted by the courts on a Preventive Register, subjecting them to a variety of police "preventative measures" for one year or more. Many agencies are able to initiate placing individuals on the Preventive Register, from health care to nature protection agencies, allowing many possibilities for officials to arbitrarily arrange for people to stay on the Register for many years. The Law also gives mahalla committees wide powers to among other things with police "take measures to prevent the activity of unregistered religious organisations". It also "legalises unofficial informers" a legal expert from Tashkent noted to Forum 18. Heavy punishments continue to be imposed on people exercising freedom of religion or belief, a police officer in a recent raid insisting to Forum 18 that people "are allowed to gather and talk about their religion only in their communities' legally-registered addresses, but not outside those buildings or in private homes".

27 June 2014

CRIMEA: Old and new place of worship problems, Greek Catholic clergy restrictions

Crimean officials deny that a decree which will lead to a substantial rise in the rent the Kiev Patriarchate Ukrainian Orthodox Church pays on its nearly 20-year-old cathedral in the Crimean capital Simferopol is a targeted move. "There is no discrimination in relation to this particular church," Lyudmila Khorozova of Crimea's Property Fund, which owns the building, claimed to Forum 18 News Service. She was unable to explain why no decrees have been adopted relating to other religious communities. Sevastopol's Roman Catholic community is less optimistic since March about being able to regain its historic church. It lodged a European Court of Human Rights case over earlier denials in 2001. Greek Catholic priests from elsewhere in Ukraine can serve in Crimea only for three months in any four. All 1,546 religious communities with Ukrainian registration will have to re-register under Russian law.

26 June 2014

CRIMEA: Raids, violence, threats – but what protection do victims get?

About 30 armed Russian security agency officers raided a madrassah (Islamic religious school) near the Crimean capital Simferopol on 24 June, Forum 18 News Service notes. The staff and students were from the Crimean Tatar minority. Three weeks earlier, a mob attacked a Kiev Patriarchate Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its congregation on a military base in Perevalnoe. The mob then changed the locks on the building to prevent it being used by the congregation. Jehovah's Witnesses have noted "a significant increase in violence" against them since March. One such attack resulted in Nikolai Martsenyuk (who was peacefully sharing his beliefs on the street) being kicked unconscious and needing hospital treatment. "Despite repeated calls on the emergency number, no police officer came to the scene of the offence," Jehovah's Witnesses told Forum 18. Crimean authorities, including the Interior Ministry and Prosecutor's Office, have refused to tell Forum 18 what action police have taken to protect victims from threats and violence, and to identify and punish attackers.

19 June 2014

RUSSIA: Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims face up to six years' imprisonment

Four of the 16 Jehovah's Witnesses on criminal trial in Taganrog and both the Muslim women whose criminal trial in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk is imminent face up to six years' imprisonment each if convicted. All have been accused of organising an "extremist" religious community banned by Russian courts, Forum 18 News Service notes. The criminal cases against Yelena Gerasimova and Tatyana Guzenko, Muslims who read Said Nursi's works, reached Krasnoyarsk's Soviet District Court on 29 May, but are being transferred to a Magistrate's Court. Meanwhile, several further Muslim women in Naberezhnyye Chelny have been issued warnings for allegedly attending an "underground madrassah", a fellow Muslim in the city told Forum 18. Officials "are harassing us on the quiet", one Muslim complained to Forum 18. "We are not left alone."

17 June 2014

KAZAKHSTAN: Teacher and bookseller fined, imam's fine overturned

Larisa Lange, a teacher, and commercial bookseller Gulnar Sandibayeva have each been fined one month's average wages for exercising their right to freedom of religion and expression. Lange hosts meetings of a Baptist community in her home without state permission, while Sandibayeva had sold Islamic books in her shop without the compulsory state licence for selling religious materials. Kordai District Prosecutor Zhasulan Yelamanov refused to explain to Forum 18 News Service why his officials had brought the case against Lange. Zhilioi District Prosecutor Aslanbek Zholanov defended the prosecution against Sandibayeva. Asked why Kazakhstan imposes censorship on religious literature, Zholanov told Forum 18: "It's not censorship. But religious literature can only be sold in approved places." By contrast, Almaty-based Imam Yerkebulan Nukasov had an earlier fine of two months' average wages for leading an unregistered Muslim Board mosque overturned on appeal.

12 June 2014

BELARUS: "I want to read the last rites over my son's body"

Tamara Selyun, mother of executed prisoner Pavel Selyun, is battling to try to recover his body. "I want to read the last rites over my son's body and bury him as a Christian," she told Forum 18 News Service. "But I was told that the body could not be handed over." In a letter seen by Forum 18, prison head Colonel Vikenty Varikash told her: "Bodies are not handed over for burial and the place of burial is not communicated." Both she and Lyubov Kovaleva – who has been seeking the return of her executed son's body since 2012 - separately insisted to Forum 18 that they are not going to give up. Meanwhile, the authorities have rejected applications for two foreign Catholic priests to be allowed to serve in Belarus. One has been a parish priest in Mogilev for seven years. Asked what parishioners should do now that the state has deprived them of their parish priest's service, religious affairs official Vladimir Martynovsky told Forum 18: "They should pray to God." The KGB appears to have dropped its criminal case against Catholic priest Fr Vladislav Lazar.

11 June 2014

KYRGYZSTAN: "I don't see political will on higher level" to resolve burial problems

As burial problems continue for deceased non-Muslims or Muslims who have non-Muslim relatives, Orozbek Moldaliyev, Head of Kyrgyzstan's State Commission for Religious Affairs, insisted to Forum 18 News Service that the problem has already been "resolved". A recent draft of Kyrgyzstan's Concept on State Policy in the Religious Sphere 2014-20 acknowledges that the problem exists. But even a Presidential Administration official involved in drafting the Concept admits that any solutions that might be included "may not resolve all future burial problems". Bishkek-based religious expert Galina Kolodzinskaya told Forum 18 that solving this long-standing problem requires both political will "on the higher level" and new laws. "At the moment I don't see such political will on the higher level."

9 June 2014

AZERBAIJAN: Third Muslim in secret police pre-trial detention

Revan Sabzaliyev became the third Muslim who reads the works of the late Turkish theologian Said Nursi to be arrested by Azerbaijan's National Security Ministry (NSM) secret police. He was summoned to the NSM headquarters in Baku on 23 May "and was arrested right there", fellow Muslims told Forum 18 News Service. Within days, a court ordered he be held in two months' pre-trial detention. He joins two others, Eldeniz Hajiyev and Ismayil Mammadov – held by the secret police since 12 April – facing criminal prosecution for a meeting for religious education without state permission. Meanwhile, two Jehovah's Witness meetings were raided by police as "illegal" in early June, one in Gyanja and one in Mingechaur. "It wasn't a raid," Mingechaur police chief Colonel Alasgar Badalov insisted to Forum 18. Four of those present at the Gyanja meeting face large fines if found guilty at court hearings due on 17 June.

6 June 2014

KYRGYZSTAN: Complaining to local authorities about burial violations is "useless"

Kyrgyzstan's government continues its long-standing failure to ensure that people may exercise their right to bury their dead with the religious ceremonies and in the cemeteries they would wish, Forum 18 News Service notes. Protestants, Baha'is, Jehovah's Witnesses and Hare Krishna devotees have all long complained that the authorities have not resolved this problem, which greatly distresses the families and friends of the dead. But they are frequently afraid to raise this problem, for fear of reprisals aided by state indifference. The most recent publicly documentable failures by the authorities to ensure people may exercise their rights concern Protestants, when in two villages in Jalal-Abad Region local imams interfered in the conduct of funerals. In another case in a different Region an imam blocked the burial of a Protestant woman and forced her grieving husband to convert to Islam to get her buried. The authorities appear to be content to allow local imams to control who is buried in state-owned cemeteries not owned by religious communities. Complaining to local authorities about the violations is "useless", Pastor Kapar Yusup uuly – who was stopped from participating in his brother's funeral in Jalal-abad Region - told Forum 18. He insisted that the authorities could resolve some problems by giving land plots in nearby towns for such burials.

5 June 2014

RUSSIA: Obstructions to building places of worship

The Regional Court in the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad has upheld a lower court ruling which deemed a nearly completed mosque illegal, despite the fact that the federal law on heritage preservation it allegedly violates did not apply to the site at the time construction began. The community's lawyer Dagir Khasavov described the court to Forum 18 News Service as being "in the worst traditions of the Soviet period of stagnation". He said the community has organised "round-the-clock protection" of the mosque in case of attempts to destroy the building now that the court decision has come into force. The same court also upheld a decision suspending the construction of a synagogue to replace one destroyed by the Nazis. Moscow's Hare Krishna community lost its court case challenging the city Property Department's unilateral termination of its lease on a plot of land on which it had planned to build a temple. The Property Department claimed to Forum 18 it was working on a new possible site.

3 June 2014

AZERBAIJAN: "The banned book the Old Testament was confiscated"

Three women convicted in southern Azerbaijan in May of meeting for religious purposes without state permission are challenging their convictions, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. No dates for the appeal hearings have been set. Two of the women were heavily fined and police confiscated Bibles and other religious publications. In another case, following the detention of two women and a 14-year old girl talking about their faith to others, police confiscated what they described as "the banned book the Old Testament". Also, Muslims who read the works of the late Turkish theologian Said Nursi have been seeking to find out from the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations why his works have been banned and are confiscated by police. The State Committee replied that his works are "inappropriate for import in large quantities or publication". As one Muslim observed to Forum 18, "they didn't use the term 'forbidden' or 'banned', but the term 'inappropriate'. This is incomprehensible in terms of legislation, isn't it?"