TURKEY: Is it possible to manifest religion or belief in teaching and education?

Can the right to manifest the freedom of religion or belief in education and teaching be effectively exercised in Turkey? Forum 18 News Service notes that recent developments have highlighted this question. From the 2012-2013 school year onwards the government has introduced optional lessons in Islam. But in many schools these "optional" lessons have not been optional in reality, as both Alevi and Christian pupils have publicly stated. Families have felt pressured by school administrations to choose the "optional" Islamic religion lessons - even though the families did not want to choose them. Also, the government is once-again apparently considering allowing the re-opening of the long-closed Greek Orthodox theological seminary on the island of Heybeliada (Halki). But Halki should not be approached as an isolated issue. For Turkey to meet its international human rights obligations the "optional" lessons should be optional in reality, and all belief communities should be able to establish institutions to train their followers or leaders.

19 August 2013

RUSSIA: Parliamentary Religion Committee back in action

The increase in Russian legislative initiatives affecting freedom of religion or belief since President Vladimir Putin's May 2012 return appears partly due to renewed activism by the Committee on Social Associations and Religious Organisations of the Duma (parliament), Forum 18 News Service notes. The Duma is a rubber-stamp parliament endorsing any idea coming from Putin's Presidential Administration, Boris Falikov of the Centre for the Study of Religions at the Russian State University for the Humanities told Forum 18. "But initiatives in the religious sphere mostly conform to the personal convictions of the Committee's members". Alexander Verkhovsky of the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis noted in relation to "astoundingly nonsensical laws" that: "the 'anti-opposition' campaign begun since Putin's return to the Kremlin involves a kind of 'competition between initiatives', and basic technical control over these initiatives is much weaker than before".

15 August 2013

RUSSIA: Rise in legal proposals affecting religious freedom

Russian legislative initiatives concerning freedom of religion or belief have markedly increased since President Vladimir Putin's return in May 2012, Forum 18 News Service notes. This appears at least partly due to activity by the Duma's Committee on Social Associations and Religious Organisations after its chairship passed to Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party in late 2011. But not all are restrictive, or have proved resistant to revision in the direction of more religious freedom. For example, a government legislative initiative backed by the Committee regulating religious meetings has still to be voted on by the Duma. The amendments, proposed on 7 June 2013 in response to a Constitutional Court ruling, are to some extent positive: meetings for worship in private could not be subject to a need to gain state permission in advance. However, a degree of uncertainty remains over public meetings for worship in rented premises. Some local state officials have continued to obstruct meetings for worship in private or rented premises. But despite a general trend towards harsher restrictions, not all recent proposals negatively affecting religious freedom are being adopted.

14 August 2013

RUSSIA: "Religious feelings" not offended – or the calm before the storm?

Since a vaguely-worded Russian law criminalising "offending religious feelings" came into force on 1 July no prosecutions have followed, Forum 18 News Service notes. Alexander Verkhovsky's SOVA Center for Information and Analysis has reported only one associated incident, concerning a representative of the Saami people in Russia's Far North. Critics fear that the new amendments are so poorly defined that they could be used by anyone to prosecute actions they simply dislike. Verkhovsky, for example, thinks they will certainly be interpreted in a way that criminalises actions previously not treated as criminal. While understood as a concession to the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), there is considerable disagreement over the criminalisation of "offence to religious feelings" in both the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) and Russian society, Forum 18 notes. And not every legal initiative apparently motivated by the notion of "offending religious feelings" is progressing in Russia.

9 August 2013

UZBEKISTAN: State tries to take one children's summer camp, raids another

Uzbekistan is attempting to deprive the registered Baptist Union of land it owns and uses to run summer camps for children and families, Forum 18 News Service has learned. The state is claiming – without any apparent legal foundation – that the land was "illegally" bought in 2000. Baptists have complained to the Prosecutor-General that "the future of Uzbekistan cannot be built on the plundering of religious organisations". Separately in Samarkand Region, an unrelated children's camp organised by local Protestants was raided. The raid on a camp of 31 adults and children involved 30 ordinary police, 20 riot police, and 30 officials from the regional tax authorities, Fire Brigade, Sanitary-Epidemiological Department, and the regional administration. Police "began brandishing their rubber batons, and collected statements from everyone – even from small children separated from their parents". After over six hours of questioning and raids on the alleged organisers' homes, it is expected that charges will be brought against six Protestants. Police have refused to discuss the raid with Forum 18.

8 August 2013

UZBEKISTAN: Religious freedom survey, August 2013

In Uzbekistan, Forum 18 News Service's religious freedom survey notes that freedom of religion or belief and related human rights such as the freedoms of expression and of assembly remain highly restricted. Among the issues documented are: state attempts to control all religious communities, with every activity without state permission being illegal and harsh restrictions on Muslims marking Ramadan and going on the haj; covert and open surveillance of all religious communities by the NSS secret police; a strict censorship regime imposing severe limitations on access to literature, including the reading of the Bible and Koran in private homes and arbitrary destruction of literature found in frequent raids; the "routine" use of torture, with women apparently being increasingly targeted; bans on the religious activity and education of children; a "legal" framework which is a symptom not a cause of human rights violations; a culture of impunity among officials; unfair trials lacking due legal process; many prisoners of conscience jailed for exercising freedom of religion or belief; and denials of this freedom to all prisoners.

2 August 2013

UZBEKISTAN: Ramadan restrictions, violent police assault on Protestant

Police in Uzbekistan have violently physically assaulted Sardorbek Nurmetov, a local Protestant, and charged him with committing an offence after he insisted on making a formal complaint about police brutality. The hospital he went for treatment to colluded with his assailants, local Protestants complained. There are also strict restrictions on Ramadan, including bans on iftar meals and closer than normal state surveillance of everyone attending mosques to pray. Today (2 August) Yelena Urlayeva of the Human Rights Alliance witnessed police secretly filming men arriving for midday prayers at the 'Tura buva' mosque in the capital Tashkent. Two police officers also stood at the entrance to the mosque checking packages and bags. Police told Urlayeva that "mosques are control-accessed enterprises". Doniyor Abdujabbarov, the local policeman who coordinated the police at the mosque adamantly denied to Forum 18 that the police filmed Muslims arriving to pray. Asked again why the police filmed people wanting to pray, he replied, "You need to ask the higher organs about these questions, not me."

26 July 2013

KAZAKHSTAN: Atheist and Pastor still detained with little evidence to convict either

Imprisoned atheist writer and anti-corruption campaigner Aleksandr Kharlamov and Presbyterian pastor Bakhytzhan Kashkumbayev are both still being detained by Kazakhstan, Forum 18 News Service has found. Kharlamov has been in detention since his 14 March arrest for "inciting religious hatred". Kuat Rakhimberdin of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law told Forum 18 that "If there were any Judge in Ridder with a minimum degree of honesty and independence, the indictment would be rejected as absurd and unfounded, and Kharlamov be acquitted." Kashkumbayev was arrested on criminal charges of "harming health" on 17 May. He is still detained although the only person whose heath the state claims was harmed told Forum 18 that Kashkumbayev is "totally innocent and has not harmed my health at all". She herself was subjected to forcible psychiatric treatment by the state. Asked whether the use of psychiatry in the cases of Kharlamov and Kashkumbayev may be a return to Soviet-era misuse of psychiatry, a Prosecutor claimed to Forum 18 that the Criminal Procedure Code "necessitates such assessment in order to determine whether the suspects can be answerable for serious crimes".

19 July 2013

UZBEKISTAN: Pensioners owning Koran and Bibles fined over two years' pension

After simultaneous police raids on four homes in a village near Uzbekistan's capital, two pensioners and two other local Protestants had religious literature including the Koran and Bibles confiscated, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. The four were also fined a combined total of 230 times Uzbekistan's minimum monthly wage. Many followers of a variety of beliefs are afraid to keep religious literature in their homes, a cross-section of people have told Forum 18. Noting officials ignoring published law in carrying out raids and other repression, a local Protestant told Forum 18 that "You won't find this in any law". The state's pressure is so strong that some believers think they have no choice but to destroy their own sacred texts. One Protestant – who asked not to be identified for fear of state reprisals – cited with distress cases where individuals have reluctantly destroyed their own Christian books, including Bibles. "I personally know of three such cases", they told Forum 18. "Many other Christians said to me they can't bring themselves to destroy their Bibles."

15 July 2013

RUSSIA: State destroys own "extremism" evidence

A Russian court case in Siberia to ban 68 Islamic books and leaflets has taken an ironic turn, Forum 18 News Service has learnt: the state has destroyed its own evidence. Following appeals against the March 2012 ban, which was not made known until June 2012 and came from a hearing lasting only 20 minutes, Orenburg Regional Court has ordered a repeat "expert" analysis. But only 42 of the titles are now being analysed, because the authorities are unable to find copies of the remaining 26. Prosecutions can only be brought relating to "extremist" texts if they are the exact edition of the work specified on the Federal List of Extremist Materials. But this has not stopped prosecutions relating to editions not on the Federal List. While "everything depends upon the analysis and the court's decision," the omission of the 26 texts should mean that the Court's ban on them will ultimately be lifted, appeal lawyer Nurzhigit Dolubayev told Forum 18. Compilation of the Federal List List is accelerating, Forum 18 notes. The List is now growing at a rate at least three times faster than when it first came into existence.

11 July 2013

UZBEKISTAN: Teaching Islam to children a crime, raids and large fines continue

Uzbekistan is currently prosecuting a Muslim father and son who taught the Koran to school-age children in Tashkent Region, the court confirmed to Forum 18 News Service. Both men - Mirmuhiddin Mirbayzaiyev and his son Sirojiddin - face the possibility of up to three years in jail. Parents who brought their children to the Islamic religious lessons have been fined. Elsewhere, in Karshi, a member of a Baptist church, Svetlana Andreychenko, has like the Mirbayzaiyevs been prosecuted for exercising her right to freedom of religion or belief in her own home. She has been fined 50 times the minimum monthly salary. Her Church has been repeatedly raided during Sunday worship, with worshippers being taken to a police station for questioning. A state "expert analysis" of books confiscated in Andreychenko's home stated that reading them "might give rise in the individual to feelings of interest towards this religion". Other raids on meetings, prosecutions, and fines for exercising freedom of religion or belief continue.

10 July 2013

RUSSIA: Orthodox relics block Jehovah's Witness meeting

A written Russian official refusal to allow Jehovah's Witness to meet for worship in Nizhny Novgorod Region, made in consultation with a local Orthodox bishop, provides rare evidence that state opposition to Jehovah's Witnesses is fuelled by support for the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), Forum 18 News Service has found. "As the administration, we conduct all our activity in close contact with the [Moscow Patriarchate] Diocese," the official who drafted the refusal, Svetlana Zakharova, confirmed to Forum 18. "There's not a single question affecting the interests of one side or the other that we don't decide collegially." It is highly unusual for Russian officials to make such admissions, especially in writing, Forum 18 notes. Elsewhere, more Jehovah's Witness texts have been banned, and raids on and detentions and fines of Jehovah's Witnesses and Falun Gong practitioners continue. The government is also set to increase punishments for "extremist" activity under the Criminal Code.