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
14 November 2005
UZBEKISTAN: When is postal censorship not postal censorship?
Uzbekistan's Post Office routinely opens parcels of religious books and magazines sent from abroad, sends examples to the state Religious Affairs Committee, then collects them with a Committee decision as to whether or not to ban the title, writes to the sender and the failed recipient to explain why titles have been rejected, and (sometimes) returns them at Uzbek Post Office expense, Forum 18 News Service has found. Kural Tulebaev, Director of the main Post Office which receives foreign parcels, as well as customs officials have both denied that this is censorship. "We're just following the law," Tulebaev told Forum 18. His Customs Service colleagues were just as adamant: "The law requires that all of it is checked by the Religion Committee," a senior inspector told Forum 18, "the law is the law." The Religious Affairs Committee has refused to explain how it makes censorship decisions, or why it censors religious literature in defiance of international human rights commitments.
11 November 2005
UZBEKISTAN: All Protestants "face persecution, whether registered or not"
"Harsh measures have been targeted at Christians," Forum 18 News Service has been told by a Protestant in Uzbekistan, with the authorities especially targeting ethnic Uzbek church members. "Unfortunately in Uzbekistan today there is no Protestant church that doesn't face persecution, whether registered or not,"Forum 18's source added. The latest cases known to Forum 18 are the Uzbek Supreme Court's confirmation of the banning of the Emmanuel Full Gospel Church in Nukus in the north-west, and the separate banning from meeting of the Fores Full Gospel Congregation in the capital Tashkent. All Protestant activity is illegal in north-west Uzbekistan, against international human rights standards. But the Emmanuel Church in the region intends to fight on for its right to meet legally. In Tashkent, a member of the Fores Church told Forum 18 that "Church members are tired and angry. They can't reconcile themselves to the illegal ban on practising their religious rights."
9 November 2005
TURKMENISTAN: Border guards ban believers from leaving
Despite the claimed abolition of a requirement for permission to leave Turkmenistan, religious believers are still being denied permission to travel from the country. The latest cases known to Forum 18 News Service are two Protestants and one Hare Krishna devotee, who are being persistenly denied permission to travel. The Protestants were not on the official exit ban list, one source told Forum 18, but were stopped after border guards asked why they were travelling abroad and they said they were going to study the Bible in a neighbouring country. The Hare Krishna devotee, who was intending to visit a temple in Russia and meet fellow devotees, "doesn't know why he's on the ban list", another source told Forum 18. Meanwhile, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion, Asma Jahangir, has this year again requested the Turkmen government to be allowed to visit the country – so far in vain. In situ visits are a "crucial aspect of the mandate on freedom of religion and belief", she insisted, expressing concern at Turkmenistan's failure to respond.
9 November 2005
BELARUS: Orthodox parish banned from worshipping
In what its priest, Fr Ioann Grudnitsky, has described to Forum 18 News Service as "the crudest violation of religious freedom," state officials in Belarus are refusing to register a Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR - which is not part of the Moscow Patriarchate) village parish that has come into conflict with the local Moscow Patriarchate diocese. Activities of the parish are – against international human rights standards – illegal under Belarusian law. Non-Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox Christian communities can only gain state registration with the approval of a local Moscow Patriarchate bishop, and state officials have told Fr Ioann's parishioners to attend the local Moscow Patriarchate Church instead. Belarusian authorities have imposed large fines for worship in private homes on four occasions this year, "but we will carry on praying no matter what the state does," Fr Ioann told Forum 18. In a telegram to both Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko and Patriarch of Moscow Aleksi II, Fr Ioann's parishioners have complained about state restrictions on their holding of "religious events," demanding to know "where is there a law banning us from praying?"
7 November 2005
ARMENIA: We are breaking our Council of Europe commitments, official admits
Four Jehovah's Witnesses who abandoned their alternative service at a psychiatric hospital in May after it turned out to be under military control were sentenced to three years' imprisonment each on 3 November in Sevan, Jehovah's Witnesses in Armenia told Forum 18 News Service. One of the four, Boris Melkumyan, testified in court that the hospital director ordered them to shovel snow with their bare hands until their arms froze, to remove a dead body from the women's section during the night, and despite having no training, to perform nursing duties on aggressive patients. Valery Mkrtumian of the Armenian foreign ministry admitted to Forum 18 that alternative service is under military control, thus violating Armenia's commitment to the Council of Europe to have introduced a genuinely civilian alternative service by January 2004. Twenty Jehovah's Witnesses are currently serving prison terms in Armenia, with a further fourteen soon due to go on trial.
4 November 2005
BELARUS: Will UN decision help religious communities?
Belarus has yet to meet a 12 November deadline, set by the UN Human Rights Committee, for confirming the correction of a religious freedom violation against Hare Krishna devotees, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. In a decision with implications for other religious communities (such as the New Life charismatic church), the UN Human Rights Committee found that Belarus had violated citizens' rights under the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights by refusing to register a nation-wide Hare Krishna association. Two devotees, Sergei Malakhovsky and Aleksandr Pikul, complained to the Committee, which set a 90 day deadline from 23 August for correcting the violation. Aleksandr Kalinov, of the State Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs, initially claimed to Forum 18 that all Krishna communities had registration, but then, questioned about the nation-wide association, claimed it did not have the right to register. Sergei Malakhovsky told Forum 18 that Krishna devotees had taken the UN Committee's decision to the State Committee and other government departments, "but they just shrugged their shoulders and said nothing."
3 November 2005
AZERBAIJAN: "If communities don't complain they will be suppressed even more"
Azerbaijan's system of state registration is used by the authorities to discriminate against religious communities, Forum 18 News Service has found. Disfavoured communities, such as Baptists, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Baha'is, are denied legal status and face repeated obstructions. But those who the authorities favour, such as ethnic Udi Christians (who have not yet formed a church) and the Molokans are given extensive registration help by the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations. The State Committee is not the only source of problems; local authorities who have taken a dislike to a religious community deploy numerous tactics to prevent registration applications from even reaching the State Committee. Eldar Zeynalov, head of the Human Rights Centre of Azerbaijan, told Forum 18 that "If communities don't complain they will be suppressed even more. We have a proverb: no-one gives milk to a child that doesn't cry."
1 November 2005
AZERBAIJAN: Selective obstruction of foreign religious workers
Azerbaijani religious communities inviting foreign religious workers are being selectively obstructed, Forum 18 News Service has found. In June, a Swedish pastor of a charismatic church, Mats-Jan Söderberg, was given two weeks to leave Azerbaijan – after being resident for more than a decade. Other religious communities - such as the Lutherans and Catholics - have told Forum 18 that they believe religious communities should have the right to invite foreign citizens to lead them, if the community wants this. The Catholic Church, Russian and Georgian Orthodox churches, Jewish communities, the Hare Krishna community and the Baha'i community are not experiencing currently visa problems for foreigners who work with them. A problem that Azeris have also complained to Forum 18 about is the intense pressure the authorities apply to non-Muslim religious communities, to get state registration as part of a foreign religious organisation.
31 October 2005
TAJIKISTAN: Mosque visits and hijabs banned for children
Tajikistan has banned female schoolchildren from wearing the hijab headscarf and, in a secret unwritten instruction, barred children from visiting mosques in school hours, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Some imams in the capital Dushanbe are, to Forum 18's knowledge, interpreting this as meaning that no children should be allowed into mosques at any time. Education Minister Abdudjabor Rahmonov has claimed that wearing the hijab "is unacceptable in secular schools and violates the constitution and a new law on education," even though the Tajik constitution does not bar wearing the hijab. Rahmonov also claimed that many pupils "spend evenings in mosques and do not do their homework." No-one at the Education Ministry or the state Religious Affairs Committee was prepared to discuss the bans, but one official told Forum 18 that the headscarf ban had not been decided by the Religious Affairs Committee, saying that "this decision was evidently taken right at the top."
27 October 2005
UZBEKISTAN: "Believers are not even allowed to visit each other"
Members of the Full Gospel Church in Jizak, at an informal meal to celebrate the harvest festival last Tuesday (25 October), had their meal broken up the ordinary police, the National Security Service (NSS) secret police and officials from the Public Prosecutor's office, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. "I think the actions of the law enforcement officers in Jizak were a gross infringement of the law," Iskander Najafov, the church's lawyer, told Forum 18. "It turns out that believers are not even allowed to visit each other." Najafov believes that an anti-Christian campaign is underway, with less violence than in the past but using other methods to pressure churches and individual believers. Religious minorities face continuing official pressure, including the Subbotniki – a Christian movement founded in the eighteenth century who follow many Jewish laws and customs, who were forbidden from holding a religious ritual for one of the community's members who had just died.
25 October 2005
AZERBAIJAN: Family and mosque appeal for imam's freedom
The family and mosque community of the only Sunni Muslim mosque in Azerbaijan's second city Gyanja have appealed for their imam, Kazim Aliyev, to be freed – three and a half years after his arrest. His family have told Forum 18 News Service that they reject absolutely the government accusation that Aliyev was preparing an armed anti-government uprising to create an Islamic state. Aliyev, who is married with three young children, is being held in prison camp 15 in Baku and his lawyer, Eldar Zeynalov, head of the Human Rights Centre of Azerbaijan, insists that he has been wrongfully jailed. A European Court of Human Rights appeal is currently under way. Zeynalov told Forum 18 that he believes Aliyev's refusal to demand set fees for carrying out religious rituals angered other imams in the town, and that this may have provoked the charges. Aliyev was initially held by the Military Counter-Intelligence Department for espionage, but the allegations were later changed.
25 October 2005
BELARUS: Third massive fine for organising religious worship
The administrator of the Minsk-based charismatic New Life Church, Vasily Yurevich, has been fined a third time for leading unauthorised worship. The latest fine is the massive amount of 3,825,000 Belarusian roubles (11,645 Norwegian Kroner, 1,488 Euros or 1,780 US Dollars), which is well over 10 times the average monthly wage in Belarus. The official text of the local court decision, which has been seen by Forum 18, relies upon police testimony – which Yurevich and congregation members strongly dispute - identifying him as the organiser of a Sunday service "by his outward appearance." New Life's Pastor Vyacheslav Goncharenko – who has also been fined for unsanctioned worship – insisted that the church would continue to meet for worship. It has also been denied state permission to turn a disused cowshed it purchased into a church building, on the grounds that it is technically a cowshed. A number of other Protestant churches have also reported recent moves by state officials to limit their religious activity, on the basis of technical violations.