UZBEKISTAN: Worsening anti-Protestant crackdown in north-west

As part of the worsening anti-Protestant crackdown in north-west Uzbekistan, Forum 18 News Service has learnt that a Protestant farmer, Murat Abatov, has been publicly pressured to renounce his faith, with threats to confiscate his land, and schoolteachers have begun bullying his sister Zulfiya, and telling children to avoid her. The authorities seem to have started using the new tactics of trying to turn people against Protestants, so that officials can claim to be doing the people's will, and also summoning individual believers in to the ordinary police, the NSS secret police, and the public prosecutor's office, in order to pressure believers to renounce their faith one by one. Amongst several other incidents, Bakhadyr Prembetov has had his flat in the regional capital Nukus raided by police, and has had threats from the head of the housing block administration that "if the Protestants did not stop visiting me, he would collect signatures from the residents and get me turned out of the apartment."

28 April 2004

CHINA: Religious Freedom and the Legal System: Continuing Struggle

The Communist party-state remains determined to maintain control over society, using over the past 20 years an increasing number of laws and regulations as a means to this end. In the field of religion, Ye Xiaowen, Director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, has publicly stated that "The purpose . . of strengthening the administration of religious affairs according to law is actively to guide the religions to adapt themselves to socialist society." There is a complex web of laws and regulations on religion under which, to take one example, children may not receive religious education, whatever their parents think. The state claims the exclusive right to decide on what are "normal" religious activities and is effectively pursuing a policy of divide-and-rule towards religious communities. Some religious communities de facto accepted this policy, not forseeing that the state's repression of Falun Gong would also lead to measures against, for example, the unofficial Protestant community. The Chinese state's relationship with religion can only improve if the state accepts that laws are supreme – even over the party - and protect individuals and society from arbitrary actions by those in power.

27 April 2004

ABKHAZIA: JWs still banned and Georgian Orthodox still barred

Politicians in the breakaway unrecognised republic of Abkhazia have told Forum 18 News Service that the Jehovah's Witnesses will continue to be banned. "If they won't defend their families, why should they have the freedom to practice their faith?" asked Valera Zantaria, making it clear that the ban was because of the Jehovah's Witnesses refusal of military service. Also unable to function is the Georgian Orthodox Church, whose members have to travel out of Abkhazia to the Georgian city of Zugdidi for services. Although the Catholic church can function in Abkhazia, access for priests has become difficult because Russian border guards refuse to let them through. Lutherans and unregistered Baptists are also allowed to function, one unregistered Baptist Pastor telling Forum 18 that conditions for their people are better in Abkhazia than in Georgia, with preaching permitted "once the authorities had established they were not Jehovah's Witnesses."

27 April 2004

UZBEKISTAN: Tight restrictions on Shia Muslim minority

The state-approved imam of one of the three registered Shia Muslim mosques has told Forum 18 News Service that Shias "do not have any difficulties with the Uzbek authorities", but many others from the ethnic Iranian Shia minority insist that there are severe difficulties with the authorities. Examples cited to Forum 18 include there being no permitted Shia educational institutions, the impossibility of registering more mosques, and the authorities insistence that Shias must be subject to the Sunni-controlled Muslim Spiritual Administration. The Iranian government has given Uzbek Shias significant help, for example by funding a mosque restoration project. However, because of these links, and the uneasy relations Uzbekistan and Iran have, the National Security Service secret police strictly controls Shia mosques.

26 April 2004

AZERBAIJAN: Expelling Muslims from Mosque "unpleasant," court executor says

The official responsible for carrying out a court order to expel Muslims from the 1,000 year old Juma mosque, which the authorities want to turn into a carpet museum, has told Forum 18 News Service that the task will be unpleasant, but that he will carry out the expulsion. Ambassador Steinar Gil of the Royal Norwegian Embassy has condemned the decision, saying it "violates the letter and the spirit of international conventions Azerbaijan has signed up to", adding that he found it hard to determine what the authorities hope to achieve by expelling the community. Ambassador Gil also pointed out that the Juma Mosque is led by Imam Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, who is disliked by the authorities and has been given a suspended five-year jail sentence for his human rights and religious freedom work for Christians and Muslims. The Imam today (26 April) told Forum 18 that he has resumed his human rights and religious freedom activity.

26 April 2004

UZBEKISTAN: New hope for religious communities to get state registration?

As hundreds of religious communities are denied state registration by bureaucratic obstruction, there are hopes that a court ruling will help force officials to issue documents needed for registration. Without registration, all religious activity is banned, and harsh penalties are imposed for worshipping without registration. On 22 April, the Fergana regional civil court upheld an appeal by local human rights activist Mutobar Tajibayeva against the local administration, which has refused for three years to issue a 'letter of guarantee' needed by a local mosque to get registration. However, the justice administration might still find pretexts to block the registration. Local human rights activists seem intent on using the ruling to help dozens of other Fergana mosques get registration. "We were waiting to see if [human rights activist] Tajibayeva would win her case, and now we are going to lobby for registration in the same way as she did," one activist told Forum 18 News Service.

22 April 2004

RUSSIA: Methodists may have fought off church stealing

A Korean Methodist church in northern Moscow appears to have fought off an attempt by a commercial firm to steal their church building. A district court ruled against the Moscow justice department on 26 March after the church challenged the justice department's acceptance of fraudulent documents which claimed to have transferred the church to the company. Galina Skakun of the justice department admitted in court the Methodists' claim to the building, and tried to defend her department even though it failed to verify the authenticity of the documents. Church administrator Svetlana Kim said the Methodists believe that coverage of their case by both Forum 18 News Service and Russian news agencies "really helped us".

21 April 2004

UZBEKISTAN: Should Christians be shot?

Amid a major crackdown, eleven Protestants in Nukus were questioned at the public prosecutor's office and pressured to convert to Islam. They were also threatened with being shot, though the city prosecutor, M. Arzymbetov, subsequently denied this to Forum 18 News Service. The prosecutor also tried to have a Protestant, Iklas Aldungarov, expelled from his university medical course, but the university rector, Oral Ataniyazova, has resisted the pressure. "How and what Aldungarov believes is his own personal business, and we do not have the right to interfere with it," she told Forum 18. She added that a very large number of young people in the region are becoming Christians. "Evidently, the Christian churches have managed to set up a competent, well conceived operation here. I do not think that is a bad thing. Let's see the mosques here work as well as the Christian churches." Pressure on Protestants elsewhere in Uzbekistan is also continuing.

21 April 2004

RUSSIA: Spring offensive against the "Vitaliban"?

Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR - which is not part of the Moscow Patriarchate) within Russia less enthusiastic about a proposed merger with the Moscow Patriarchate have faced obstruction from the state authorities, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. When 50 clergy and lay members held a diocesan assembly in Tula region in February, officers of the police and FSB (former KGB) questioned their legal right to meet, while elsewhere local authorities have failed to register parishes, obstruct those that meet in privately-owned buildings and even threatened to confiscate churches built with parishioners' funds. Without state registration, parishes cannot produce publications or conduct missionary activity, but some clergy argue it is better not to have registration. "It is easier for state officials to apply pressure to a community with legal status by finding fault with its documentation," one priest told Forum 18.

19 April 2004

ARMENIA: Council of Europe fails to punish commitment violations over imprisoned conscientious objectors

With 24 Jehovah's Witnesses in prison for refusing military service on grounds of conscience, another fined and a further three awaiting trial, Council of Europe officials have been unable to explain to Forum 18 News Service what punishment Armenia faces – if any - for violating its commitments to the organisation. The commitments required Armenia to have freed all imprisoned conscientious objectors and introduced alternative service by January 2004, but it failed on both counts. One outsider involved in the issue at the Council of Europe, who preferred not to be identified, told Forum 18 that the Armenian government had deployed "an especially successful lobbying campaign" to have the issue buried. The Jehovah's Witnesses, one of Armenia's largest religious minorities, appear no nearer to receiving state registration.

16 April 2004

RUSSIA: Was terrorist threat to Protestant Easter celebration genuine?

Although Russian Orthodox and Catholics celebrated Easter without problem in the Siberian city of Tyumen on 11 April, a large-scale Protestant Easter evangelistic service due to have been held in a city-owned stadium on 14 April was cancelled by the authorities, citing what they said was a "terrorist threat". Andrei Knyazhev, co-ordinator of the Protestant service, told Forum 18 News Service he is "almost 99 per cent certain" that the threat was spurious. Forum 18 has been unable to establish the authenticity or otherwise of the threat independently, though the service faced opposition from local Orthodox believers. After an explicit Chechen terrorist threat against Orthodox churches in Russia, the security agencies have stepped up their protection of Orthodox Christmas and Easter services.

14 April 2004

UZBEKISTAN: Guilty of the unregistered teaching of a faith - even when charge is disproved

Even though it has been proved that a Jehovah's Witness was not teaching his faith without registration, and so not breaking the law, an Uzbek criminal court has found him guilty of this, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Uzbekistan bans all religious teaching by unregistered religious organisations or private individuals. The persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses, along with all other religious groups, continues in Uzbekistan and is compounded by the authorities lack of knowledge of faiths. For example, a deputy public prosecutor has told a Jehovah's Witness that reading their literature causes people either to become a "Wahhabi" (a term widely and loosely used in Central Asia for Islamic extremists), or to become a terrorist. The same prosecutor also claimed that Jehovah's Witnesses hypnotise people.