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
18 July 2023
AZERBAIJAN: Will State Committee return religious books seized in 2007?
Shukran Mammadov is still waiting for the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations to return books by Muslim theologian Said Nursi seized in a police raid in 2007. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in his favour in 2020, and on 1 March 2023 Baku Appeal Court ordered the books to be returned. "The government should have ensured that Shukran's property was returned, but few European Court of Human Rights decisions are fully carried out," Mammadov's lawyer Asabali Mustafayev told Forum 18.
14 July 2023
AZERBAIJAN: Yet another conscientious objector case set for Strasbourg?
On 8 June, Azerbaijan's Supreme Court rejected Jehovah's Witness Seymur Mammadov's final appeal against his conviction for refusing compulsory military service on grounds of conscience. Initially jailed, he is now halfway through a one-year suspended sentence. He is considering an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, which found in favour of seven conscientious objectors jailed or given suspended sentences earlier. The ECtHR judgments "called for legislative action on civilian service as an alternative to military service". No draft Alternative Service Law has been presented to Parliament.
7 July 2023
RUSSIA: Long jail terms for Moscow Nursi readers
Arrested in October 2021, six Muslims who met to study the works of Turkish theologian Said Nursi finally went on trial in September 2022. On 27 June 2023, a Moscow court jailed four of the six for 6 years or more, with the others receiving lesser terms. The judge ordered the destruction of books by Nursi taken during the investigation. On 20 June, a Taganrog court jailed Jehovah's Witness Aleksandr Skvortsov for 7 years. All were convicted on "extremism" charges, which all denied.
5 July 2023
KAZAKHSTAN: Fined, as "he had no basis for conducting a religious event"
Zakirzhan Rozmetov was fined for leading evening prayers during Ramadan in a Shymkent mosque stripped of registration in 2021. "Rozmetov broke the law – he had no basis for conducting a religious event," said Alzhan Tuyakbayev, head of Shymkent's Religious Affairs Department. Courts fined other individuals up to one month's average wage in the first half of 2023 for prayer rooms in a cafe, roadside restaurant and shopping centre. Astana Police "anti-extremism" officers inspected "illegal" prayer rooms in a technohub, IT centre and concert organisation, leading to fines.
30 June 2023
KAZAKHSTAN: Parish ousted from church after 31 years
The Holy Apostles Peter and Paul Orthodox parish in Oktyabrskoye held its last Sunday service on 28 May in the church where it has worshipped since December 1991. On 2 June, court executors and police ousted the parish, handing the building to the Russian Orthodox diocese. "This was done on a legal basis," officials told Forum 18. The parish moved from the Moscow Patriarchate to the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in 1997. Official documents appear to attest that the parish owned the church, not the Moscow Patriarchate Diocese.
26 June 2023
RUSSIA: Judges "ignore completely" amended Supreme Court guidance on Extremism Law application
Hundreds of Jehovah's Witnesses and dozens of Muslims who read theologian Said Nursi's works have been jailed or given suspended sentences on "extremism" charges. October 2021 Supreme Court revised guidance for extremism trials directed judges to ascertain defendants' "specific actions" and "motivation". Courts have now overturned all eight acquittals resulting from the revised guidance, with one acquitted earlier jailed for 8 years. Early hope has now "completely gone", Jehovah's Witness lawyers say. The defence "of course" refers to the Supreme Court guidance in every case, but "the judges ignore it completely".
22 June 2023
BELARUS: Bulldozers destroy Minsk church
Evicted from its church building in February 2021, banned from meeting for worship in the church car park, Minsk's New Life Pentecostal Church has now seen its church bulldozed. The bulldozing – ordered by Capital Construction Management Company, owned by Minsk City Executive Committee – began on 20 June, within a day reducing much of the building to rubble. The Company, the Office of the Plenipotentiary for Religious and Ethnic Affairs, and Minsk City Executive Committee would not explain why New Life's church building – which it bought in 2002 – was destroyed.
21 June 2023
TAJIKISTAN: Jail sentences, fines for studying Islam
Imam Mukhammadi Mukharramov, who is now 50, was jailed for eight years for privately teaching Islam to a group of 12 Muslim men throughout 2022. The 12 men – whose names are unknown and whose ages ranged between about 30 and 40 - were jailed for between 6 and 9 years. Elsewhere, a man was fined 9 months' average wages for privately teaching Islam to his brother's wife, and a Muslim woman was fined 1 month's average wages for teaching the Koran to a neighbour's 8-year-old daughter.
15 June 2023
BELARUS: Draft Religion Law "playing on formal appearance of legality"
The regime has published the text of a restrictive draft new Religion Law, due to be discussed by the non-freely elected Parliament in September, which it falsely claims "does not affect" international human rights obligations. Exiled human rights defender and Orthodox priest Fr Aleksandr Shramko described the aim as "to somehow extinguish any pockets of not only possible resistance, but also any uncontrolled life", saying the draft law is "playing on the formal appearance of legality".
12 June 2023
BELARUS: Detained, fined for sharing faith on streets
On 2 June, a judge fined Vladimir Burshtyn – who is in his 70s – over a month's average pension for an outdoor meeting in Drogichin with fellow Baptists to share their faith. He intends to appeal against the fine, imposed in a court hearing fellow-Baptists were denied access to. Police held him overnight before the hearing, and Head of the local Ideology Department Svetlana Shchur insisted to Forum 18 that any event must have state permission. Elsewhere, for the first time since 1990 a Catholic Corpus Christi procession did not stop at Minsk's Red Church, which the regime closed in September 2022.
9 June 2023
TAJIKISTAN: Decree bans funerals for alleged "terrorists", denies relatives bodies
President Emomali Rahmon has signed a Decree denying the families of those killed in alleged "anti-terrorism operations" the possibility of, among other things, burying their dead with the religious or other rites they would have chosen or even knowing where they are buried. A human rights defender said this is to "publicly threaten that people who protest against the government will die and will not be buried as Muslims". Another human rights defender, journalist Anora Sarkorova, noted that "the authorities are enforcing the Decree violently".
2 June 2023
UKRAINE: Conscientious objector freed, new trial ordered
Ukraine's Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Christian conscientious objector Vitaly Alekseenko – the first jailed conscientious objector since Russia's renewed invasion - and ordered his release from prison. However, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial in the original court, and his requests to perform an alternative civilian service have been ignored. A Supreme Court case lodged by Christian conscientious objector Andrii Vyshnevetsky – still forcibly held in the army – continues. He argues that failure to determine a procedure for dismissal from military service on the basis of conscientious objection is illegal.