FORUM 18 NEWS SERVICE, Oslo, Norway http://www.forum18.org/

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

30 January 2007

KAZAKHSTAN: PRESIDENT TOO BUSY WITH “IMPORTANT AFFAIRS” TO MEET BAPTISTS

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=904

Amanbek Mukhashev, head of Kazakhstan’s Religious Affairs Committee, has petulantly complained to Forum 18 News Service about a request from a group of Baptist churches to meet President Nursultan Nazarbayev to discuss state harassment of their congregations. “Instead of tearing the President away from important affairs the Baptists would do better to register their churches and not violate the law,” he told Forum 18. The Council of Churches Baptists, who have over 100 congregations in Kazakhstan, estimate that more than 40 of their members have been fined for their role in worship services since legal restrictions on religious freedom were made harsher in July 2005. “It is perfectly natural that the President will not meet the Baptists,” a Presidential Administration official stated. Pastor Yaroslav Senyushkevich commented to Forum 18 that “we regret that officials have such an attitude towards us.”

31 January 2007

KAZAKHSTAN: DO-IT-YOURSELF DEMOLITION FOR EMBATTLED HARE KRISHNA COMMUNE?

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=905

As official pressure on the Hare Krishna commune near the commercial capital Almaty mounts, three more home owners have been served demolition notices, Hare Krishna sources told Forum 18 News Service. If they fail to demolish their own homes by 2 February, the authorities will do so and charge them for the cost. Thirteen Hare Krishna-owned homes were bulldozed last November, though other homes in the village owned by non-Hare Krishna residents have not been touched. Other court cases are pending. The Kazakh authorities have failed to respond to a November 2006 offer to help from the OSCE Advisory Council on Freedom of Religion, but Gauhar Beyeseyeva of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry claimed to the head of the Hare Krishna commune: “We were denied the OSCE chairmanship specifically because of you people.” Despite denying any religious motives to the moves against the commune, Amanbek Mukhashev defended the inclusion of Muslim and Orthodox clergy in the official Commission charged with examining the dispute: “The population of Karasai district is basically Orthodox and Muslim and it follows that we should have regard for the views of the representatives of these faiths.”

2 February 2007

MACEDONIA: WILL DRAFT NEW RELIGION LAW END DISCRIMINATION?

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=907

Chief government religious affairs official Zvonko Mucunski has refused to provide religious communities with the latest text of the new draft religion law, religious minorities have complained to Forum 18 News Service. The big sticking point in the draft law due to go to public discussion as early as March is whether more than one denomination of any one faith can gain legal recognition, banned in the present law and in the previous version of the draft new law. “Both we and Brussels criticise this,” Isa Rusi of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights told Forum 18. Imprisoned Archbishop Jovan, who heads the Serbian Orthodox Church in Macedonia which has been denied legal status, insists the new law must allow all faiths to register “not only when they result from differences between religions, but also from possible conflicts with leaderships of already recognised religious communities”. Mucunski insisted to Forum 18 that the current draft law “carefully” guarantees full religious freedom for all religious communities, “taking care of our specific circumstances”.

1 February 2007

UZBEKISTAN: PROSECUTORS REFUSE TO SAY WHY PROTESTANT PASTOR FACES TRIAL

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=906

Andijan city prosecutor’s office has refused to tell Forum 18 News Service why local Protestant pastor Dmitry Shestakov is due to face trial or when. But the prosecutor’s aide as well as independent sources confirmed to Forum 18 on 1 February that the pastor is still in investigation prison. Shestakov was arrested on 21 January during his Full Gospel Pentecostal congregation’s Sunday service and is said to be accused of stirring up religious hatred and illegally producing literature spreading dissension. “Prosecutors and the police are accusing Dmitry of stirring up aggression against other religions, but he was not aggressive at all,” one source told Forum 18. Another Andijan Protestant pastor was fined in late December for his religious activity. * See full article below. *

1 February 2007

UZBEKISTAN: PROSECUTORS REFUSE TO SAY WHY PROTESTANT PASTOR FACES TRIAL

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=906

By Igor Rotar, Central Asia Correspondent, Forum 18 News Service <http://www.forum18.org>, and

Felix Corley, Editor, Forum 18 News Service <http://www.forum18.org>

Arrested Pentecostal pastor Dmitry Shestakov remains in an investigation cell awaiting trial in the city of Andijan [Andijon] in eastern Uzbekistan as prosecutors prepare his case to go to court, sources who preferred not to be named told Forum 18 News Service on 1 February. However, prosecutors have refused to confirm to Forum 18 the exact nature of the charges and when his trial is due.

Also reached on 1 February, an aide to Bekmuhamad Amadaliev, the city prosecutor, who gave his first name as Batyr, confirmed to Forum 18 that Shestakov is still in the investigation prison but asked Forum 18 to call back half an hour later to talk to Amadaliev. However, when Forum 18 called back Batyr handed the phone not to the prosecutor but to a woman who refused to give her name. “Neither Amadaliev nor anyone else from the prosecutor’s office will answer your questions by telephone,” she told Forum 18. “You must write an official request by post and we will answer you.”

Shestakov – who also uses the name David – is pastor of a registered Full Gospel congregation in the town of Andijan. He was arrested by the National Security Service (NSS) secret police during his church’s Sunday service on 21 January. Compass Direct news service reported that secret police officers arrived at the church and asked the pastor to step outside with them for five minutes. They then immediately escorted him to the nearest police station.

Pastor Shestakov is apparently accused of “incitement of national, racial and religious enmity” under Article 156 of Uzbekistan’s criminal code. If convicted of this charge, he could face up to five years in prison. He has also been charged under Article 244-1 for the “illegal manufacture and spread of literature which rouses dissension between religions.”

One source who preferred not to be identified for fear of retaliation told Forum 18 that the secret police ordered people close to Shestakov to write statements about him under duress. “They didn’t understand the seriousness of what they were writing,” the source declared. “The police then used the statements against Dmitry. At least one of them has retracted the statement extracted under pressure.”

The source added: “Prosecutors and the police are accusing Dmitry of stirring up aggression against other religions, but he was not aggressive at all.”

There were hopes that Shestakov would be freed as he should have been under Article 7 of last year’s Amnesty Law. Yet prosecutors refused to release him as they claim he is a member of a “banned religious organisation”, despite the fact that the Full Gospel Church has written a declaration that he is one of their officially-accredited pastors and is part of a registered congregation.

Prosecutors have long been seeking to imprison Shestakov. Protestants told Forum 18 last summer that at first the Prosecutor’s Office intended to launch a case against him under Article 216-2 of the Criminal Code, which punishes “violation of the law on religious organisations” with imprisonment of up to three years, but then was ordered by the secret police to charge Shestakov with the far more serious offence of treason. After investigator Kamolitdin Zulfiev lodged a case against him under Article 157 of the Criminal Code, Shestakov, his wife and three daughters were forced to go into hiding to evade arrest (see F18News 20 June 2006 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=803>).

However, sources have confirmed to Forum 18 that he no longer faces treason charges.

Several months after fleeing Andijan, the Shestakov family returned to a nearby city, continuing covert contact with their Andijan congregation. In an October 2006 interview obtained by Compass Direct, Pastor Shestakov described how authorities began to harass him in May 2006, apparently in reaction to the conversion to Christianity of some ethnic Uzbeks.

In June 2006, police raided the pastor’s house, temporarily detaining Shestakov and confiscating videos of his sermons. Although the pastor was ordered to list all of his church members, he refused to do so.

“It was clear that the National State Security were going to find something to charge me with and remove me from my position as a Christian pastor,” Shestakov said in the interview. Authorities also searched Shestakov’s Andijan church, confiscating religious CDs and videos and pressuring members of the congregation to testify against their pastor.

But after pastoring for 13 years, Shestakov said he did not believe it would be right to leave his country and abandon the church in Andijan that he started four years ago. Seeking asylum abroad was not an option for him, he said, although he wants to clear his name in his homeland.

Also recently punished in Andijan for his religious activity was Protestant pastor Bakhtior Tuichiev, who has been seeking to gain legal status for his congregation in vain since 2002 and is a frequent victim of official harassment (see F18News 2 February 2006 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=722). He was fined 109,500 sums (550 Norwegian Kroner, 68 Euros or 88 US Dollars) in late December by Andijan city court under Article 240 of the Code of Administrative Offences, which punishes “violating the law on religious organisations”. This sum is equivalent to more than two months’ average wages.

“Our only guilt was that we meet together for prayers without being registered by the justice department,” Tuichiev told Forum 18 from Andijan on 1 February. “However, our church is repeatedly refused registration.”

The authorities in Andijan continue to restrict religious practice for a variety of faiths. Late last year the new Hokim (head of administration) of Andijan region, Ahmadjan Usmonov, introduced a range of restrictions on Muslim practice, including a ban on the azan (call to prayer) from mosques (see F18News 20 December 2006 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=892>).

The past year has seen increased government control of all religious activity in Uzbekistan. New restrictions have been proposed to punish religious leaders if any members of their communities share their faith with others (see F18News 21 August 2006 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=833>) and censorship of religious literature has been intensified (see F18News 29 June 2006 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=805>), while massively increased fines for unregistered religious activity were introduced at the end of 2005 (see F18News 27 January 2006 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=720>).

Foreign non-governmental organisations with any kind of religious affiliation or suspected of having a religious affiliation have been closed down (see F18News 10 October 2006 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=852>) and foreign citizens involved in religious activity have been deported (see F18News 21 August 2006 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=833>). At the same time the government has stepped up its propaganda offensive trying to deny that it violates religious freedom (see F18News 19 December 2006 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=891>). (END)

For a personal commentary by a Muslim scholar, advocating religious freedom for all faiths as the best antidote to Islamic religious extremism in Uzbekistan, see http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=338.

For more background, see Forum 18’s Uzbekistan religious freedom survey at http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=777.

A survey of the religious freedom decline in the eastern part of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) area is at http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=806, and of religious intolerance in Central Asia is at http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=815.

A printer-friendly map of Uzbekistan is available at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/index.html?Parent=asia&Rootmap=uzbeki (END)

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