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

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1 September 2010
AZERBAIJAN: NO RE-REGISTRATION, NO BUILDING – NO WORSHIP
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1482
Cathedral of Praise Protestant church in Baku – which claims 1,500 members
– has been unable to meet for worship since its tent was destroyed in an
apparent arson attack in January, its pastor Rasim Halilov told Forum 18
News Service. Its re-registration application was rejected because some of
its founders had changed since 2002, a decision it failed to overturn in
court. The State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations said it
cannot use another church for worship. Similarly failing to overturn its
re-registration denial in court was Baku’s Jehovah’s Witness community,
though it has been able to continue to meet. Eight months after the
deadline, only 450 communities have gained compulsory re-registration,
including 433 mosques and only 2 Protestant churches. Re-registration for
the Catholics – who were forced to apply only for their Baku parish, not
for a community covering the whole of Azerbaijan – awaits the outcome of
discussions between the nuncio and the Foreign Ministry.

2 September 2010
TAJIKISTAN: “YOUR CHILDREN WILL BECOME EXTREMISTS AND TERRORISTS”
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1483
A new crackdown is underway on religious education of children and young
people in Tajikistan and abroad, Forum 18 News Service notes. In televised
remarks, President Emomali Rahmon called on parents to recall their
children from foreign Islamic colleges, claiming that otherwise “your
children will become extremists and terrorists”. “We ourselves, the
government and the Religious Affairs Committee, will decide how many
religious ministers are needed for the country,” he insisted. Presidential
Advisor Mansur Sayfutdinov claimed to Forum 18 that the president was
speaking not of all such students, but only those who had not sought state
permission for such studies. Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry launched an
apparently nationwide “Operation Madrassah” to end private teaching of
Islam, which has seen many madrassahs raided and administrative cases
launched against teachers. “We have only identified and stopped illegally
acting mullahs who have no licence to teach the Koran,” one police officer
told Forum 18. Article 474 of the Administrative Code prescribes fines for
“teaching religious knowledge without authorisation”.

3 September 2010
TAJIKISTAN: OFFICIALS CHOOSE RAMADAN TO IMPOSE CONTROLS
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1484
On the first full day of Ramadan, the Chair and other officials of the
Tajikistan government’s Religious Affairs Committee, as well as the Justice
Ministry and the National Security Committee secret police, visited the
Dushanbe headquarters of the Islamic Revival Party (IRP) to order it to
halt using its offices for prayers. “We do not officially call it a mosque
but do pray in it. However, the officials take a different view on this,”
Hikmatullo Saifullozoda of the IRP told Forum 18 News Service. Officials
agreed to allow prayers there but only for the rest of Ramadan.
Presidential Senior Advisor Mansur Sayfutdinov told Forum 18 that according
to the law, no political organisation may establish a mosque. Authorities
in a town in Sughd Region chose the start of Ramadan to ban the use of
loudspeakers to broadcast Muslim prayers. The Religious Affairs Committee
has reaffirmed the 2009 ban on children taking part in the haj pilgrimage
to Mecca. And the investigator has refused to tell Forum 18 whether the
criminal case against 17 Jehovah’s Witnesses will be sent to court.

30 August 2010
TURKMENISTAN: FIVE YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT FOR ARRESTED PROTESTANT PASTOR?
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1481
Pentecostal pastor Ilmurad Nurliev, arrested at his home in Mary in
south-eastern Turkmenistan on 27 August, faces criminal charges of
large-scale swindling which carry a maximum penalty of five years’
imprisonment and confiscation of property, his wife Maya and his lawyer
have told Forum 18 News Service. Two women who had attended church meetings
wrote statements that he took money from them, as did a man they had never
heard of, charges his wife and other church members deny vigorously. They
say police pressured the two women to write the statements and they now
regret doing so. Another church member has been threatened that if she does
not testify against Pastor Nurliev her husband – who is not a church member
– will be sacked from his job. Forum 18 was unable to discuss the case with
officials, including police investigator Durdimurad Gazakov. Meanwhile,
mystery surrounds why two imams were arrested and given long prison terms.
* See full article below. *

30 August 2010
TURKMENISTAN: FIVE YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT FOR ARRESTED PROTESTANT PASTOR?

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1481
By Felix Corley, Editor, Forum 18 News Service

Police in the town of Mary in south-eastern Turkmenistan arrested
Protestant pastor Ilmurad Nurliev on 27 August, his wife Maya and other
church members told Forum 18 News Service. Investigators have accused him
of swindling money from two women who attended church meetings and from a
man he had never heard of before. He faces up to five years’ imprisonment
if convicted. Church members vigorously refute the accusations. Another
church member has been summoned and threatened that if she does not testify
against Pastor Nurliev, her husband will be sacked from his job in the
military. “They have no conscience, no limits,” Maya Nurlieva told Forum 18
of the officials who have arrested her husband. “What they’ve done is not
right.”

Pastor Nurliev has been accused under Article 228, Part 2 of the Criminal
Code, which punishes swindling by a group of people, repeated swindling, or
large-scale swindling, his lawyer told Forum 18 on 30 August. Those found
guilty face punishment of between one and five years’ imprisonment and
possible confiscation of property. Investigators allege that Pastor Nurliev
swindled the three out of 7,000,000 Manats (15,395,700 Norwegian Kroner,
1,932,650 Euros or 2,456,140 US Dollars), which they say represents
large-scale swindling.

The lawyer added that investigators have up to two months to prepare a case
for trial. Pastor Nurliev is currently being held in the town police
investigation cells.

No official response

Forum 18 has been unable to discuss the accusations with investigator
Durdimurad Gazakov, who is leading the case at the Mary town police. The
man who answered his telephone on 30 August put the phone down as soon as
Forum 18 asked for him. Subsequent calls went unanswered. Forum 18 reached
town prosecutor Razmurad Durdiev the same day, but he refused to answer any
questions and put the phone down.

The man who answered the telephone of Nurmukhamed Gurbanov, Deputy Chair of
the government’s Gengeshi (Council) for Religious Affairs in the capital
Ashgabad [Ashgabat], put the phone down on 30 August as soon as Forum 18
had introduced itself. Subsequent calls went unanswered. The telephone of
the Mary Region chief imam, who also heads the Mary Regional Gengeshi, went
unanswered on 30 August.

Earlier harassment

Pastor Nurliev’s congregation, Peace to the World Pentecostal church, has
faced intermittent harassment in recent years. Pastor Nurliev was fined for
his religious activity in 2008. The church applied for state registration
in 2007, but officials repeatedly asked for “corrections” to be made to the
church’s application and since the beginning of 2010 no progress on
processing the application appears to have been made.

Since October 2007, Pastor Nurliev has been on the government’s secret exit
blacklist maintained by the country’s Migration Service on behalf of the
Interior Ministry and the Ministry of State Security (MSS) secret police
(see F18News 3 August 2010
).

Arrest

The latest trouble for Pastor Nurliev came with his sudden arrest on the
morning of 27 August. “I was out at work when the police arrested my
husband, and the first I knew was when he was allowed to call me from the
investigator’s office,” Maya Nurlieva told Forum 18. She said police have
refused to allow her to meet her husband. “They should have allowed me to
see him.” Police also refused to give her any document certifying his
arrest or outlining the reasons for it.

She added that they took his certificate in preaching he gained at a
Ukrainian Christian college in March 2006, refusing to allow her to take it
back and give them a photocopy. He also had 150 US Dollars in his pocket
when he was arrested which they have also refused to give back. “All they
gave back to me were the keys to our flat,” she lamented.

Maya Nurlieva said that police and the investigator have refused to discuss
her husband’s case with her, only directly with the lawyer.

Accusations

Pastor Nurliev is accused of swindling the money from two women who
occasionally attended a women’s group of his church, as well as from one
man, Maya Nurlieva explained. The three wrote statements to the police
denouncing Pastor Nurliev, but she insists neither of the women ever gave
money to the church or to her husband. “They now regret having written
these accusations, but they did so under police pressure and it is now too
late.” She said neither she nor her husband knew the man who had accused
him.

One of the women attended three or four meetings in 2009, some of them with
her mother. Both were subsequently imprisoned for causing a disturbance
where they lived, but were freed from prison later that year in a prisoner
amnesty. The young woman came to a few more meetings in 2010 after her
release, accompanied by another young woman. Maya Nurlieva maintains that
police or the MSS secret police put pressure on the two younger women to
write the complaints as a basis to arrest her husband.

Human rights defenders have in other cases told Forum 18 that those who
have been imprisoned are particularly vulnerable to pressure from the
authorities to sign accusations prepared by officers.

Pastor Nurliev’s lawyer said that as the case rests on the three
accusations, it is only if they renounce their accusations that the case
can stop. “None of them has done so,” she told Forum 18.

“There are many people who could testify with the truth – that my husband
did not extort money from anyone,” Maya Nurlieva insisted to Forum 18. “He
also has a secular job and so do I – our family does not live off extorted
money.”

She said that 15 church members who came to their Sunday service on 29
August signed an appeal to the Prosecutor’s Office testifying to Pastor
Nurliev’s innocence.

Threats to church member

Another church member, Kristina Petrova, was summoned by the police on the
afternoon of 29 August, Maya Nurlieva told Forum 18. Officers pressured her
to testify against the pastor, but she refused. “They shouted at her and
threatened her very crudely,” Nurlieva told Forum 18. “She’s just a young
woman.”

When Petrova refused to testify against Pastor Nurliev, she was then
threatened that her husband would be sacked from his job in the military.
She told the police that he is not a church member and has nothing to do
with the case. “If they sack her husband, the family will have nothing to
eat,” Nurlieva pointed out.

Religious prisoners

Five Jehovah’s Witnesses are currently serving prison sentences for
refusing compulsory military service on grounds of religious conscience
while a further two, also prosecuted under the Criminal Code, are serving
suspended sentences (see F18News 24 May 2010
).

Mystery surrounds the recent imprisonment of several imams – it remains
unclear whether they were punished for peaceful religious activity or for
other reasons. A 73-year-old imam Shiri Geldimuradov died in prison
apparently in early June, Radio Free Europe and the Turkmen Initiative for
Human Rights reported. He was arrested in April after the authorities
claimed weapons had been found in his Ashgabad home. One of his sons had
already been arrested, while three others were arrested after the imam’s
arrest.

The Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights also reported on 22 August that two
other imams were imprisoned in separate cases after MSS secret police claim
to have found weapons on them.

One of them, an elderly imam from a village in Lebap Region of eastern
Turkmenistan, was given a five year prison term after officers who stopped
his car in late June alleged they had found bullets for a Makarov pistol.
By the time the case reached court, no mention was made in the case of any
bullets and he was imprisoned on other charges. The other imam was
imprisoned for three years after MSS secret police officers claim to have
found a dummy grenade at his home. Similarly, by the time the case reached
court no mention was made of any grenade.

Harassment continues

Other Protestant churches have faced recent harassment. A summer camp for
young people run by several Protestant churches near Geok-tepe was raided
by police in July, who questioned and threatened participants. The same
month, members of a Baptist church in Dashoguz [Dashhowuz] were pressured
to sign statements that they would no longer attend the church. Elsewhere,
two Protestant Christians were sacked from their employment because of
their faith in summer 2010, one in state employment, the other in private
employment (see F18News 3 August 2010
). (END)

 © Forum 18 News Service. All rights reserved. ISSN 1504-2855
You may reproduce or quote this article provided that credit is given to
F18News http://www.forum18.org/

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