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Kazakstan's Minorities Fear Anti-Terror Law Will End Religious Freedom

ALMATY, Kazakstan - Religious minorities and human rights activists here are convinced that a religion bill now awaiting the president's signature will decisively end a decade of religious freedom in this mostly Muslim Central Asian country. "Everybody is in shock," said Ninel Fokina, chairwoman of Almaty's Helsinki Committee, a group that monitors human rights and religious freedom.

The proposed legislation, part of a packet of four urgent bills aimed at countering terrorism, speedily passed both houses of Kazakstan's parliament in the span of two weeks at the end of January. President Nursultan Nazarbayev has promised to sign the measure.

Kazakstan, a country wedged between Russia and China and over four times the size of Texas, is in the lead of four former Soviet republics moving to adopt restrictive laws ostensibly aimed at curbing religious extremism, especially militant Islam. The others are Russia, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan.

Human rights activists like Fokina see the movement to restrict religious freedom as an effort to take advantage of a sea change after Sept. 11 in the U.S. government's approach to Islam and Central Asia. "September 11th was a big present for them," said Fokina, referring to Kazak authorities who made six previous attempts to adopt draconian changes to a 1992 religion law. Each attempt was met with strong objections by Western governments, which provide substantial aid and investment to oil-rich Kazakstan.

A leader of the Association of Religious Unions of Kazakstan, Vladimir Lyashevskiy, said he is surprised at the near silence in the West on the proposed changes. Local Protestants, he said, worry that Nazarbayev made a secret deal with President George Bush during a December visit to the White House: Kazakstan's cooperation in the U.S. war on terrorism in exchange for Washington's silence on human rights abuses. "We have that suspicion," said Lyashevskiy, whose association represents 159 Protestant churches in Kazakstan.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Almaty, Jim Kenney, denied any such deal, saying, "This is baseless speculation." "The idea that we would sacrifice human rights for the war on terrorism is absolutely nonsense," said Kenney, citing a three-day January visit to Kazakstan by the State Department's assistant secretary for human rights as evidence of continued U.S. concern.

Under Kazakstan's proposed new rules, all religious communities and missionaries must obtain government registration, 50 people are required in order to legally start a congregation and unregistered congregations are forbidden to rent property for worship -- a heavy blow in post- Communist Kazakstan where construction of new mosques and churches was long banned. "To buy a house (for worship) costs at least $5,000. A little church simply can't do it," said Lyashevskiy, adding that if Nazarbayev signs the bill, "Right away little churches with under 50 people will become illegal. There are hundreds of these around the country that have been started by (local) missionaries."

Protestants in Kazakstan are a tiny minority, numbering 50,000 active churchgoers by Lyashevskiy's reckoning. The country of 14 million has an estimated 360,000 citizens of Roman Catholic heritage. About 6 million people have a Russian Orthodox background and the balance -- ethnic Kazaks who make up 60 percent of the population -- are nominally Muslims.

Muslim leaders in the government-aligned Spiritual Directorate of the Muslims of Kazakstan are the lone religious voices fiercely supporting the proposed legislation. "If we don't control the extremists coming in, they will destroy the government," said Tairabei Risbayev, head of the Spiritual Directorate's department of Spiritual Preaching and Studies.

If the proposed changes are enacted, the Spiritual Directorate will assume tremendous new authority to approve or disapprove all Muslim organizations seeking the required government registration. Risbayev did not foresee any potential conflict of interest for the Spiritual Directorate, which upholds Kazakstan's dominant Hanafi school of Sunni Islam. Regarding other strains of Islam found in the country's 1,400 mosques, Risbayev said, "They won't be under our jurisdiction but we will decide whether to give them permission to work here in Kazakstan."

About 12 miles east of Almaty in the city of Talgar, on a road that leads eventually to the Chinese border, one local imam voiced his steadfast opposition to the new law. He predicted a disaster for Islam in Kazakstan if the Spiritual Directorate is given supreme authority over Muslim activity. "Let's say in the name of Allah I built a mosque with my money for all people. Why should I have to ask permission of the Spiritual Directorate for that?" said Imam.

Abdurazak Turdi, a leader of the country's 300,000-strong Uighur ethnic minority who noted that the Spiritual Directorate is dominated by ethnic Kazaks. "Look at any nationality: Uighurs, Chechens or Turks. Why do they need to get permission?" Turdi said. "Worship is permitted by Allah, not by the Spiritual Directorate." In Talgar, there is one mosque with a 500-person capacity for the city's 30,000 Muslims, Turdi said. The city's other mosque, he said, was sold recently by the Almaty-based Spiritual Directorate.

Instead of seeking to regulate religious practice and foreign missionaries, the government would be better served promoting democracy and prosperity in Kazakstan, Turdi said. "The extremists who come from abroad are nowhere near as dangerous as those who come from within, drawn from the ranks of people unhappy with the way things are in Kazakstan," said Turdi, a retired cook who teaches Arabic and the Koran to a half-dozen students in a makeshift classroom in his home. Like other religious leaders, Turdi predicted that the sometimes vaguely worded bill will leave much to the discretion of provincial bureaucrats, who have a reputation for being fickle and venal.

As it stands, Muslims associated with the Spiritual Directorate and Christian Orthodox under the Russian Orthodox Church enjoy an unofficial privileged position. Leaders of both denominations said they were consulted by the religion bill's drafters. Catholics were not. During Pope John Paul II's historic visit in September, Kazakstan's Roman Catholic clerics expressed hope the government might show more sympathy to the church's needs. Judging from the lack of consultation over the proposed law and continued visa hassles for foreign Catholic clergy working in Kazakstan, the papal visit did not make a significant difference. "Now, they only want to prolong the visas for two months," reported Father Athanasius Schneider, himself a German citizen and the chancellor of the Karaganda Diocese in northern Kazakstan. Schneider explained that in his diocese that means half the 45 priests and nuns must trek to the Kazak capital Astana to complete visa paperwork. For foreign clergy working in the farthest reaches of Kazakstan, it can take a day to reach Astana. Ordinarily, Catholics might have a potent voice in the Vatican, which Nazarbayev has twice visited, but Schneider and other local Catholic leaders said they are handicapped by the departure two months ago by the papal nuncio -- Vatican ambassador -- to Kazakstan. A new nuncio has not been named and no one is coordinating relations with the government, they said.

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Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002