Forum 18News: Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan; Russia; Uzbekistan
3 October 2008
KAZAKHSTAN: HOW SIMPLE IS IT TO GAIN LEGAL STATUS?
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1198
Atyrau's Jehovah's Witnesses first applied for registration in 2001. Their 2007 application was rejected because they failed to supply work telephone numbers for some of the founders. Their December 2007 application was rejected in August 2008 despite successfully passing two "expert assessments" at the Religious Affairs Committee in the capital, Jehovah's Witnesses told Forum 18 News Service. The Justice Department rejected it because one of the 20 founders (twice the required legal minimum) could not provide an uptodate identity document. "Tens" of Protestant churches have been denied registration in recent years. Kuanysh Sultanov, head of the Kazakh government delegation to an OSCE human rights conference, boasted of a "simplified mechanism" for registering religious organisations. Yet Lyudmila Danilenko, head of the registration department at the Religious Affairs Committee, told Forum 18: "There have been no changes to the registration procedures over the past year." She claimed they were already "simple", even though for the past year any religious community applying for registration must undergo an "expert assessment" by her Committee.
2 October 2008
KYRGYZSTAN: RESTRICTIVE PROPOSED NEW RELIGION LAW TO PARLIAMENT THIS MONTH
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1197
Kyrgyzstan's proposed new Religion Law - which ruling party deputies say will make it more difficult for religious communities to gain legal status and for people to share their faith - is set to reach the full Parliament in the second half of October, Kanybek Osmanaliev, Chair of the State Agency for Religious Affairs, told Forum 18 News Service. "There are many inadequacies in the current law," a parliamentary press officer told Forum 18. "Religious organisations function freely without any control. This law will bring control." Osmanaliev has expressed concern over the "abnormality" of a rising number of people changing faith, especially young ethnic Kyrgyz joining Christian churches. He complained of "illegal" activity by "various destructive, totalitarian groups and reactionary sects", among whom he included the Hare Krishna and Mormon communities. Fr Igor Dronov of the Russian Orthodox Church told Forum 18 of his support for the proposed new Law. "The earlier Law was too liberal and led to the spiritual destruction of the country. Thank God the state is starting to act."
1 October 2008
RUSSIA: RELIGIOUS FREEDOM SURVEY, OCTOBER 2008
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1196
The gravest current threat to freedom of thought, conscience and belief in Russia comes from the federal government's approach to combating religious extremism, Forum 18 News Service finds in its survey analysis of religious freedom. In the wake of the 2002 Extremism Law, moderate Muslim literature has been outlawed as inciting religious extremism - despite the reasoning behind this being questionable. This has led to harassment and sometimes prosecution of alleged authors, distributors or simply readers. The authorities have subsequently begun to level religious extremism charges against other confessions, including traditional pagans, Jehovah's Witnesses and a Baptist. Some religious communities continue to complain of restriction through petty bureaucracy, such as the loss of legal status for unlicensed educational work or not engaging in financial activity, even though the law is ambiguous on these points. Long-running problems - such as state disruption of religious events, obstruction of access to and retention of property for worship and bureaucratic visa problems for foreign religious personnel - persist.
30 September 2008
UZBEKISTAN: IMAMS ARRESTED AND PROTESTANT FREED
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1195
A Justice Ministry official in Karakalpakstan has confirmed to Forum 18 News Service that several imams have been arrested in the region in north-western Uzbekistan in recent months. However, it remains unclear whether the authorities' accusations against the imams of financial irregularity or drugs possession are true or an excuse to punish them for their religious activity. "No imams were arrested in Karakalpakstan," an official of the Religious Affairs Committee in Tashkent told Forum 18 categorically. Other Muslims in Karakalpakstan have reportedly been arrested for reading the works of Al-Bukhari, a noted Islamic scholar whose works can no longer be published in Uzbekistan. Surveillance of mosques increased during Ramadan. Meanwhile, Protestant Christian Aimurat Khayburahmanov was freed by a Karakalpak court on 26 September after religious extremism charges were dropped. "I thank everybody who thought about me while I was in custody and gave their support," he told Forum 18. In Fergana a Baptist was fined for giving out Christian literature, which has been ordered destroyed. In Tashkent, nine Baptists are awaiting administrative trial for holding an open-air baptism.