Forum 18News: Armenia, Kazakhstan
26 September 2007
ARMENIA: 82 RELIGIOUS PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE IS NEW RECORD
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1024
With 82 Jehovah's Witnesses imprisoned for refusing military service and the military-controlled alternative service on grounds of religious conscience, the Armenian authorities have reached a new record. Jehovah's Witnesses told Forum 18 News Service that 73 of them are serving terms of 18 to 36 months' imprisonment, while nine more are awaiting trial. Seven are due for trial on 15 October, while the new call-up about to begin is likely to bring more arrests. "Alternative service is under the control of the Defence Ministry - I believe this should not be the case," Armen Harutyunyan, Armenia's Human Rights Ombudsperson, told Forum 18. But Artur Agabekyan, chair of the parliamentary Defence Committee, rejects this. "The alternative civilian service has no connection with the Defence Ministry," he claimed to Forum 18. Local journalist Vahan Ishkhanian says there is no appetite for change within Armenia. "They say we already have a law that meets European standards. I believe any change depends on the Council of Europe."
28 September 2007
KAZAKHSTAN: "THE SECRET POLICE'S PERSECUTION BY PROXY"
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1026
Members of the Grace Presbyterian Church in the north-eastern town of Karaganda - who have already faced the police, the secret police, the Prosecutor's Office and the sanitary-epidemiological service - now face intrusive questioning from the Tax Police. Among the questions are why they go to the church and not to the mosque. Members of the Hare Krishna commune near Almaty in the south equally face relentless pressure from a succession of different government agencies in a bid to crush their activity. Migration Police raided the commune on 20 September checking the documents
of all those present at an important religious festival. "This is the secret police's persecution by proxy," one observer familiar with both cases, who preferred not to be identified, told Forum 18 News Service. But Amanbek Mukhashev of the government's Religious Affairs Committee claimed to an OSCE conference in Warsaw on 26 September that "freedom of belief and freedom to express religious beliefs have become one of the leitmotivs in the work of Kazakhstan's state and local organs of power".
Source: www.forum18.org