Forum 18 News: Azerbaijan, Russia, Uzbekistan
22 June 2007
Azerbaijan: Baptist pastor still held on false charges
Imprisoned Baptist pastor Zaur Balaev has been held for over a month by Azerbaijan, on charges which witnesses insist are false, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Pastor Balaev was arrested on 20 May, and the authorities intend to bring criminal charges of resisting officials with violence. The arrest took place during a police raid on a worship service which they insist against Azerbaijan's international human rights commitments was illegal as the church does not have state registration. The authorities have been denying the church legal status for 13 years. Since being detained over a month ago, "Zaur's health has deteriorated seriously" the head of the Baptist Union Ilya Zenchenko told Forum 18. Zenchenko also stated that police had hit Balaev in the face and that since his arrival in prison he has been threatened with violence. The Balaev family has had to go into debt to pay to take food to Zaur Balaev, who has been held over 250 km. (150 miles) from his home. The authorities have denied Balaev's family the opportunity to meet him since his arrest. Officials have refused to discuss the charges with Forum 18.
27 June 2007
Russia: Said Nursi ban brands moderate Muslims as extremist
Muslims popularising the work of Said Nursi, a Turkish Muslim theologian, may be at risk of criminal prosecution as extremists, Forum 18 News Service has been told. If an appeal which may be heard in August - against a Moscow court ban on translations of Nursi's works fails, "anyone in Russia who publishes or distributes the banned publications of Said Nursi will be liable to criminal prosecution," Valeri Kuzmin of Tatarstan's Public Prosecutor's Office told Forum 18. Sergei Sychev, a lawyer who is contesting the ban, estimates that millions of copies of Nursi's work Risale-i Nur - a popular missionary text are currently in circulation in Russia. Kuzmin has stated that legal action was initiated in response to complaints from relatives "concerned by what was happening to those lured into the Nursi community." Its approximately 200 members in Tatarstan, Kuzmin estimated, "try to sever social ties" in just the same way as "totalitarian sects such as the Jehovah's Witnesses." The ban relies solely upon analysis of the work by psychologists and linguists of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Russia's Ombudsman for Human Rights, Vladimir Lukin, and a wide range of Russia's Muslim leaders and scholars has condemned the ban.
26 June 2007
Uzbekistan: Crackdown on Protestants continues
In the latest deportation for religious activity known to Forum 18 News Service, a Tajik Pentecostal who has lived in Uzbekistan for more than 10 years has been deported to Tajikistan. Sayora (who preferred that her last name not be published) was held in jail for 22 days before deportation. Other church members arrested and held by the NSS secret police in the raid include a man who was intimidated by officials and neighbours into moving out of his local mahalla (urban district). Five church members were fined and three were jailed for five days after trial. A registered Full Gospel congregation near Tashkent has failed to persuade the authorities to hold Anti-Terrorist police to account for violent threats made during a raid on the church. Police claimed the church was "preparing terrorists." After another police raid in north-west Uzbekistan, where all non-Muslim and non-Russian Orthodox religious activity is a criminal offence, a Protestant has been sentenced for "illegally teaching religion." The trial of other local Protestants is continuing. Officials have refused to discuss these cases with Forum 18.
27 June 2007
Uzbekistan: Pentecostal and Jehovah's Witness prisoners of conscience face harsh labour camp conditions
Friends of Pentecostal prisoner of conscience Dmitry Shestakov, sentenced to four years in a labour camp, have told Forum 18 News Service of their concern at the conditions he is being held in. He has has lost between 15 and 20 kilograms (33 to 44 pounds) in weight and is being pressured to renounce his faith. Former prisoners from Camp No. 29, where he is being held, describe unsanitary and dangerous living and working conditions, which cause a high level of sickness among prisoners. Guards beat them with truncheons and members of criminal gangs have a ruthless hold over other prisoners. Jehovah's Witness prisoner of conscience Irfon Hamidov has lost his appeal against a sentence of two years in a labour camp. Jehovah's Witnesses note irregularities in the legal process, including testimony from two people claimed by the authorities to be "victims" of Hamidov's "illegal" teaching, who testified at his original trial that they had never met him. The authorities have refused to speak to Forum 18 about the cases.
Source: www.forum18.org