Forum 18 News Summary: Azerbaijan; Belarus
26 July 2006
AZERBAIJAN: JEHOVAH'S WITNESS CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR SENTENCED
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=818
Mushfiq Mammedov, a Jehovah's Witness conscientious objector has been given a six month suspended jail sentence and intends to appeal against this, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. He was sentenced for refusing compulsory military service - even though the country's Constitution guarantees the right to alternative service, and not allowing this breaches its Council of Europe commitments. "My son has done nothing wrong - he's not guilty," his mother Sevil Najafova told Forum 18 "He told the Military Commissariat he's prepared to do alternative unarmed service in line with his religious beliefs." A spokesperson for the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations, defended the sentence. "Our law says every young man must join the army, so this sentence is correct," he told Forum 18. The OSCE has noted that "a constitutional right would be meaningless if the government recognised a right to alternative service only after it had initiated the promulgation of a law."
28 July 2006
BELARUS: TIME RUNNING OUT FOR MINSK CHURCH
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=819
New Life Church in Belarus' capital Minsk could lose its worship premises as early as mid-August, the charismatic church's lawyer, Sergei Lukanin, has told Forum 18 News Service. Minsk City Economic Court has ruled that New Life must sell - at a low price - the disused cowshed it worships in, following official insistence that the city Development Plan requires that the building be demolished. No new evidence for this claim was presented at the most recent hearing, which Forum 18 attended, one official eventually agreeing that the church "could be sited anywhere in the city." Minsk's main religious affairs official, Alla Ryabitseva, has previously told Forum 18 that the Development Plan was the reason why New Life was not
given permission to convert the building into a church. Because it does not have state-approved worship premises, New Life was not given the compulsory re-registration demanded by the Religion Law, which bans all unregistered religious activity - against international human rights
standards. The church could therefore be liquidated under the Religion Law.
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