From: Forum 18 <f18-news-server@forum18.org>
Subject: F18News Summary: Azerbaijan; Belarus; Macedonia; Uzbekistan;
Date: January 30, 2004
FORUM 18 NEWS SERVICE, Oslo, Norway
The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one's belief or religion
The right to join together and express one's belief
29 January 2004
AZERBAIJAN: AUTHORITIES PLAN TO STORM EMBATTLED MOSQUE?
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=240
Muslims from the 1000-year old Juma mosque in Baku fear the authorities, who want to use it as a carpet museum, will seize the mosque by force on Friday, and the mosque has invited foreign diplomats to be present as neutral observers. Rafik Aliev, head of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations, has said that Muslims must leave the mosque because his committee has not registered them - but his committee has refused to consider the mosque's registration application. Otherwise, Aliev has said that police will remove them by force. Under international human rights conventions that Azerbaijan has signed, the absence of official registration does not give any grounds for this expulsion. The embattled mosque and its religious freedom activist imam, Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, who was
jailed after a rigged trial, have received strong support from Azerbaijan's Baptist and Adventist churches, as well as from the International Religious Liberty Association.
* See full article below. *
27 January 2004
BELARUS: KRISHNA DEVOTEES UNDER PRESSURE
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=236
Authorities in Belarus have been briefly detaining Krishna devotees two or three times a week for distributing religious literature, as well as obstructing literature distribution in other ways, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Separately, the Society for Krishna Consciousness in Belarus has asked the UN Human Rights Committee to investigate the legality of the states' refusal to register the organization under the previous religion law. Vasili Marchenko, the official in charge of religious affairs in Brest region, told Forum 18 that a local Hare Krishna community had not been denied re-registration under the new religion law, and that he had not received any such application. This is disputed by a devotee, who told Forum 18 that the community's re-registration documents had been returned without explanation. In October 1997, the Belarusian State Committee for
Religious and Ethnic Affairs' Expert Council described the Minsk Society for Krishna Consciousness as a "destructive totalitarian sect infringing personality, health, citizens' rights and national security."
29 January 2004
BELARUS: JEWS FAIL TO RECOVER SYNAGOGUES OR PREVENT THEIR DESTRUCTION
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=239
Yakov Gutman, who heads the World Association of Belarusian Jewry, has accused President Aleksandr Lukashenko of "personal responsibility for the destruction of Jewish holy sites" in Belarus. Gutman was subsequently detained by police and hospitalised with
a suspected heart attack, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. He claims that Belarusian
authorities permitted the demolition of a former synagogue to build an elite housing complex, that the construction of a multi-storey car park will prevent the reconstruction of a sixteenth-century stone synagogue demolished in the late 1960s, and that Jewish cemeteries have been destroyed by two local authorities in recent years. Meanwhile, only 9 out of 92 historical synagogues in Belarus have been returned to believers since 1991, and the new 2002 religion law states that religious organisations do not have priority in cases when a former worship building is currently used for culture or sport. Yakov Dorn, Chairman of the Judaic Religious Association in Belarus, told Forum 18 that "most former synagogues come into that category - so the authorities usually refuse our requests and refer to that provision."
28 January 2004
MACEDONIA: ORTHODOX MONK AND BISHOP FINED, AND ANOTHER BISHOP STILL JAILED
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=238
A Serbian Orthodox Bishop, Marko (Kimev), and a monk, Sasko Velkov, have been fined yesterday (27 January) for taking part in a baptism last July, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Another Bishop, Jovan ((Vranisskovski), who conducted the baptism, is still in jail for his participation in a church service on 11 January at which Bishop Marko and other monks and nuns were also arrested by Macedonian police. Bishop Marko told Forum 18 that the arrest and sentencing of monks and nuns is an "an obvious attempt to scare Macedonian Orthodox Church monks who desired to join the Serbian Orthodox Church". Both the Serbian and Greek Orthodox churches have asked the Macedonian government to release Bishop Jovan, who Amnesty International has described as being in jail for his "non-violent religious convictions". Macedonian officials have rejected these appeals.
28 January 2004
UZBEKISTAN: POLICE ARREST, INSULT & THREATEN TO RAPE FEMALE JEHOVAH'S
WITNESSES
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=237
Two female Jehovah's Witnesses, Gulya Boikova and Parakhat Narmanova, have been arrested, insulted and threatened with rape by police in Karsh (Qarshi), Forum 18 News Service has learnt. On 22 January a pending courtcase against the women was adjourned by Judge Abdukadyr Boibilov, whilepolice gather more evidence. This is one example
of the continuingpersecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Uzbekistan, who are the religious
minority most frequently victimised by the authorities. Witnesses have beensubjected
to vicious beatings by police, and a Jehovah's Witness is theonly member of a religious minorities to have been sentenced to jail forhis religious beliefs. (There are about 6,500 prisoners of conscience fromthe majority religion, Islam.) The persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses isprobably explained by their being the most active religious minority
in trying to spread their beliefs, and the Uzbek religion law banning "actions aimed
at proselytism".
29 January 2004
AZERBAIJAN: AUTHORITIES PLAN TO STORM EMBATTLED MOSQUE?
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=240
By Felix Corley, Editor, Forum 18 News Service
Members of the Juma mosque in Baku's historic old city fear the authorities are planning steps to seize the mosque as the deadline for them to abandon their place of worship approaches. The authorities want to turn it into a carpet museum, as was it was in Soviet times (See F18News 19 January http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=231 ). "Ten or so unidentified people in civilian clothes arrived outside the mosque this
morning as well as three of four film crews from pro-government television channels," Najaf Allahverdiev and Seimur Rashidov told Forum 18 News Service from inside the mosque on 29 January. "No-one demanded that we should leave, but the journalists told us they are expecting an attack." Allahverdiev - brother of the mosque's imprisoned imam, religious freedom activist Ilgar Ibrahimoglu Allahverdiev - and Rashidov both pledged that the community will not leave their thousand-year-old mosque, despite
pressure from the authorities.
Allahverdiev said the mosque leaders fear official may organise a "provocation" to give cover for their seizure of the building. "Many people will be in the mosque tomorrow as it is a major feast - perhaps more than a thousand. We have arranged guards, but we can't check everyone coming in or their bags," he told Forum 18. "They might get people to start shouting terrorist slogans, start a fight or plant weapons in the mosque. Then it
will all be on TV and they will be able to say: Look, they're all terrorists."
He said this was why the mosque had invited international officials to examine the building on 22 January. Representatives of the Royal Norwegian and the United States embassies, the Council of Europe office in Baku, and human rights activists Saida Gojamanli, chairman of the Legality and Human Rights Bureau NGO, and Arzu Abdullayeva, chairwoman of the Azerbaijan National Committee of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, were given free access to the building to check that nothing illegal was being stored or carried out in it. Mosque leaders told the foreign representatives that they would insist on their rights to remain in the mosque, but were pledged to reject the use of violence to protect their rights.
"Even if they beat us with truncheons, we will not respond," Allahverdiev told Forum 18. He said the mosque leaders had invited foreign diplomats to be present at the mosque on 30 January to ensure neutral witnesses are present if the feared attack materialises.
The film crews and unidentified people arrived a day after Rafik Aliev, the head of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations, had declared on television that the Muslims had to leave the mosque because they did not have registration from his committee. He added that the police would otherwise remove them by force. Aliev did not explain that his committee had refused to consider the mosque's registration application lodged in 2001.
"Because of his position, Aliev is obliged to secure religious freedom," Allahverdiev complained. "We wrote to him asking him to defend our rights and this is the only response we got." He and fellow-mosque members point out that the mosque retains its 1993 Ministry of Justice registration, and under international human rights conventions that Azerbaijan has signed, absence of official registration does not make religious activity illegal.
Reached by telephone on 29 January, Rafik Aliev's assistant declined to put Forum 18 through to him after he learnt who was asking for an interview.
"Please do everything within your power in order to preclude the violence over the believers and to prevent their being ousted from God's temple," some 500 mosque members have written in their latest appeal. "Don't let the small island of civil and religious tolerance which is the religious community of the Juma Mosque be suppressed."
Members of the mosque have complained of long-running pressure from the authorities, even before Ibrahimoglu's detention on 1 October last year and his subsequent remand on three-months investigate detention (see F18News 4 December 2003 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=203 ). The authorities have accused Ibrahimoglu of organising and participating in riots that followed last October's rigged presidential election, although so far investigators have not produced any evidence of his involvement.
On 16 January the Juma mosque received a letter from the authorities of the old city preservation area claiming that the Muslims were occupying the mosque illegally, an accusation the mosque leaders deny. The letter gave 15 days for the community to leave the mosque. The Baku city authorities also wrote to say they intend to turn the mosque back into a carpet museum, as it was during the later Soviet period. The mosque leaders wrote back to say they rejected the accusations and order to leave the mosque as illegal.
"Since 1992 the Juma mosque religious community has been performing its activities in the mosque and over that period of time it has never once been reproached in any way by the governmental agencies," the community pointed out in a 29 January statement.
The mosque insists that it intends to remain independent of the Caucasian Muslim Board, a body that the government requires all mosques to belong to. "The distinguishing feature of the mosque is its activities aimed at propagandising inter-religious and inter-confessional tolerance, civil tolerance and religious freedom. The community implements many charitable programmes including providing religious rituals to the population free of
charge. It arranges charitable dinners for orphan children, renders them moral assistance, helps their psychological rehabilitation and arranges classes in geography, history and English."
The embattled mosque and its imam have received strong support from Azerbaijan's Baptist and Adventist churches, as well as from the International Religious Liberty Association.
For more background information see Forum 18's latest religious freedom survey at
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=92
A printer-friendly map of Azerbaijan is available at
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/index.html?Parent=asia&Rootmap=azerba
(END)
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