Tajikistan;Transdniester; Turkmenistan;

FORUM 18 NEWS SERVICE, Oslo, Norway http://www.forum18.org/

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

4 September 2003 AZERBAIJAN: “KGB METHODS” USED TO BREAK UP SUNDAY SCHOOL http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=135 Local police chief Mukhtar Mukhtarov used “Soviet, KGB methods” in breaking up the Sunday school attached to Baku’s Greater Grace Protestant Church on 31 August, one of the church’s pastors complained. “Mukhtarov said we do not have the right to teach kids and convert Azeri children,” Pastor Fuad Tariverdi told Forum 18 News Service. But Mukhtarov rejected any criticism and blamed the church. “They’re acting illegally,” he told Forum 18. “There was nothing bad, but this must be done with the permission of the Committee for Work with Religious Organisations.” The director of the club where the Sunday school met has told church leaders that he has been threatened that if he lets them in again he will be imprisoned. * See full article below. *

1 September 2003 BELARUS: MORE OBSTACLES TO PUBLIC RELIGIOUS EVENTS http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=131 Protestants and other minority faiths could find it even more difficult and expensive to hold public religious events under the new law on demonstrations and public events which came into force on 29 August. President Aleksandr Lukashenko reportedly removed proposed exemptions for religious events from the text of the new law approved by both houses of parliament in June. Forum 18 News Service points out that the new law – which formalises the web of controls that already exist over public religious events – adds a new twist, allowing religious groups to be liquidated (and therefore made illegal) if an event they organise causes any harm to the “public interest”, even such as any disruption to public transport.

3 September 2003 RUSSIA: MOSCOW BAPTIST STREET SERVICE BROKEN UP http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=134 After police broke up an open air Baptist evangelistic service in southern Moscow, a court ruled on 11 August that the singing and praying “disturbed public order and the peace of those relaxing nearby”. One Baptist was fined 16 US dollars after police claim he swore at them, a charge denied by local Baptists. “Believers don’t swear,” Veniamin Khorev told Forum 18 News Service. He described the breaking up of the service as “part of the normal life of our church”. As the Baptists refuse to register with the authorities they have no legal status and in practice cannot rent buildings for worship. Their evangelistic events have been disrupted across Russia this summer, with books confiscated, tents taken down, six church members detained for five days and four fined.

2 September 2003 SLOVENIA: HINDUS REGISTERED, BUT OTHERS STILL WAIT http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=133 “We are very happy to get registration, of course,” Natasa Sivic, leader of Slovenia’s Hindu community, told Forum 18 News Service. Her community – one of three religious groups granted registration in August by Drago Cepar, head of the government’s Office for Religious Communities – had been waiting seventeen months. Among the seven Cepar identified to Forum 18 as having lodged registration applications is the Christian Outreach Centre in Ljubljana. “My husband was told at the religious office that they couldn’t accept any new communities because as Slovenia is joining the European Union all laws need to be changed,” co-pastor Carol Vidic told Forum 18. “That was their excuse.”

2 September 2003 TAJIKISTAN: LOUDSPEAKERS BANNED FROM UNREGISTERED MOSQUES http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=132 Unregistered mosques in the capital Dushanbe may no longer broadcast the call to prayer through loudspeakers, local Muslims told Forum 18 News Service, but officials denied that any decree had been issued. Shamsuddin Nuriddinov of the religious affairs department of the city administration admitted to Forum 18 that the authorities had “requested” the leaders of unregistered mosques not to use loudspeakers for the call to prayer. Nuriddinov believes unregistered Muslim places of worship cannot be regarded as mosques and are operating illegally.

5 September 2003 TRANSDNIESTER: METHODISTS LIVE “TWILIGHT EXISTENCE,” LEADER CLAIMS http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=136 The two Methodist congregations in the separatist republic of Transdniester in eastern Moldova live a twilight existence, their leader reports. “We can’t rent anywhere for services and we can’t afford to buy property. We have to meet semi-legally in private flats,” Dmitri Hantil told Forum 18 News Service. He said their local registration applications in 1997 and again in 2000 had stalled as they refused to pay a bribe of at least 500 US dollars sought by Pyotr Zalozhkov, the commissioner of religion and cults. Forum 18 tried to reach Zalozhkov but his phone went unanswered. The Methodists have also sought registration with the Moldovan authorities – so far in vain.

1 September 2003 TURKMENISTAN: BAPTISTS TO BE FINED FOR EACH SERVICE http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=130 In the wake of the latest raid on a Baptist Sunday service in Balkanabad on 24 August, police have banned church members from meeting for services and threatened that if they do so they will be fined for each meeting. In July and August, all its members had already been fined 48 US dollars each. “The Baptists refuse to be registered, citing the fact that they are forbidden from having contact with the secular authorities,” Balkanabad’s procurator Berdy Shirjanov told Forum 18 News Service. “The law is the law. We have to fine the Baptists.”

4 September 2003 AZERBAIJAN: “KGB METHODS” USED TO BREAK UP SUNDAY SCHOOL

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=135 By Felix Corley, Editor, Forum 18 News Service

Pastor Fuad Tariverdi of the Greater Grace Protestant Church in the capital Baku has accused the local police chief of using “Soviet, KGB methods” in breaking up the children’s Sunday school last Sunday, 31 August. “Lieutenant-Colonel Mukhtar Mukhtarov said we do not have the right to teach kids and convert Azeri children,” Pastor Tariverdi told Forum 18 News Service from Baku on 2 September. “He asked us to take the kids back to their parents.” But Lieutenant-Colonel Mukhtarov, chief of police in Baku’s Nasimi district where the church is located, vigorously denied doing anything wrong and blamed the church. “They’re acting illegally,” he told Forum 18 on 4 September.

The raid came as the Sunday school was almost ending. Pastor Tariverdi said the only children present in a club near the church were the children of church members. “Actually the parents asked us to take care of their children while they sit in the church service,” he reported. “We even had written permission from each parent.”

He said Mukhtarov had ordered the local police to make sure that the director of the club where the Sunday school is held “never lets us back in again”. Pastor Tariverdi quoted Mukhtarov as saying that the church and its members are bad and “should be out of his area”.

But Mukhtarov insists all he did was to call the Sunday school leaders to act in accordance with the law. “There was nothing bad, but this must be done with the permission of the Committee for Work with Religious Organisations,” he told Forum 18. “They must list all the parameters of what they are doing, all the subjects they are teaching.” He brushed aside as irrelevant church claims that all the parents had given written permission for their children to be present.

Mukhtarov then complained that the club where the Sunday school was held “is not designated for such use”. But he denied that he had banned the Sunday school from meeting again and insisted he was not “against the church”.

Pastor Tariverdi told Forum 18 that the church can no longer use the club, as the director is now too afraid to lend it. “We met him on Tuesday. He’s been told if he lets us in he’ll be imprisoned.” The church does not know where it will take the fifty or so children for the Sunday school from now on.

Pastor Tariverdi claimed Mukhtarov has been “persecuting our church for years”. “He always sends people to invite our leadership to talk to him and tries to prove to us that we are wrong, bad, illegal and tries to intimidate us, using Soviet/KGB ways and mentality,” Pastor Tariverdi maintained. He said Mukhtarov had even turned up at the church one Sunday – a day when he was not working – and summoned the elders. “The elders have been summoned four times since January – each time without anything in writing.”

Pastor Tariverdi believes Mukhtarov hates his church and is abusing his position to push his own private views. “He violates the Constitution of Azerbaijan and human rights, using his power and putting his personal dislikes ahead of Azeri law and government policy.”

Azerbaijani officials at all levels have obstructed the work of many minority religious communities, especially Protestant churches which have many ethnic Azeris as members (see F18News 25 June 2003).

The Greater Grace church was registered with the Justice Ministry in 1993. It has been seeking re-registration with the Committee for Work with Religious Organisations for the past two years. “Hopefully we’re now at the last stage of this re-registration process,” Pastor Tariverdi declared. (END)

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