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

6 October 2005 ROMANIA: CONCERNS ABOUT DRAFT RELIGION LAW http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=667 Romanian religious minorities and human rights groups have told Forum 18 News Service of their alarm about both the current draft of a new religion law and it being sent to parliament under “emergency procedures.” Proposals to replace the communist-era 1948 religion law have been discussed for 15 years, but Mihai Agafitei of the State Secretariat for Religious Denominations told Forum 18 that parliament will adopt the new law “by the end of this year.” Much concern – from Adventists, Baptists and other Protestants, Greek Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Baha’is – surrounds proposals to divide religious communities into three categories with widely differing rights, and Baptists are particularly concerned that parliament could worsen the draft law’s provisions. Agafitei told Forum 18 that “all the representatives of each community approved the draft,” but both the Greek Catholics and Jehovah’s Witnesses have told Forum 18 they did not approve the draft law.

7 October 2005 ROMANIA: TOO MUCH POWER FOR THE STATE AND RECOGNIZED COMMUNITIES? http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=669 Romanian religious minorities have told Forum 18 News Service of their concerns about the undefined powers given to the state by the draft religion law, due to passed by the end of 2005, and the privileges the law gives the highest status religious communities. Amongst areas of concern Forum 18 has been told of are legal protection being given only to members of 18 state-recognized “religious denominations,” and the undefined powers the state is given to decide which communities will be so classified in future. Some have suggested to Forum 18 that the law breaks the Romanian Constitution, and concerns have also been expressed about the lack of legal personality of unrecognized groups, preventing them from buying property, building churches or having paid staff or ministers.

6 October 2005 RUSSIA: WHY WAS MOSCOW’S CHIEF RABBI DEPORTED? http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=668 It remains unclear why Moscow’s Chief Rabbi, Pinchas Goldschmidt, was denied entry to Russia last week after returning from Israel. Rabbi Goldschmidt, who is Swiss-born and has lived in Moscow since 1989, stated that he was not given a reason by border guards at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. His wife and seven children are still in the city. Various factors have been suggested to Forum 18 News Service as influencing the entry denial, including: rivalry between the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organisations of Russia and the state-favoured Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia; proposed changes to visa rules; a dispute between Rabbi Goldschmidt and the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organisations of Russia; and his strong criticism of a petition signed by 19 Russian parliamentarians, which called for a ban on all Jewish religious and national organisations in Russia. The Russian Foreign Ministry is not commenting on the case. Rabbi Goldshmidt is now in Israel and intends to apply for a new Russian visa following Yom Kippur, to be marked on 13 October 2005.

4 October 2005 UKRAINE: DID AUTHORITIES CRUSH RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH ABROAD PARISH? http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=666 Archbishop Agafangel (Pashkovsky) of the Odessa Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA) has told Forum 18 News Service that the authorities in western Ukraine have crushed a budding parish of his church, at the instigation of Metropolitan Onufry, the diocesan bishop of the rival Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. The head of the village administration, Vasyl Gavrish, denies claims that he threatened parishioners after the ROCA parish submitted a state registration application. When asked by Forum 18 whether an Orthodox church from a non-Moscow Patriarchate jurisdiction could gain registration, Gavrish replied: “We already have a parish of the Moscow Patriarchate here.” Both Gavrish and parishioners have stated that the state SBU security service was involved in moves against the parish, but the SBU has denied this along with Bishop Agafangel’s claim that there was pressure from the Moscow Patriarchate.

3 October 2005 UZBEKISTAN: GROWING ATTEMPTS TO ISOLATE RELIGIOUS GROUPS FROM SUPPORT http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=665 Andijan Protestant pastor Bakhtier Tuichiev has told Forum 18 News Service that, since the violent crushing of the Andijan uprising in May, he has – along with other local Protestants – been placed under NSS secret police surveillance, and has regularly been threatened with arrest if he does not shut down his unregistered Pentecostal church. Since the Andijan crackdown, Uzbekistan has increased attempts to isolate religious believers from the support of local and foreign journalists and human rights activists. For example, Tuichiev was told by police that “We are not going to let foreign human rights activists into Uzbekistan any more. It’s payback time – we’ve already dealt with Igor Rotar and now we’ve come for you.” Rotar, Forum 18′s Central Asia correspondent, was deported from Uzbekistan, apparently as part of a wide crackdown on independent media and human rights activists. Repression and attempts to isolate religious communities – including the unconcealed censorship of international post – are continuing. * See full article below. *

3 October 2005 UZBEKISTAN: GROWING ATTEMPTS TO ISOLATE RELIGIOUS GROUPS FROM SUPPORT

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=665 By Igor Rotar, Central Asia Correspondent, Forum 18 News Service

Andijan Protestant pastor Bakhtier Tuichiev has told Forum 18 News Service that, since the violent crushing of the Andijan uprising in May, he has regularly been called in by the local police and National Security Service (NSS) secret police and threatened with arrest if he refuses to shut down his unregistered Pentecostal church, he stated from Andijan on 29 September. Pastor Tuichiev has been trying to register his church for several years without success. Under Uzbek law, a religious community cannot operate without state registration. Since the Andijan crackdown, the authorities have increased attempts to try and isolate religious believers from the support of local and foreign journalists and human rights activists.

However, the chief specialist at the Uzbek government’s religious affairs committee Begzot Kadyrov denied absolutely that the government’s religious policy had been tightened since the crackdown. “We have actually started to treat believers more leniently,” he claimed to Forum 18 from Tashkent on 29 September. However, he was unable to cite any evidence for this view.

Tuichiev has been frequently summoned by the police and secret police in recent years, while in September 2002 he was visited by a group of people from Tashkent he believes were NSS secret police officers masquerading as BBC and CNN journalists (see F18News 14 March 2003 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=5>).

Tuichiev maintains that since the crushing of the uprising the NSS has placed him under surveillance, along with other active members of the Protestant community. Tuichiev claims that NSS officers are trying to stir up residents of his local mahalla (city district) against him. He says he was told openly at the police station: “We are not going to let foreign human rights activists into Uzbekistan any more. It’s payback time – we’ve already dealt with Igor Rotar and now we’ve come for you.”

Rotar, Forum 18′s Central Asia correspondent, was deported from Uzbekistan on 13 August (see F18News 16 August 2005 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=631>). Soon after the events in Andijan, the authorities arrested Nosir Zakir, a Radio Liberty correspondent from Namangan, a city in Uzbekistan’s section of the Fergana valley, and forcibly detained Tashkent-based human rights activist Elena Uralayeva in a psychiatric hospital. The courts ordered the closure of the local offices of Internews, a US organisation which assists the development of journalism in developing countries, while the activity of the US organisation IREX has been at a standstill for six months. IREX organises student exchanges in Uzbekistan and promotes the use of the Internet in schools.

During the court case against followers of the Akramiya movement the state prosecutor, Uzbekistan’s deputy general public prosecutor Anvar Nabiev, described the group of journalists covering the Andijan events, almost all of whom were from western publications, as “jackals feeding from carrion”. The director of the Uzbekistan office of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting Galima Bukharbaeva, a correspondent for the news agency Fergana.ru Aleksei Volosevich, Radio Liberty reporter Andrei Babitsky and BBC correspondent Matlyuba Azamatova have all been accused of being among Uzbekistan’s sworn enemies. Because of their fear of repression by the authorities, Bukharbaeva has had to remain in New York (where she had gone to attend a conference), while Azamatova has left for the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek. Many such journalists have reported on violations of the rights of religious believers.

“Since the events in Andijan it has been completely impossible for journalists and human rights activists to work in Uzbekistan,” Tulkin Karaev, a human rights activist and journalist from Karshi in southern Uzbekistan, told Forum 18 on 29 September in Bishkek. “Almost all of them have either already left Uzbekistan or are getting ready to leave the country.”

Meanwhile, the repression of believers in Uzbekistan continues. Local Council of Churches Baptists – who refuse on principle to register with the state authorities in post-Soviet countries – told Forum 18 on 23 September that the previous day a group of 16 Baptists from Tashkent, Karshi [Qarshi] and Mubarek decided to hold an evangelistic meeting in the town of Kagan near the western town of Bukhara [Bukhoro]. “After prayers, they had just sung a few hymns when divisional police inspector R. Sobirov and an officer M. Alanazarov arrived and banned them from continuing the meeting,” the Baptists reported. They put all the Baptists in cars and took them to the town police station. There Alanazarov and an official from the criminal investigation department A. Babaev took the passports from those detained and interrogated them “without following any of the proper procedures”. The Baptists complain they also behaved very rudely.

The Baptists were detained all day before being released in the evening. Their equipment was confiscated, along with all their Christian literature, including Uzbek-language Gospels, children’s stories, books of music and poetry, and leaflets in Russian and Uzbek.

Kadyrov dismissed any concern over the detention of the Baptists and the confiscation of their literature. “According to Uzbek law, unregistered religious groups are not allowed to meet, so the police in Kagan were acting within the law,” he told Forum 18.

The authorities have frequently confiscated religious literature from Muslims, Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Hare Krishna devotees. On occasion courts have ordered that religious literature be burnt (see F18News 6 September 2005 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=643>). The authorities prevent literature being brought in from neighbouring Kazakhstan or from Russia and also obstruct it from being sent from abroad.

One Protestant who had sent a parcel of Christian books from Germany to Protestants in Uzbekistan received them back in summer 2005 with an official letter from the Uzbek post office declaring that sending such religious literature into Uzbekistan is not permitted. The letter particularly instructed the sender not to try to mail further copies of a book by female Uzbek Protestant pastor Shirinai Dosova. She is now based in Moscow and was recently strip-searched at Tashkent airport in April 2005, on a return visit to her homeland (see F18News 12 July 2005 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=604>).

Protestants in Tashkent have told Forum 18 that letters from abroad to local churches are routinely opened and read before being handed on. The authorities make no pretence over this censorship, not bothering to reseal the letters.

(END)

For a personal commentary by a Muslim scholar, advocating religious freedom for all faiths as the best antidote to Islamic religious extremism in Uzbekistan, see <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=338>

For more background, see Forum 18′s Uzbekistan religious freedom survey at <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=546>

For an outline of the repression immediately following the Andijan uprising, see F18News 23 May <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=567> and for an outline of what is known about Akramia and the uprising see 16 June <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=586>

A printer-friendly map of Uzbekistan is available at <http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/index.html?Parent=asia&Rootmap=uzbeki> (END)

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