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
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1 June 2005
EASTERN EUROPE: OSCE CONFERENCE ON INTOLERANCE REGIONAL SURVEY
As delegates prepare for the forthcoming OSCE Conference on Anti-Semitism
and on Other Forms of Intolerance, Forum 18 News Service notes that
religious believers face intolerance in the form of attacks on their
internationally agreed rights to religious freedom – mainly from their
governments – in many countries of the 55-member OSCE. Despite binding
OSCE commitments to religious freedom, in some OSCE member states
religious communities are still being vilified, fined and imprisoned for
peaceful exercise of their faith, religious services are being broken up,
places of worship confiscated and even destroyed, religious literature
censored and religious communities denied state registration and hence the
domestic legal right to exist. Events in Uzbekistan offer one warning of
what the persistent intolerance of religious freedom and other
internationally agreed human rights can lead to.
* See full article below. *
30 May 2005
KAZAKHSTAN: OFFICIALS ENFORCING RELIGION LAW BEFORE IT IS PASSED
The harsh new religion law has not yet been passed, but the authorities
are already behaving as if it is law Forum 18 News Service has found.
Religious communities do not yet need state registration – a requirement
imposed by the new law. But a Protestant church in the Caspian Sea port of
Aytrau is the latest religious community to be attacked because it does not
have registration. Diyaz Sultanov, the prosecutor’s assistant, told Forum
18 that “it is impermissible for a church to operate without
registration.” Another proposal put forward – but then apparently
withdrawn – allowed religious communities to be closed without a court
hearing. New Life Protestant Church, close to Almaty, has been “banned” by
local administration chief Raspek Tolbayev, who told Forum 18 that “I will
take the decision whether or not to open the church.” Parliamentary
deputies Forum 18 has spoken to described the new law as a weapon against
the “ideological diversity” of the West.
30 May 2005
UKRAINE: PEOPLE BARRED ENTRY ON RELIGIOUS GROUNDS NOW FREE TO APPEAL
In a new move, the SBU security police has told Forum 18 News Service that
people barred entry by other CIS countries – including Russia – on
religious and other grounds can now appeal against any visa bar to
Ukraine. Appeals can be made either to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry or
the SBU, Forum 18 was told. The move follows the ending of an entry ban
against Japanese Buddhist monk Junsei Teresawa. The SBU refused to tell
Forum 18 why Teresawa had originally been denied entry, but insisted it
was not for religious reasons and denied that there is a religious
category for blacklisting. Not every religious figure blacklisted by
Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan has been barred from Ukraine and
Latvian-based Pastor Aleksei Ledyayev – barred by Russia, Belarus and
Kazakhstan – is now in Ukraine. One of the most prominent recent deportees
from Russia was Catholic Bishop Jerzy Mazur, a Polish citizen, but the SBU
told Forum 18 that “no-one with the surname Mazur is on the Ukrainian
blacklist”.
2 June 2005
UZBEKISTAN: PROTESTANTS IN NORTH-WEST “ILLEGAL”
The last legal Protestant church in north-west Uzbekistan has been closed
by the Karakalpakstan region’s Justice Ministry, Forum 18 News Service has
learnt. As all unregistered religious activity in Uzbekistan is illegal,
the church cannot now legally operate. Klara Alasheva, first deputy
Justice Minister, denied that her ministry’s closure of the church was
persecution of the Protestant minority. “We warned the church last year
not to conduct missionary activity but they carried on regardless,” she
told Forum 18. Alasheva also denied that Uzbekistan’s ban on missionary
activity violated its international human rights commitments. “That’s what
you’re claiming, but we’re legal specialists,” she told Forum 18. The
authorities in north-west Uzbekistan have long conducted an anti-Christian
campaign, but Protestants in the region are known to still be active.
Catholic sources have denied a claim by Alasheva that there is a
registered Catholic parish in Nukus.
1 June 2005
EASTERN EUROPE: OSCE CONFERENCE ON INTOLERANCE REGIONAL SURVEY
By Felix Corley, Editor, Forum 18 News Service
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which has
as members all the states of Europe, Central Asia and North America, works
not by coercion but by consensus and persuasion. Membership is not
compulsory: states have the free choice whether to accept the binding OSCE
commitments by joining or not. The commitment of all OSCE states to respect
freedom of of thought, conscience, religion or belief is clear and has been
repeatedly reaffirmed. One of the most important sets of human rights
commitments that members states have agreed to are the ‘Copenhagen
Commitments,’ which, amongst other things, state that:
“Everyone will have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and
religion. This right includes freedom to change one’s religion or belief
and freedom to manifest one’s religion or belief, either alone or in
community with others, in public or in private, through worship, teaching,
practice and observance. The exercise of these rights may be subject only
to such restrictions as are prescribed by law and are consistent with
international standards.”
Yet government intolerance against religious believers, through denial of
their rights to religious freedom – rights agreed to by these same
governments – remains disturbingly pervasive throughout many member
countries of the OSCE.
As delegates assemble in Cordoba in Spain for the OSCE Conference on
Anti-Semitism and on Other Forms of Intolerance on 8 and 9 June, many ask
how violators of these fundamental OSCE commitments – especially
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Armenia – can be allowed
to continue as members of an organisation whose fundamental principles they
blatantly flout. OSCE officials argue off the record that it is better to
keep violators in, with the hope that they can be persuaded to mend their
ways, rather than expel them, abandoning local people to the clutches of
their governments. The result is that persecuted believers Forum 18 News
Service has spoken to in a number of states now have
little faith in what the OSCE can and will do for them to protect their
right to religious freedom.
The OSCE has reaffirmed that intolerance of and discrimination against
religious believers is as unacceptable as intolerance of and
discrimination against ethnic or other social groups or individuals.
Meeting in the Dutch city of Maastricht in 2003, the OSCE Ministerial
Council stressed in its Decision No. 4 on Tolerance and Non-Discrimination
that it
“[a]ffirms the importance of freedom of thought, conscience, religion or
belief, and condemns all discrimination and violence, including against
any religious group or individual believer”
and “[c]ommits to ensure and facilitate the freedom of the individual to
profess and practice a religion or belief, alone or in community with
others, where necessary through transparent and non-discriminatory laws,
regulations, practices and policies”.
The ministerial council also emphasised what it believed is the importance
of a “continued and strengthened interfaith and intercultural dialogue to
promote greater tolerance, respect and mutual understanding”.
But in much of the OSCE region the most serious discrimination and
intolerance against religious believers of all faiths comes from
governments themselves. In many states discrimination is enshrined in law
and in official practice (from national to local level). Believers will
only be free of such discrimination if such discriminatory laws are
abolished or amended, and if other laws and international commitments
guaranteeing religious freedom are put into actual practice.
Social intolerance of religious minorities does exist – for example among
Orthodox in Georgia, among Muslims in Central Asia, and among ethnic
Albanians (whether Muslim or Catholic) in Kosovo. Governments clearly have
a duty to address this and promote tolerance in society, and many claim to
do so. But the claims of some governments to be against intolerance are
rendered worthless by their persistent, repeated failure to either improve
their own behaviour towards their own citizens, or to honour the
international commitments they have freely chosen to abide by.
In considering religious intolerance and hatred, it is important to
remember that criticising the beliefs of religious or non-religious
people, whether from a religious or non-religious perspective, does not of
itself constitute religious hatred. This can only reasonably be said to
exist where violence is incited leading to acts of violence being
committed. An absolutely vital element of religious freedom is the right
peacefully to expound and promote one’s own beliefs, including setting out
how they differ from the beliefs of others, as well as why one believes
ones own beliefs to be truer than other beliefs.
In the run-up to the September 2004 OSCE Conference on Tolerance and the
Fight against Racism, Xenophobia and Discrimination in Brussels, Forum 18
News Service surveyed some, but not all, of the continuing
abuses of religious freedom in the eastern half of the OSCE region (see
F18News 9 September 2004
). Discrimination against
believers also occurs in other OSCE countries (such as the About-Picard law
in France, restrictions on newer religious communities in Belgium and
discrimination against minority faiths in Turkey). It is disturbing that
nearly one year on, almost all the abuses Forum 18 noted in 2004 have
continued unchecked. Current abuses are outlined thematically below. The
situations and incidents given are examples and not a comprehensive list
of religious freedom violations.
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP: An alarming number of states raid religious meetings to
close down services and punish those who take part. Uzbekistan is one of
the worst offenders: unregistered religious services and meetings are
often raided and participants beaten and fined. Christian bible study
groups – and small meetings of other faiths – in homes are illegal.
Large-scale co-ordinated raids took place against Jehovah’s Witnesses
worshipping in April. Islam remains under very tight government control.
Despite allowing some religious minority communities to register over the
past year, Turkmenistan restricts the freedom to conduct religious worship
and meetings – they remain banned in private homes. Even registered
religious communities – such as the Hare Krishna community in Ashgabad –
has been banned from meeting, while the Seventh-day Adventists could not
meet legally for six months after gaining registration. Religious
communities are pressured to venerate the president’s book, Ruhnama,
despite the fact that many religious believers consider it to be
blasphemous. Belarus specifically bans unregistered religious services,
while numerous Protestant congregations – some numbering more than a
thousand members – cannot meet because they cannot get a registered place
to worship. In Kazakhstan the new national security amendments now
completing passage through parliament will similarly ban unregistered
religious services (administrative fines have already been imposed for
this). Azerbaijan also on occasion raids places where worship is being
conducted, either in religious buildings or private homes. In Macedonia,
members of the Serbian Orthodox Church have difficulty holding public
worship and leaders have been prosecuted. In Russia and some other states,
minority faiths are often denied permission to rent publicly-owned
buildings available to other groups.
PLACES OF WORSHIP: Opening a place of worship can be impossible in some
states. Turkmenistan is the worst offender: not only is it almost
impossible to open a place of worship for non-Muslim and non-Russian
Orthodox communities, those that existed before harsh new regulations came
in from the mid-1990s saw those places of worship confiscated, while Hare
Krishna, Muslim and Adventist places of worship were even bulldozed. More
than half a dozen mosques were destroyed in 2004. Uzbekistan has closed
down thousands of mosques since 1996 and often denies Christian groups’
requests to open churches. Azerbaijan obstructs the opening of Christian
churches and tries to close down some of those already open, while in 2004
it seized a mosque in Baku from its community and tried to prevent the
community meeting elsewhere. Belarus makes it almost impossible for
religious communities without their own building already – or substantial
funds to rent one – to find a legal place to worship. An Autocephalous
Orthodox church (which attracted the anger of the government and the
Russian Orthodox Church) was bulldozed in 2002. In Slovenia, which
presently chairs the OSCE, the Ljubljana authorities have long obstructed
the building of a mosque, as have the authorities in the Slovak capital
Bratislava. In Bulgaria, in July 2004 the police stormed more than 200
churches used by the Alternative Synod since a split in the Orthodox
Church a decade ago, ousting the occupants and handing the churches over
to the rival Orthodox Patriarchate without any court rulings.
REGISTRATION: Where registration is compulsory before any religious
activity can start (Turkmenistan, Belarus and Uzbekistan, with Kazakhstan
likely to follow soon) or where officials claim that it is (Azerbaijan),
life is made difficult for communities that either choose not to register
(such as one network of Baptist communities in the former Soviet
republics) or are denied registration (the majority of religious
communities in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan). Registration in Turkmenistan
is all but impossible, despite the reduction in 2004 from 500 to 5 in the
number of adult citizens required to found a community. In countries such
as Azerbaijan or Uzbekistan, registration for disfavoured communities is
often made impossible – officials in the sanitary/epidemiological service
are among those with the power of veto in Uzbekistan. Belarus, Moldova,
Slovenia, Slovakia, Macedonia, Russia and Latvia are also among states
which to widely varying degrees make registration of some groups
impossible or very difficult. Moscow has refused to register the Jehovah’s
Witnesses in the city, despite their national registration. Some countries
– including the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria, with plans for
similar moves in Serbia – grant full status as religious communities to
favoured religious communities only. Faiths with smaller membership or
which the government does not like have to make do with lesser status and
fewer rights.
RELIGIOUS LITERATURE: Belarus and Azerbaijan require compulsory prior
censorship of all religious literature produced or imported into the
country. Azerbaijani customs routinely confiscate religious literature,
releasing it only when the State Committee for Work with Religious
Organisations grants explicit written approval for each title and the
number of copies authorised. Forbidden books are sent back or destroyed
(thousands of Hare Krishna books held by customs for seven years have been
destroyed). Even countries without formal religious censorship – eg.
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan – routinely confiscate imported religious
literature or literature found during raids on homes. Uzbekistan has burnt
copies of the Bible confiscated as travellers arrive in the country.
Uzbekistan routinely bars access to websites it dislikes, such as foreign
Muslim sites.
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: Believers from minority religious communities in
institutions such as prisons, hospitals or the army may face difficulties
obtaining and keeping religious literature, praying in private and
receiving visits from spiritual leaders and fellow-believers. In
Uzbekistan, even Muslim prisoners have been punished for praying and
fasting during Ramadan. Death-row prisoners wanting visits from Muslim
imams and Russian Orthodox priests have had requests denied, even for
final confession before execution. In Kazakhstan, Protestant
schoolchildren under 18 are denied their right to worship and their
parents are denied the right to bring their children up in their own
faith.
DISCRIMINATION: Turkmenistan has dismissed from state jobs hundreds of
active Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses and members of other religious
minorities. Turkmen, Azeri, Kazakh and Uzbek officials try to persuade
people to abandon their faith and “return” to their ancestral faith
(Islam). Although the order has now reportedly been rescinded, Armenia
ordered local police chiefs to persuade police officers who were members
of faiths other than the Armenian Apostolic Church to abandon their faith.
If persuasion failed, such employees were to be sacked. Belarus has
subjected leaders of independent Orthodox Churches and Hindus to pressure
– including fines, threats and inducements – to abandon their faith or
emigrate. Officials in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus and Macedonia
repeatedly attack disfavoured religious minorities in the media, insulting
their beliefs, accusing them falsely of illegal or “destructive”
activities, as well as inciting popular hostility to them.
RELIGIOUS SCHOOL CLASSES: Some states have allowed the dominant faith to
determine the content of compulsory religious education classes and
textbooks in state-run schools. In Belarus, minority faiths complain their
beliefs are inaccurately and insultingly presented. In Georgia, classes
often became denominational Orthodox instruction, with teachers taking
children to pray in the local Orthodox church. In Russia, Old Believers
and Protestants have complained of the way religious history is presented
in Foundations of Orthodox Culture classes which have been partially
introduced in schools.
GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE: Many governments meddle in the internal affairs
of religious communities. Central Asian governments insist on choosing
national and local Muslim leaders. Turkmenistan ousted successive chief
muftis in January 2003 and August 2004. Turkmenistan imposes the
president’s book Ruhnama on religious communities, while Uzbekistan allows
imams at Friday prayers only to deliver officially-produced addresses and
maintains almost total control of Islamic religious education. Tajikistan
has conducted “attestation tests” of imams, ousting those who failed.
Islamic schools are tightly controlled (in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan,
schools have either been closed or access to them restricted).
Turkmenistan obstructs those seeking religious education abroad. Some
countries with large Orthodox communities (but not Russia or Ukraine), try
to bolster the largest Orthodox Church and obstruct rival jurisdictions
(Belarus, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Georgia, Moldova). Russia has prevented
communities from choosing their leadership, expelling a Catholic bishop
and several priests, a Lutheran bishop, and dozens of Protestant and other
leaders, while the security service tried to influence the choice of a new
Old Believer leader in February 2004.
PROTECTION FROM VIOLENCE: Law enforcement agencies fail to give religious
minorities the same protection as major groups. Between 1999 and 2003,
Georgia suffered a wave of violence by self-appointed Orthodox vigilantes,
with over 100 attacks on True Orthodox, Catholics, Baptists, Pentecostals
and Jehovah’s Witnesses in which believers were physically attacked,
places of worship blockaded and religious events disrupted. Mob protests
against religious minorities still continue. The authorities – who know
the attackers’ identity – have punished only a handful of people with
relatively light sentences. In some cases, police cooperated with attacks
or failed to investigate them. In Kosovo the Nato-led peacekeeping force
and United Nations police have repeatedly failed to protect Serbian
Orthodox churches in use and graveyards, especially during the upsurge in
anti-Serb violence in March 2004, when some 30 Orthodox sites were
destroyed or heavily damaged. Few attackers have been arrested or
prosecuted.
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MIGRANTS: Many religion laws restrict the rights of
legal residents who are not citizens, requiring founders and leaders of
religious organisations to be citizens. Azerbaijan provides for
deportation of foreigners and those without citizenship who have conducted
“religious propaganda”, while Kazakhstan’s new national security laws
tighten restrictions on foreign “missionaries”. In the past decade,
Turkmenistan has deported hundreds of legally-resident foreigners known to
have taken part in religious activity, especially Muslims and Protestants.
Some states (including Russia and Belarus) have denied visas to foreign
religious leaders chosen by local religious communities, while others such
as Kazakhstan have banned short-term visitors invited by local
communities.
LACK OF TRANSPARENCY: Major laws and decrees affecting religious life are
drawn up without public knowledge or discussion. Examples are the
restrictive laws on religion of Belarus and Bulgaria in 2002, new national
security amendments in Kazakhstan in 2005 which will add harsh restrictions
to the religion law, and planned new laws in Georgia, Serbia, Azerbaijan
and Moldova. International organisations, such as the OSCE or the Council
of Europe may be consulted but governments often refuse to allow their
comments to be published or ignore them (as, most recently, in
Kazakhstan). Many countries retain openly partisan and secretive
government religious affairs offices. Between 1999 and 2003, Slovenia’s
religious affairs office refused to register any new religious
communities. Azerbaijan’s has stated which communities it will refuse to
register and what changes other communities will have to make to their
statutes and activities to gain registration. For many years Armenia
refused to register the Jehovah’s Witnesses, while Moldova still refuses
to register Muslim and True Orthodox communities.
RELIGIOUS NGOs: Non-governmental organisations which touch on religion are
often treated with suspicion and can be denied legal status. Azerbaijan has
persistently refused registration to the local affiliate of the
International Religious Liberty Association (IRLA), local religious
freedom group Devamm and Religion and Democracy, a group of intellectuals
interested in religion. Even NGOs conducting religious surveys of the
population are harassed. Religious charities are regarded with suspicion
across the region, especially in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
In most countries religious communities and their leaders are banned from
taking part in political activities and religiously-affiliated political
parties are banned.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM REPORTING: Those reporting on religious freedom such as
Forum 18 News Service and groups campaigning on the issue
face lack of cooperation, obstruction and harassment. Those suspected of
passing on news of violations have been threatened in Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, with the aim of forcing silence. In a region
without much government transparency or a genuinely free media, officials
involved in harassing religious communities often refuse to explain to
journalists what they have done and why. Local religious freedom
campaigning groups are denied registration or kept waiting. Azerbaijan has
for many years refused to register a local affiliate of the International
Religious Liberty Association (IRLA), as well as other religious freedom
groups. Demonstrators protesting in Belarus against the restrictive 2002
religion law were fined. In September 2004, the Belarus bureau of the
Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union, which included
monitoring religious persecution in its work, was denied registration.
Government reports on religious freedom issues to bodies such as the OSCE
or Council of Europe are often confidential and closed to public scrutiny.
CONCLUSION: Government-directed intolerance against religious communities
remains endemic in many OSCE countries. Many actions to deny
internationally agreed rights to religious freedom are – as in the case of
the repression currently being carried out in Uzbekistan – claimed to be
for reasons of “national security” or “counter-terrorism.” But as many of
these actions predate the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks – and 1999
Islamic-inspired incursions into Central Asia – these arguments are
clearly invalid. The comprehensive nature of many of these measures shows
the hostility of some OSCE member states to the right to exercise the
faith of one’s choice freely, something described by the European Court of
Human Rights in 1993 as “one of the foundations of a democratic society”.
Events in Uzbekistan offer one warning of what the persistent intolerance
of religious freedom and other internationally agreed human rights can
lead to.
Surveys of countries’ religious freedom situation are available on the
Forum 18 website at , along with reporting
of events at and personal commentaries on religious
freedom issues at .
You can subscribe free to the weekly summary or full editions of the news
service at .
(END)
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