AZERBAIJAN: "WASN’T ONE PRISON TERM ENOUGH?"
Felix Corley
Forum 18, Norway
June 12 2008
Baptist former prisoner of conscience Zaur Balaev has been summoned
and threatened with a new prison term, he has told Forum 18 News
Service. "Haven’t you learnt from your imprisonment?" Balaev quoted
police officers as telling him. "Wasn’t one prison term enough for
you?" One officer added: "You may not be afraid, but you’ve forgotten
you’ve got a wife, daughter and a son." Police banned Balaev’s church
from meeting, a ban the congregation has defied. Kamandar Hasanov,
the deputy police chief in Azerbaijan’s north-western Zakatala
region, denied to Forum 18 that he had threatened Balaev. Hasanov
also refused to discuss with Forum 18 the harassment of Balaev’s
Baptist congregation, why Muslim men with beards were forcibly shaved
and banned from Zakatala’s mosque in recent years, and why religious
books were confiscated in a raid on a Jehovah’s Witness home. A local
resident told Forum 18 that the pressure to shave off beards has at
present halted.
Baptist former prisoner of conscience Zaur Balaev – freed on 19
March after being held for nearly a year to punish him for leading
his congregation – was summoned and threatened with a new prison
term in early May, he told Forum 18 News Service on 12 June from
his home village of Aliabad in the north-western region of Zakatala
[Zaqatala]. "Haven’t you learnt from your imprisonment?" Balaev quoted
police officers as telling him. "Wasn’t one prison term enough for
you?" And, in what Balaev says was a clear threat, one officer added:
"You may not be afraid, but you’ve forgotten you’ve got a wife,
daughter and a son."
Balaev said the threats came from Kamandar Hasanov, the deputy
regional police chief, and two of his colleagues in Hasanov’s office
in Zakatala. "They didn’t hit me but they were very crude."
Balaev said the police banned his church from meeting, a ban the
congregation has defied. Police have continued to visit his church
during worship services. "They realise they can’t drive us out,"
he told Forum 18, referring to the fact that all the church members
are local people. "But they observe us closely."
Hasanov denied to Forum 18 that he had threatened Balaev. "There
were no threats," he told Forum 18 from Zakatala on 12 June. "Who
said there were any threats and raids?" He declined to say why the
Baptist congregations in Aliabad cannot meet for worship without
harassment, why Muslim men with beards were forcibly shaved and banned
from Zakatala’s mosque in recent years and why religious books were
confiscated in a raid on a Jehovah’s Witness home in Zakatala in
March. "Call me back later," Hasanov said and put down the phone. He
was not in the office later in the day.
Strongly backing Balaev and his congregation is Ilya Zenchenko, head
of Azerbaijan’s Baptist Union. "They used very bad threats against
him," he told Forum 18 in the capital Baku in late May. "This must
be reported. They definitely want to threaten him, telling him ‘this
is an Islamic country and Christians shouldn’t be here’."
Balaev was arrested in May 2007 on charges of attacking five police
officers and damaging a police car that he and his church insist
were trumped up. He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment,
but was freed under amnesty in March, perhaps as a result of
international attention to his case (see F18News 19 March 2008
=1102). Another
prisoner of conscience, Jehovah’s Witness conscientious objector
Samir Huseynov, was freed on 1 May (see F18News 14 May 2008
=1129).
However, Said Dadashbeyli, a Muslim teacher on a 14 year jail
term is still in prison. His lawyer and family have insisted to
Forum 18 that he is "completely innocent." His lawyer, Elchin
Gambarov, claims the Azerbaijani government wanted to show foreign
governments that there was a serious Islamist threat. Dadashbeyli’s
family told Forum 18 that he promoted a "European style of
Islam" and rejected fundamentalism (see F18News 28 May 2008
=1134).
The 44-year-old Balaev told Forum 18 his health suffered during his
imprisonment. He was held for four months in an investigation cell
together with some twenty other prisoners who smoked constantly and
some of whom suffered from tuberculosis (see F18News 9 August 2007
=1005).
Like the overwhelming majority of Aliabad’s inhabitants, Balaev is
from the Georgian-speaking Ingilo minority, which was converted
to Islam several centuries ago. The congregation he leads has
existed for more than fifteen years and has repeatedly been barred
from gaining state registration (see eg. F18News 8 December 2004
=471). Forum 18 believes
it to be Azerbaijan’s religious community that holds the record for
the longest denial of registration.
Although police have not punished church members for continuing to
meet, Balaev told Forum 18 that they have continued to visit services
both of his congregation and of another Baptist congregation in the
village led by Hamid Shabanov. "They visited us three times and
other congregations twice," Balaev complained. "Pastor Hamid was
also summoned by the police and threatened." He said police scrutiny
had been particularly intense during a visit some two weeks earlier
by fellow church members from Baku. "Police asked them why they had
come and what they were doing. They demanded to see their identity
documents and wrote down their details."
Balaev reported that Christian literature confiscated from Pastor
Shabanov a year ago has still not been returned (see F18News 4 June
2007 ) .
After Balaev’s release, church members accompanied by Zenchenko tried
once more to have their signatures on the congregation’s registration
application officially notarised by Zakatala’s notary. "But they
absolutely refused to do this," Zenchenko told Forum 18. "This is
how they have behaved for years."
Jeyhun Mamedov of the State Committee for Work with Religious
Organisations in Baku refused adamantly to discuss the threats
to Balaev and harassment of his congregation and other religious
communities in Zakatala Region with Forum 18 in his office in Baku on
21 May. However, he pledged to investigate the refusal of the notary
to notarise the signatures on the registration application. Mamedov’s
telephone has gone unanswered every time Forum 18 has called since
then.
Najiba Mamedova, Zakatala’s notary, screamed down the phone at Forum
18 when it tried to find out why the notary’s office is refusing to
notarise the signatures on the registration application. "You’ve been
going on about this for years," she told Forum 18 on 12 June. "You’re
a provocateur. It’s none of your business. Armenians have occupied
Nagorno-Karabakh for more than 15 years and we’ve spent blood over
it. One Karabakh is enough." When Forum 18 pointed out that the Aliabad
Baptist church has no connection with Armenians and that its members
are Azerbaijani citizens she angrily put the phone down.
In November 2004 Mamedova angrily threw Forum 18 out of her
office during a visit to try to find out why she was then
refusing to notarise the signatures (see F18News 8 December 2004
=471).
Numerous religious communities of a variety of faiths have been
denied registration over recent years (see F18News 6 February 2008
=1082 and forthcoming
F18News article).
Children given Christian first names by their parents in
Aliabad have been denied birth certificates by officials
angry at their choice of name (see F18News 19 March 2008
=1102).
Meanwhile, Jehovah’s Witnesses told Forum 18 that four police
officers and two official witnesses raided the Zakatala home of
Matanat Gurbanova and her family at noon on 25 March. Although she
and her husband were out, police ignored her daughter’s request that
they should come back and insisted on conducting a search. When the
daughter fainted in shock the police gave her water to bring her round
then threatened her physically when she continued to object to the
raid, Jehovah’s Witnesses reported. Police confiscated Gurbanova’s
religious literature.
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Protestants in other parts of
Azerbaijan also continue to experience raids and police
threats against their members (see F18News 9 June 2008
=1140).
Deputy police chief Hasanov told the media after the raid that 570
books and 78 brochures – which he described as "banned" literature –
had been removed and that an investigation was underway.
Several days later, when Gurbanova was again out, a police officer
again visited and said she could go to the investigator and collect the
literature. "I did not go since I consider they acted unlawfully,"
Gurbanova wrote in a 2 April complaint to the Zakatala Regional
Prosecutor’s Office and the General Prosecutor’s Office in the capital
Baku. She insisted the raid violated her rights to freedom of thought,
speech and conscience guaranteed in Articles 47 and 48 of Azerbaijan’s
Constitution and Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Zakatala’s Muslim community has also faced official pressure in recent
years. In October 2007 the APA press agency reported local Muslims
as complaining that police officer Nasib Musaev had banned men with
beards from praying at the prayer room at the town’s market. They say
he summoned all the men and ordered them to shave off their beards if
they wanted to be allowed into the prayer room. APA said local Muslims
had complained about the ban to the State Committee in Baku. Musaev
denied to APA that he had issued any ban, claiming that anyone who
wanted to could pray at the prayer room.
Local Muslims had earlier complained of close police scrutiny and
pressure to shave off beards. However, one local resident told Forum
18 on 12 June that this problem seems to have at present halted.