Keston News Service Summary: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan & Russia
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Subject: Keston News Service Summary: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan & Russia
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Keston News Service Summary: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan
& Russia
KESTON INSTITUTE, OXFORD, UK
______________________________________
KESTON NEWS SERVICE – SUMMARY 4-8 February 2002
Summaries of recent reporting on violations of religious liberty and
on religion in communist and post-communist lands.
______________________________________
AZERBAIJAN: UNREGISTERED RELIGIOUS GROUPS "WILL BE BANNED" (8 Feb).
When the controversial re-registration process now underway is
complete, religious groups functioning without state registration will
be closed down and have their activity halted through the courts, and
all future unregistered religious activity will be forbidden, a senior
religious affairs official has told Keston News Service. He refused to
discuss another innovation which violates Azerbaijan's international
human rights commitments - a new provision banning religious
organisations from functioning outside their designated location.
Keston has established that most of the 80 or so religious
organisations that have so far received re-registration have been
Muslim. The re-registration process is due to be completed at the end
of March.
GEORGIA: PATRIARCHATE CONDEMNS BIBLE BURNING PRIEST (4 Feb).
Metropolitan Daniil Datuashvili of the Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate
has condemned the Bible-burning in Tbilisi yesterday (3 February) by
Father Basil Mkalavishvili, a priest of the Greek Old Calendarist
Church. "We are demanding that the government takes immediate, serious
measures to arrest all those who took part," he told Keston News
Service from Tbilisi on 4 February. The Georgian Baptist Union told
Keston that at about 1 pm on 3 February a group of about 150 people
arrived at the Union's warehouse in three large buses, led by
Mkalavishvili, turned the warehouse upside-down and destroyed
thousands of books. The role of the private television company Rustavi
2, which filmed the attack, has been questioned.
GEORGIA: POSTPONED TRIAL OF VIOLENT PRIEST IMMINENT (4 Feb). The
much-delayed trial of the violent Old Calendarist priest Basil
Mkalavishvili and his main accomplice, Petre (Gia) Ivanidze, is
finally due to begin tomorrow (5 February) at 2 p.m. at the
Didube-Chugureti court in the Georgian capital Tbilisi. Jehovah's
Witness sources in Tbilisi told Keston News Service that the previous
scheduled hearing, due to have taken place on 25 January, had been
postponed as the prosecutor notified Judge Ioseb Chkheidze that he was
unable to appear at the time set by the court. It remains unclear
whether the raid yesterday (3 February) on the Baptist Union's
warehouse and burning of thousands of Bibles (see separate KNS
article) was a deliberate snub to the court or simply part of
Mkalavishvili' s continuing campaign against religious minorities.
GEORGIA: INTIMIDATION SABOTAGES TRIAL OF VIOLENT PRIEST (7 Feb). The
criminal trial of the violent priest Basil Mkalavishvili and his main
accomplice Petre (Gia) Ivanidze failed to begin at Tbilisi's
Didube-Chugureti district court for the second time on 5 February as a
large crowd of Mkalavishvili's supporters packed the courtroom and
intimidated those present. "There was chaos in court," one lawyer told
Keston News Service. "Our security was not guaranteed. I have never
seen anything like it in my five years as a lawyer." However, an aide
to the judge hearing the case denied to Keston that security measures
had been inadequate. Pressure on the Georgian authorities to take
action against religious violence is mounting in the wake of
Mkalavishvili's raid on a Baptist warehouse at Vashlisdjvari near
Tbilisi on 3 February, when thousands of Bibles and religious books
were burned (see full article below).
KYRGYZSTAN: NEW DECREE SET TO TIGHTEN RELIGIOUS CONTROLS (8 Feb). As
preparations continue for a new religion law which could be approved
as early as May, the Kyrgyz government has issued a decree tightening
controls on publishing which seems set to increase control over
religious organisations. The senior Muslim cleric in Jalal-abad region
in southern Kyrgyzstan told Keston News Service he feared the "audit"
of religious organisations heralded by the decree would impact not
only on "religious extremists", the professed target of the decree,
but on ordinary believers as well. A human rights activist from
Jalal-abad agreed. "I have no doubt that in time we will feel the
impact of this decree, and that the controls over believers will
tighten," he told Keston.
RUSSIA: DRAFT LAW ON "TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS ORGANISATIONS" (5 Feb). A
draft law would introduce into Russian legislation the term
"traditional religious organisation", which will be subdivided into
the categories "traditional religious organisation"; "traditional
religious organisation of individual peoples of the Russian
Federation"; "historical traditional religious organisation"; and
"representation of a foreign traditional religious organisation". The
draft law will be unveiled at a press conference at the Russian
Parliament today.
RUSSIA: OPINION DIVIDED OVER TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS ORGANISATION STATUS
(5 Feb). The draft law "On Traditional Religious Organisations" would
allot state preferences but "would not limit freedom of conscience for
anyone else," its author has claimed in an interview with Keston. At a
conference chaired by President Putin’s representative, Georgi
Poltavchenko, at which the only religions represented on the
praesidium were Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism & Buddhism, Poltavchenko
said "traditional religious organisations are ones which have been
present in the Russian state for many centuries and have contributed
to Russian statehood - that's Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism."
"Protestantism is not traditional for the Russian Federation - for
England, maybe."
RUSSIA: PROPOSED BAN ON RELIGIOUS "EXTREMIST ACTIVITY" (5 Feb). A new
draft law would ban religious organisations found to have committed
"extremist activity" including “violation of the rights and freedoms
of citizens on account of their race, nationality, language or
attitude to religion or convictions”. An accompanying bill includes
amendments and additions relating to Russia's 1997 law on religion,
which lists grounds for liquidating or banning a religious
organisation. There is also a proposed amendment to the Criminal Code,
by which leadership or participation in a banned extremist
organisation is punishable by a fine of up to 1000 times the minimum
wage or confiscation of received or other income for up to ten months
or arrest for up to six months or deprivation of freedom for up to
five years.
RUSSIA: CRITICISM OF ANTI-RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM PROPOSALS (5 Feb). The
proposed legislation outlawing "extremist activity" has met with
criticism from various quarters. An aide to a Russian Duma
(parliament) deputy commented that the bills were "ideological
legislation, which shouldn't exist in principle - one can talk about
terrorism, but extremism is meaningless as a legal term." Metropolitan
Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad insisted that the amendments were
"unacceptable without the consultation of religious organisations",
particularly when draft laws were prepared "in secret". An assistant
to the governor of Kursk region commented that the US government was
currently unlikely to criticise such initiatives in Russia: "Since 11
September they have passed a lot which goes against their own
constitution."
RUSSIA: SUCCESSOR TO SOVIET-ERA COUNCIL FOR RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS BY THE
BACK DOOR? (6 Feb) Draft legislation aimed at outlawing "extremist
activity" (see KNS 5 February 2002) contains an inconspicuous proposed
amendment to Russia's law on religion which would create a body like
the Soviet-era Council for Religious Affairs. Metropolitan Kirill of
Smolensk and Kaliningrad has criticised the creation of any kind of
Ministry for Religion in Russia, as such an organ would always "tend
towards interference in the internal life of religious organisations."
The Soviet-era Council for Religious Affairs, explained the
Metropolitan, had passing to the Politburo and Communist Party Central
Committee only that information which it considered advantageous to
itself. As a result the ruling organs of the nation "didn't really
know what was happening in the religious sphere in the country," which
ultimately led to "tragic consequences" - the break-up of the nation.
The Church would oppose the introduction of such an organ as "nothing
good will come of it."
RUSSIA: ORTHODOX CHURCH ATTACKS GOVERNMENT MOVES TO AMEND RELIGION LAW
(6 Feb). Moscow Patriarchate representatives and supporters have
recently sharply criticised plans to amend Russia's law on religion.
Patriarch Aleksi II is reported as stating that the 1997 law on
religion was the "result of a difficult compromise" and that it should
not be changed. Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad has
stated that the review "is currently all focussed on the personality
of a single person (…), but I do not think that one person can
commence such a process in a vast country on his own initiative: No
single official has the right to interpret the Constitution in such a
way that it becomes an element of state policy."
Thursday 7 February
GEORGIA: INTIMIDATION SABOTAGES TRIAL OF VIOLENT PRIEST
by Felix Corley, Keston News Service
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For the full text, see http://www.keston.org/knsframe.htm
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