Keston News Service Summary: 10-14 and 17-21 December 2001
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Subject: Keston News Service Summary: 10-14 and 17-21 December 2001
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Keston News Service Summary: 10-14 and 17-21 December 2001
KESTON INSTITUTE, OXFORD, UK
______________________________________
KESTON NEWS SERVICE – SUMMARY 17-21 December 2001
Summaries of recent reporting on violations of religious liberty and
on religion in communist and post-communist lands.
______________________________________
AZERBAIJAN: EIGHT-MONTH BAN ON BAPTIST SERVICES OVERRIDDEN (21 Dec).
A Baptist church in the western Azerbaijani town of Gyanja held its
first public service yesterday (20 December) after an official of the
State Committee for Relations with Religious Organisations in the
capital Baku overrode a ban on the church's public worship issued by
the local police last April. Pastor Boris Kuliev told Keston News
Service from Gyanja on 20 December that the official gave the verbal
assurance the previous day when the church lodged its re-registration
application at her office in Baku. "She said we could meet and
declared that no-one had the right to ban us."
CENTRAL ASIA (SPECIAL REPORT): FORMER ISLAMIC FIGHTER RECOUNTS LIFE IN
TRAINING CAMP (18 Dec). A former fighter for the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan (IMU), which seeks to overthrow the rule of Uzbek president
Islam Karimov and now fights alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, has
told Keston News Service how religious studies were transformed into
military training to "fight for Islam". As there is very little
information about the life of IMU fighters, the former fighter's story
could provide a better understanding of the type of person that forms
the backbone of this movement.
KAZAKHSTAN: NO PUBLIC CONSULTATION ON RELIGION BILL (17 Dec). A new
draft religion law was presented to the Kazakh parliament at the end
of November without public consultation, the mainly Protestant
Association of Religious Organisations of Kazakhstan (AROK) complained
in a letter received by Keston News Service. Kazakhstan's religion law
was adopted in 1992, but there have been repeated attempts in recent
years to amend it. Commenting on the latest draft, the head of the
Almaty Helsinki Group told Keston: "The authorities are making no
secret of the fact that they intend to intensify the controls on
believers. In the preamble to the draft law it is stated clearly that
it is meant to limit the expansion of 'non-traditional' religious
groups in Kazakhstan."
ROMANIA: ORTHODOX DESTROY FORMER GREEK CATHOLIC CHURCH (21 Dec).
Despite objections from governmental agencies and public associations,
as well as the papal representative in Bucharest, the former Greek
Catholic church in the village of Vadu Izei in Transylvania, was
almost completely demolished in October, Keston News Service has
learned. It was removed to make way for a new church for the local
Orthodox parish. "The destruction of the church did not have any
Christian justification, you can be sure of it,” Fr Marius Visovan, of
the Greek Catholic community in Vadu Izei, told Keston. "They would
rather destroy the churches instead of giving them back."
TURKMENISTAN: ELDERLY BLIND WOMAN THREATENED WITH EVICTION (21 Dec).
Mariya Zadorozhnaya, an elderly, blind Baptist, has been threatened
with eviction from her flat in the town of Khazar (formerly Cheleken)
on the Caspian Sea after hosting a Baptist service raided by the
political police last Sunday (16 December). "They threatened her that
if believers gather in her flat again, they will take it away from
her," declared a 20 December statement from the Khazar church, passed
to Keston News Service by the US-based Russian Evangelistic
Ministries. "They have banned the believers even from visiting this
sister." The officers issued a "final warning" to the Baptists that if
they continued to meet for worship or distribute Christian literature
they would be expelled from the town or would be taken to court under
Article 205. (see full article below)
YUGOSLAVIA/KOSOVO (SPECIAL REPORT): HOW SHOULD ORTHODOX RESPOND TO
MEDIA "LIBELS"? (17 Dec) The international bodies governing Kosovo
have refused to take sanctions against three Albanian-language Kosovar
papers which published articles about the Decani monastery which the
Orthodox regard as libellous, despite media rules to stamp out such
inter-ethnic libels. The publisher of one of the papers, which
published allegations that the monastery had been a den of
paramilitaries in 1998 and 1999, told Keston News Service on 13
December that the article did not necessarily reflect the views of the
paper, and added that Father Sava (Janjic), who had led the complaints
about the coverage, was "welcome" to publish a response in his paper.
Father Sava told Keston that such a response was inadequate and that
the international bodies should take action to prevent or punish such
"hate speech".
Friday 21 December
TURKMENISTAN: ELDERLY BLIND WOMAN THREATENED
WITH EVICTION
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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KESTON INSTITUTE, OXFORD, UK
______________________________________
KESTON NEWS SERVICE – SUMMARY 10-14 December 2001
Summaries of recent reporting on violations of religious liberty and
on religion in communist and post-communist lands.
______________________________________
AZERBAIJAN (SPECIAL REPORT): RELIGIOUS GROUPS CAUTIOUS OVER
RE-REGISTRATION PROMISES (12 Dec). It is too early to say whether
Azerbaijan’s new registration system for religious organisations will
put an end to officials’ power to obstruct the registration of
communities they dislike, members of a variety of religious
communities have told Keston News Service. All religious organisations
registered in Azerbaijan must apply for compulsory re-registration by
31 December this year. Speaking to Keston on 11 December, the
government's senior religious affairs official, Rafik Aliev, pledged
that obstruction of registration will end, as "the registration system
has fundamentally changed", but some sources in the Azerbaijani
capital Baku remain suspicious about his claims. "He often appears to
be open and liberal in public while his actions don't always match his
words," one source told Keston. (see full report below)
KAZAKHSTAN: BAPTIST FINED FOR REJECTING CHURCH REGISTRATION (13 Dec).
Pavel Leonov, leader of the Baptist church in the town of Ayaguz in
Eastern Kazakhstan region has been fined for refusing to register his
church with the authorities, Keston News Service learned from a 3
December statement from local Baptists. Leonov’s congregation, which
belongs to the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians/Baptists,
believes that such registration is a sin. Neither Kazakhstan's
constitution nor its religion law specifies any obligation for
religious groups to register, but Article 375 of the administrative
code allows the authorities to prosecute believers who refuse to
register religious communities. The head of the Almaty Helsinki
Committee told Keston she believes the authorities’ reliance on the
article is unlawful.
MACEDONIA: WAS CHURCH FIRE ARSON? (11 Dec) Police investigating the
burnt-out remains of an Orthodox church in the Tetovo region of
north-western Macedonia on 9 December believe the fire was started
deliberately. Remains of 14th century frescoes were destroyed, as well
as the church and a monastery accommodation building. "It is a
terrible picture," Archpriest Mirko Stankoski of the Tetovo parish
told Keston News Service on 11 December. Officials of the Organisation
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) declined to comment to
Keston on whether the fire was due to arson, but expressed concern
that the church burning might stir up further conflict in the region.
At least 30 religious sites, including churches and mosques, have been
destroyed there in the last three months.
MACEDONIA: WAS FIRE AT BITOLA MOSQUE ALSO ARSON? (13 Dec) Police are
still investigating how a fire started late on 10 December at the 15th
century Hamza Bej Mosque in Bitola, Macedonia's second largest city.
It damaged two entry rooms to the prayer area and spread to the roof.
Speaking to Keston News Service, a representative head of the Islamic
Faith Community in Macedonia refused to speculate on the cause of the
fire before the result of the investigation is known, but said there
was ‘some suspicion’ about it. He also told Keston that the Islamic
community had experienced problems during the summer, when mosques in
Bitola were attacked in what many believe were acts of revenge against
the ethnic Albanian population, which is mainly Muslim, after the
rebel uprising in western Macedonia. Macedonia’s President Boris
Trajkovski recently pledged his country's commitment to
inter-religious harmony, despite the burning of places of worship.
MOLDOVA: GOVERNMENT TO CONTEST STRASBOURG RULING IN FAVOUR OF
BESSARABIAN CHURCH (14 Dec). In the wake of the ruling issued
yesterday (13 December) by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)
in Strasbourg that the Moldovan government has violated the rights of
believers of the Bessarabian jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church by
refusing for the past decade to grant registration, officials have
insisted to Keston News Service that they will protest. Members of the
Bessarabian Church - which is an integral part of the Romanian
Orthodox Patriarchate - have welcomed the ruling, as did the lawyer
who represented them in court, who told Keston: "The Moldovan
government had - and has – no business deciding what is a proper
church and what is not. That is for the religious believers to
determine, not the state."
UZBEKISTAN (SPECIAL REPORT): HOW STRONG IS THE ISLAMIC OPPOSITION? (12
Dec) The main challenge to the rule of Uzbek president Islam Karimov
is likely to come from the Islamic-inspired opposition, either from
the Uzbek branch of the international Islamic organisation
Hizb-ut-Tahrir or from the armed Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. One
analyst told Keston News Service that most people "are preoccupied
primarily with how to feed their families and they don't have anything
to do with wider politics". According to an Uzbek religious affairs
official "the main social background of Islamic fundamentalists is the
most deprived section of the population," and others agree that
deprivation may provide the catalyst for the potential destabilisation
of Uzbekistan, despite tight control by secular authorities over
religious life. Young radicals told Keston they had concluded that
"only an Islamic state can give people a life of dignity".
Wednesday 12 December
AZERBAIJAN: RELIGIOUS GROUPS CAUTIOUS OVER RE-REGISTRATION PROMISES
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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