MINELRES: KNS SUMMARY: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Moldova & Uzbekistan.

[minelres@lists.delfi.lv]

KESTON INSTITUTE, OXFORD, UK
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KESTON NEWS SERVICE SUMMARY  19 � 21 June 2002

Summaries of recent reporting on violations of religious liberty and on 
religion in communist and post-communist lands.
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AZERBAIJAN: U.S. OFFICIALS DISPUTE AZERBAIJAN 
OFFICIAL'S CLAIMS (19 June). No agreement has been made between 
the United States government and Azerbaijan requiring the U.S. government 
to clear any remarks about religious liberty in Azerbaijan with Azerbaijani 
officials, U.S. government officials have told Keston News Service. Rafik 
Aliev, Chairman of the Azerbaijani State Committee for Relations with 
Religious Organisations, reportedly made this claim to the Baku-based MPA 
news agency after his recent visit to the U.S. "An agreement was reached 
during the talks that from now on all problems on violations of freedom on 
religion in Azerbaijan would be discussed with the Azerbaijani State 
Committee for Relations with Religious Organisations and reported only 
after that," MPA reported on 12 June. "We were not happy to see the MPA 
account," a State Department official told Keston. "The notion that we 
reached any such agreement is absolutely not true." 

KAZAKHSTAN: RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY WITHOUT PERMISSION 
"UNACCEPTABLE", OFFICIALS CLAIM (20 June). Baptists in a 
village in north-western Kazakhstan close to the Russian border have been 
pressured to halt their religious activity  especially work with children - until 
they gain registration, something the congregation is unwilling to accept, 
Keston News Service has discovered. Although under Kazakh law 
registration is not compulsory, an official stated that "if the Baptists were 
registered all the problems would instantly disappear".

MOLDOVA: "KHRUSHCHEVITE SMELL" FROM NEW 
CRIMINAL CODE ARTICLE (20 June). Religious leaders and human 
rights activists have criticised an article in the new Moldovan criminal code 
lifted almost word for word from an article introduced into the Soviet 
criminal codes at the beginning of the 1960s during the anti-religious 
persecution unleashed by Nikita Khrushchev. The Pentecostals and the 
Jehovah's Witnesses, who learned of the new article from Keston News 
Service, are particularly concerned. "I grew up with this  I know what it 
means," Bishop Pyotr Borshch, head of the Pentecostal Union, said. In 
Soviet times this article was widely used against believers, including 
Pentecostals ("singing in tongues" or prophesying was deemed to harm 
health) and Hare Krishna devotees (chanting was likewise deemed to harm 
health). Jehovah's Witnesses suffered under this article because of their 
rejection of blood transfusions and their refusal to vote or perform military 
service. (See full text below)

MOLDOVA: FINED FOR DOOR TO DOOR PREACHING (21 June). 
For the first time in recent years, a Jehovah's Witness has been fined for door 
to door preaching. Igor Danile was fined 360 lei (27 US dollars, 28 Euros or 
18 British pounds), equal to twenty months' minimum wage, for preaching 
from door to door. 

UZBEKISTAN: JEHOVAH'S WITNESS FINED FOR "ILLEGAL" 
TEACHING (19 June). An Uzbek court has found a Jehovah's 
Witness guilty of "illegal" religious teaching after he attended a wake for 
a dead friend last February, and fined him 19,725 Uzbek Som (27 US 
Dollars, 18 British Pounds or 28 Euros). The court declared that he "was 
engaged in teaching religious beliefs in a private capacity, without 
holding the corresponding authorisation from the relevant agency." The 
head of the department for liaison with non-Muslim confessions at the 
Committee for Religious Affairs, Kamol Kamilov, stated that "Naturally, 
three believers can meet together - that is not against the law. It's another 
matter if a community is unregistered, because then they are not allowed 
to preach. There is a very fine line between preaching and simple friendly 
conversation, and we have to look at each such case individually."

UZBEKISTAN: KGB VETOES JEHOVAH'S WITNESS SERVICES 
(19 June).  An unregistered Jehovah's Witness community has been refused 
permission to use a local home for religious meetings after the former KGB 
vetoed the proposal, Keston News Service has learned. A similar attempt 
two years ago led to the local mahalla committee threatening the 
householder concerned. A number of mahallas, one of which refused 
permission on instructions from the KGB, have refused permission for 
religious communities to operate on the orders of city authorities.


MOLDOVA: "KHRUSHCHEVITE SMELL" FROM NEW 
CRIMINAL CODE ARTICLE 	(20 June 2002)

by Felix Corley, Keston News Service

Some religious leaders and human rights activists have criticised an article in 
the new Moldovan criminal code lifted almost word for word from an article 
introduced into the Soviet criminal codes at the time of the anti-religious 
persecution unleashed by Nikita Khrushchev at the beginning of the 1960s. 
The Pentecostals and the Jehovah's Witnesses, who were unaware of the new 
article until Keston News Service sought their comments, are particularly 
concerned. "I grew up with this  I know what it means," Bishop Pyotr 
Borshch, head of the Pentecostal Union, told Keston from the Moldovan 
capital Chisinau on 20 June. "I don't trust them." His colleague, Bishop 
Viktor Pavlovsky, agreed. "This smells of the Khrushchev era." Their 
concerns were shared by Serghei Ostaf, chairman of the Moldovan Helsinki 
Committee for Human Rights. "This is a backward step," he told Keston.

The new code  adopted by the Moldovan parliament on 18 April  comes into 
force only next 1 January, as the Criminal Procedure Code needs to be 
adopted as well.

Article 186 of the new code punishes "an offence against the person or the 
rights of citizens under the guise of the fulfilment of religious rituals". The 
new article declares in full: "The organisation, conducting or active 
participation in a group whose activity, carried out under the guise of the 
preaching of religious beliefs or the fulfilment of religious rituals, if it is 
accompanied by the causing of harm to the health of citizens or the 
instigation of citizens to refuse to participate in public life or the fulfilment 
of citizens' obligations, is to be punished by a fine of 300-700 units or 
imprisonment of up to 5 years."

The only substantial difference from part 1 of Article 143 of the criminal 
code of the Moldovan SSR is that reference to "enticing minors into such a 
group" has been deleted and that there is no longer the possibility of being 
sent into internal exile for this offence.

During the Soviet period this article was widely used against believers, 
including Pentecostals ("singing in tongues" or prophesying was deemed to 
harm health) and Hare Krishna devotees (chanting was likewise deemed to 
harm health). Jehovah's Witnesses suffered under this article because of their 
rejection of blood transfusions and their refusal to vote or perform military 
service.

Many other former Soviet republics abolished this article in the early 1990s 
as a relic of the Soviet totalitarian past. Article 227 of Russia's Soviet-era 
Criminal Code was repealed in 1991 by the law on exonerating victims of 
political persecution. However, the similar article in the Armenian criminal 
code, Article 244, has not yet been abolished and was used last year to 
attempt to send to prison a Jehovah's Witness, Levon Markaryan, who was 
not finally cleared until April of this year (see KNS 19 April 2002). The 
Yerevan office of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe 
(OSCE) complained that Armenian Article 244 contained "outdated 
concepts" and should be abolished, although attempts have been made to 
bring it back in under a new guise.

Ostaf has so far produced the most detailed critique of Article 186. He 
complains that the article does not specify that any actions must have been 
carried out against an individual's will, that the article is too broadly 
formulated and that the article is aimed solely at religious activity. 
"Religious values and ideas are discriminated against in comparison with 
non-religious values, as they are required to meet far stricter requirements," 
he told Keston. He argues that the article directly attacks religions' core 
activity, not any specific harm that such activity might have caused based on 
firm evidence. He also fears that the article could be deployed not only 
against religious groups, but against non-governmental organisations that 
disseminate religious beliefs. 

Citing case law of the European Court of Human Rights, Ostaf complains 
that the notions of "citizens' obligations" and "participation in public life" are 
"clearly outdated" and "cannot be considered as legitimate reasons for 
limitations of any rights, including religious rights". 

Bishop Pavlovsky also complained about what he believed was the article's 
"very general formulation". "You could easily get five years under it!" he 
told Keston. "Whoever controls the interpretation of the article will be right." 
He feared that the provision over "citizens' obligations" could cause 
problems for the Pentecostals. "We don't take any oaths," he noted. "If 
alternative service is abolished, we would have a choice of going to prison or 
renouncing our faith. We had just such problems in the past." He argued that 
there are some "dangerous sects" in Moldova which harm health, but said 
that other articles of the criminal code already cover that. "Why should there 
be a specific law just for religious believers? Are religions more dangerous 
than anything else?" 

Equally unhappy is the Jehovah's Witness community. "The article is not 
good," Ion Rusu, a Jehovah's Witness leader, told Keston from Chisinau on 
20 June. "It could be used against us." He pointed out that various Jehovah's 
Witness practices, such as preaching from door to door, refusing to vote in 
elections and rejecting blood transfusions could fall foul of the article. "Our 
people were sentenced under this provision in the Soviet era  this could 
happen again," Rusu warned. 

However, Angelina Zaporojan-Pirgari, human rights assistant at the OSCE 
mission to Moldova, made no direct criticism of Article 186. "The OSCE 
does not have an official position on the new article on religion," she told 
Keston from Chisinau on 13 June. "I think that the article does not exceed 
the margin of appreciation afforded to states to limit the right to freedom of 
religion." However, she stressed that the jurisprudence of the European 
Court of Human Rights concerning article 9 (freedom of thought, conscience 
and religion) of the European human rights convention was also relevant to 
any application of this article. (END)

Copyright (c) 2002 Keston Institute. All rights reserved.
 
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