Six members of a Baptist congregation in the town of Khazar (formerly Cheleken) were fined in mid-January for holding “illegal services”, Keston News Service has learned. The instruction to fine them came from the political police, the KNB (former KGB), the six were told. The Turkmen authorities routinely fine members of unregistered religious congregations for holding religious meetings, even if such meetings take place in private homes.
Just two days after a court in the capital Baku liquidated a Baptist congregation, a local policeman in the small town of Chukhuryurd near Shemakha in central Azerbaijan tried to ban a small Baptist church from meeting, Baptist sources told Keston News Service. “He had heard the news of the Baku church’s liquidation on ANS television and came to the local elder last Friday [5 April] and told him the church could not meet on Sunday for worship,” Ilya Zenchenko, head of the Baptist Union in Azerbaijan, told Keston from Baku on 10 April. “We told the church elder on Saturday the policeman had been overzealous and exceeded his powers and that his demands for the church not to meet had no legal basis.”
by Felix Corley, Keston News Service As believers who claim their rights have been violated by the state authorities debate and argue over the best way to resolve such violations, Keston News Service has discovered that Rafik Aliev, chairman of the State Committee for Relations with Religious Organisations, has repeatedly warned believers not to take their complaints to foreigners. “Come to us with your problems and we will sort them out,” he has told religious minority leaders, despite the fact that his office is often the cause of the violations or – in cases where other agencies have violated believers’ … Read more
by Felix Corley, Keston News Service As believers who claim their rights have been violated by the state authorities debate and argue over the best way to resolve such violations, Keston News Service has discovered that Rafik Aliev, chairman of the State Committee for Relations with Religious Organisations, has repeatedly warned believers not to take their complaints to foreigners. “Come to us with your problems and we will sort them out,” he has told religious minority leaders, despite the fact that his office is often the cause of the violations or – in cases where other agencies have violated believers’ … Read more
On the day Baku’s Protestant Greater Grace church was celebrating Easter, police in the city’s central Sabail district tried to forcibly deport a church member, alleging that she had been conducting religious “propaganda”. One of the church’s pastors, Musfig Bayram, told Keston News Service from Baku that police took Nina Koptseva, a Russian citizen who has a residence permit to live in Baku, to the city’s railway station on Sunday morning (31 March), bought her a ticket to the Russian border and tried to place her on the train without any court decision. It was only when she screamed loudly and insisted that if she had to leave she could buy an airline ticket to Russia herself that police halted the attempt and returned her to the cells in the Sabail district police station. Koptseva is now slated for deportation today (1 April) by air.
MINSK, BELARUS (ANS) — In a move expected to further isolate isolate the former Soviet Republic underground , Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko signed Europe’s “most restrictive religious law,” Thursday October 31, the Keston News Service (KNS) said.
Three Baptists have been fined for taking part in a street outreach in the town of Lepel in the north-eastern region of Vitebsk and a further six were given official warnings, Keston News Service has learnt in a statement from local Baptists. At their 6 June trial, two other Baptists were acquitted. Reached by telephone in Lepel on 11 June, the judge in the case, Nikolai Kozlovsky, refused to explain why the Baptists had been put on trial. “We don’t give out information by telephone,” he told Keston, before putting down the telephone. The town’s police chief, Konstantin Borovik, reached by telephone the same day, also refused to explain. “The Baptists violated the law,” was all he would tell Keston.
The campaign group For Freedom of Conscience has described as “a bolt from out of the blue” the sudden adoption by parliament yesterday (27 June) of a repressive religion bill that only a day earlier had been postponed until the autumn (see KNS 26 June 2002). “Yesterday, when I learnt that consideration of the draft law had been postponed until the autumn I thought that common sense had prevailed among the deputies,” German Rodov, head of the Bible Society, declared in a 27 June statement passed to Keston News Service. “But today I have the impression that in taking these decisions the deputies are completely ignoring the views of tens of thousands of Belarusian citizens. This law is a fiasco for the Chamber of Representatives as a parliament and testimony to its bankruptcy.” Religious minorities in Belarus now fear President Aleksandr Lukashenko will sign the bill into law today, the last day of the parliamentary session.
Jerusalem (ICEJ) — Israeli and US intelligence officers believe that al-Qaida plans to launch suicide attacks against Israel and against Israelis abroad, based on information on a Web site officials believe speaks for the terrorist organization.
The Malawi Council of Churches – a mother body of prostestant churches in the country – has issued a statement asking the ruling party United Democratic Front (UDF) and the government at large, to curb acts of violence committed against the clergy.
A Church building belonging to the Mountain of Fire Ministries in Gusau, capital of Zamfara State, northern Nigeria was set ablaze by suspected Islamic fanatics.
The leader of a group of churches in Laos notified Christian Aid today that Lao authorities confiscated the Saybangnoun Church Saturday after Christians refused to surrender the facility to them Saturday noon. The church was located in Songkorn district, Savannakhet Province. The Christians gathered and worshiped in tears outside their confiscated church building Sunday.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (BP)–Thousands of extremist Muslim fighters armed with automatic weapons are attacking Christian villages in Indonesia’s Central Sulawesi province, burning churches and thousands of homes and sending residents fleeing.
ISTANBUL, November 5 (Compass) — Security was at an all-time high yesterday as solemn memorial services were held in every Christian church in Pakistan, mourning the 16 victims massacred by Muslim extremists during a Sunday morning worship service last week.
Pervez Masih, a Pakistani Christian schoolmaster being accused of blasphemy against Muhammad, is scheduled to appear before the Lahore High Court on Monday, October 8 to appeal for bail. Since his arrest on April 1, 2001, Pervez has been tortured and imprisoned in a 6-ft X 4-ft cell in Sialkot jail. The daytime temperature in the cell exceeds 50 degrees centigrade. He is not allowed to come out of his room and walk. Once a week, he is taken out to meet his relatives. He sleeps on the hard floor on a mat next to the toilet. In May he told visitors that police beat him, demanding that he convert to Islam.
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (ANS) — Members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have visited in Kabul eight Western and Sixteen Afghan aid workers, who face possible execution for allegedly spreading Christianity in war ravaged Afghanistan. The Sunday visit was the first contact the prisoners had with the outside world, since being detained three weeks ago under the Taliban regime’s strict interpretation of Islamic law.
A Baptist from the town of Turkestan in Chimkent region of southern Kazakhstan, Tursunbai Auelbekov, was in the town’s Kuanysh market distributing free copies of Kazakh-language religious literature from the Evangelical-Christian Baptist Church on 23 January when he was arrested by police, Keston News Service has learned. According to the law enforcement agencies, since the Baptist church is not registered at the justice department of the Turkestan administration, its followers do not have the right to carry out any activity in the town, which is 165 kms (100 miles) north-west of Chimkent, or the surrounding district.
by Geoff Stamp ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (Compass)– A leading member of Ethiopia’s Protestant church says that freedom to practice religion is only “constitutional.” Yet despite ongoing persecution, Protestant churches are experiencing significant growth. “During the former regime of communist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, the persecution came from the Marxist government authorities. Now we may have freedom on paper, but I can say that persecution has doubled and it is coming from the Orthodox Church and the Muslims,” the church leader told Compass. Even in the capital, Addis Ababa, there have been several recent incidents of people throwing stones at churches … Read more
by Alex Buchan LONDON, January 31 (Compass)– In an attempt to ensure fair treatment of house church leader Gong Shengliang, six jailed female co-workers from the embattled South China Church authorized the release on January 29 of three letters detailing how they were tortured by police into providing false testimony against him. In a secret December trial, Gong was sentenced to death on charges of rape and arson, and of leading a cult. Although due to be executed on January 5, fifty-year-old Gong was granted permission to appeal his death sentence while on death row after international pressure was applied … Read more
BANGALORE, India (Compass) — Nineteen villagers who recently embraced Christianity have been forced to re-convert to Hinduism in the Korua village of Kendrapada district in India’s Orissa state after undergoing sustained social ostracism from their fellow villagers. They are also facing prosecution by the district administration for violating provisions of the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act (OFRA).