Christian Persecution – Russia & Former USSR

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.

Perhaps because of international reporting on the case, a court in Nukus, the capital of the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan in western Uzbekistan, has handed down what many regard as a “lenient” sentence against the leader of a local Protestant church. Members of the “Mir” (Peace) Protestant church, which lost its state registration in 2000, went on trial on 7 June accused under the administrative code of conducting an unlawful service, Keston News Service learnt from local Protestants.

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.

A Hungarian Reformed Pastor continues to preach the Gospel despite alleged death threats and opposition from Russia and Communists who he says still rule the Hungarian village of Doboz, near the Romanian border.

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,”

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.

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.

In addition to their unhappiness over the very need for re-registration of religious organisations and the way the compulsory re-registration process has been run, believers of a variety of religious denominations have complained to Keston News Service over the demands made of them by the State Committee for Relations with Religious Organizations, which is handling the process.

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.

There were fresh reports about persecution of Christians throughout the former Soviet Union Monday January 20, including the arrests of Pentecostal leaders and the banning of the world famous Jesus film in several regions.

Amid growing pressure on Protestant congregations, two leaders of the unregistered Pentecostal church Living Stones have been arrested and given fifteen-day prison terms, Protestant sources in the Azerbaijani capital Baku have told Keston News Service. The two – Yusuf Farkhadov and Kasym Kasymov – were detained in Sumgait, a town close to Baku, when police and National Security Ministry officers raided a prayer meeting last Friday (18 January) held in a private flat in the town’s 9th micro-district.

BUDAPEST/MOSCOW (ANS) — There were fresh reports about persecution of Christians throughout the former Soviet Union Monday January 20, including the arrests of Pentecostal leaders and the banning of the world famous Jesus film in several regions.

ISTANBUL, April 11 (Compass) — Two Christians were sent to jail yesterday for seven days on charges of “disobeying the police” in the town of Ismailly, 120 miles west of the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.

The authorities of the Niyazov district of the Turkmen capital Ashgabad broke their own seals on the doors of the city’s Baptist church on 2 March and confiscated everything inside. The move was timed on the last working day before nearly a week of public holidays in the country. Keston News Service has been able to find no Turkmen local or national government official prepared to discuss why the contents of the country’s last Baptist church have been carted away in several lorry loads, despite repeated telephone calls.

During the past two weeks, Turkmenistan’s political police have launched another harsh crackdown against its Protestant Christian citizens.

At least four known believers in the capital of Ashgabad have been subjected to repeated beatings, electric shocks, partial suffocation and other forms of torture while under interrogation, prosecution and ongoing harassment.