Kyrgyzstan: Religion Law changes being done "democratically"
Government-backed changes to Kyrgyzstan's Religion Law have begun passage in Parliament, Forum 18 News Service notes. If eventually adopted, they would ban sending students for foreign religious...
View ArticleUzbekistan: Muslim prisoners of consciences' appeals rejected, Christians...
A court in Uzbekistan today (20 December) rejected appeals by two Muslim prisoners of conscience - Gayrat Khusanov and Shuhrat Yunusov - against seven year jail terms for meeting with seven others to...
View ArticleRussia: Is anti-Jehovah's Witness campaign slowing?
Russia's efforts to convict Jehovah's Witnesses for criminal "extremism" appear to be weakening, Forum 18 News Service notes. "But we can't say the authorities have become more relaxed in principle,"...
View ArticleRussia: Reduced state harassment of Jehovah's Witnesses?
Incidents of Russian police harassment against Jehovah's Witnesses appear to be declining, Forum 18 News Service notes. However, Jehovah's Witness spokesperson Grigory Martynov stated that the apparent...
View ArticleKyrgyzstan: NSC secret police behind "needed" new religious freedom punishments
Kyrgyzstan's State Commission for Religious Affairs (SCRA), with the help of the National Security Committee (NSC) secret police, formulated proposed new punishments for exercising the right to...
View ArticleBelarus: Alternative Service Law "earliest by summer 2014"?
Belarus has prepared a "working version" of a proposed Alternative Service Law, Vera Chaushnik of the National Centre for Legislation and Legal Research has told Forum 18 News Service. "If all goes...
View ArticleAzerbaijan: Accountability for raiders through Baku and Strasbourg courts?
Baku-based Muslim Zeka Miragayev - whose home was raided by police and secret police without a warrant in May 2012 during which Korans and other religious books were seized - is seeking through a Baku...
View ArticleAzerbaijan: No legal place of worship for 40,000-strong town
The stripping of state registration from a Muslim community through the court leaves the 40,000 residents of Hirdalan near the Azerbaijani capital Baku with no legal place of worship of any faith,...
View ArticleKazakhstan: Seven large fines for "illegal missionary activity" - so far
Seven individuals - four Jehovah's Witnesses, two Muslims and a Protestant - are known to have been prosecuted since August 2012 for "illegal missionary activity", Forum 18 News Service has learned....
View ArticleKazakhstan: "Protect us from officials' lawlessness"
Mosques in Kazakhstan continue to be denied re-registration - and so permission to exist - if they will not join the state-backed Muslim Board, Forum 18 News Service has found. Independent and ethnic...
View ArticleKyrgyzstan: Extradition "would violate our international human rights...
Khabibullo Sulaimanov - who led a mosque in the Uzbek capital Tashkent and is seeking asylum in Kyrgyzstan - is fighting extradition back to Uzbekistan. "If the former imam is handed back to...
View ArticleBelarus: Religious freedom survey, January 2013
Belarus continues to keep religious communities within an invisible ghetto of regulation, Forum 18 News Service has found. The state closely controls people meeting together to exercise their religious...
View ArticleUzbekistan: Raids, criminal charges and Christmas Bible destruction
After two raids on her home in Urgench in north-west Uzbekistan this January and being detained for 11 hours, Protestant Christian Sharofat Allamova is facing criminal prosecution for "illegally"...
View ArticleKazakhstan: "To counter manifestations of religious extremism and terrorism"
At least eight separate meetings for worship in Kazakhstan were raided by the authorities in January, Forum 18 News Service has learned. Raids on Baptists were made, police claimed, "to counter...
View ArticleKyrgyzstan: Imam still faces extradition to Uzbek torture
The legal appeal by former imam Khabibullo Sulaimanov against his extradition from Kyrgyzstan back to Uzbekistan resumes on 12 February, Forum 18 News Service has learned. Officials failed to produce...
View ArticleChina: Should religious freedom be a "core interest"?
Why does the Chinese state adopt measures that result in freedom of religion and belief violations? A fundamental explanation might be found among the Chinese leadership's concept of the country's...
View ArticleTurkmenistan: Raid, two-day detentions, torture, rape threat, fines
After the UN Human Rights Committee sought a response from Turkmenistan to complaints by 10 Jehovah's Witness conscientious objectors, about 30 police officers raided the lead complainant's family home...
View ArticleTurkmenistan: Four new conscientious objector prisoners of conscience
Six months after each completing 18-month jail sentences in Turkmenistan for refusing compulsory military service on grounds of conscience, Jehovah's Witnesses Dovran Matyakubov and Matkarim Aminov...
View ArticleRussia: Criminal charges to follow armed Tatarstan raids?
Russian law enforcement agents raided 23 homes of readers of Islamic theologian Said Nursi in Tatarstan, in the early hours of 14 February, Forum 18 News Service has learned. "They took everything,"...
View ArticleKazakhstan: Bookshop censorship, ban on all non-Hanafi Sunni Muslim literature
Kazakhstan continues to ban all non-Hanafi Sunni Muslim literature. State-backed Muslim Board spokesperson Ongar Omirbek told Forum 18 News Service that "only Islamic literature from the Sunni Hanafi...
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