Officials Call on Police to Close Embattled Baptist Church in Kyrgyzstan
by Jeremy Reynalds
March 14, 2007
KYRGYZSTAN, CENTRAL ASIA (ANS) -- More than six months after a violent mob broke into a Baptist church in southern Kyrgyzstan, and four months after a second violent attack, no one has been prosecuted for either attack, local Baptists have complained to Forum 18 News Service.Kyrgyzstan is in Central Asia, west of China.
Local Baptists told Forum 18 News Service they are upset about the way they are being treated. Forum 18 reported that the state Religious Affairs Committee has refused the church registration, and asked the police to stop what it called the church's "illegal" activity.
Officials refuse to defend the church's rights, Forum 18 reported, stating that the local population hates the Baptists. Aleksandr Nikitin, pastor of the Baptist church in Osh and Baptist coordinator in southern Kyrgyzstan, told Forum 18 that the situation for Baptists in the village remains "depressing."
On July 28 2006, Forum 18 reported, a crowd of about 80 people broke into the house in Karakulja of the missionary pastor Zulumbek Sarygulov. They beat him unconscious, broke two of his fingers and threw him out of the house. They then opened a shed containing religious literature, including several dozen Bibles, and burnt it all in the courtyard.
Three police officers stood by watching, but without intervening. "A criminal case was opened on the basis of this hooliganism, but as was to be expected nobody was convicted," Nikitin told Forum 18. "Meanwhile people continued threatening the pastor, and not just with empty words," he added.
During the night of Nov.12-13 , a number of unidentified people threw bottles containing a flammable substance at the prayer house. "Luckily church members were able to extinguish the fire, and called the police," Nikitin told Forum 18. "A criminal case was opened, but none of the arsonists was caught." He believes the way authorities are operating is benefitting the attackers.
On Dec.1 2006 the government's Religious Affairs Committee sent Nikitin an official notification that the Karakulja church - a branch of his Osh church - had been refused formal registration. It justified the refusal on the grounds that, according to a Nov. 1999 presidential decree, activity by a religious community which has not received such formal registration is forbidden.
As the Karakulja church had been carrying on religious activity without registration for many years, the Committee alleged the church was breaking the law. "For this reason the Religious Affairs Committee refuses registration to the Karakulja community," the department's letter stated.
"This is just absurd," Forum 18 reported Nikitin told the news service. "Nothing in Kyrgyz law says that if a church has been functioning without registration, and then wishes to obtain it, the Religious Affairs Committee has the right to refuse. We intend to go to court."
In Karakulja, police Captain Kadyrbek Tursunbayev, who is responsible for contacts with religious organizations, showed Forum 18 a letter from the Religious Affairs Committee to the police chief in the village. It stated that the Baptist community had been refused registration and proposed that the police "take measures to end the Baptists' illegal activity."
Forum 18 reported that Tursunbayev refused to tell a reporter from the news service what specific measures police are proposing to take, but said that "practically all the inhabitants of the village hate the Baptists." He said that the police intended to protect the Baptists "as Kyrgyz citizens," but could not guarantee that this protection would be effective.
Shamsybek Zakirov, adviser to the head of the state Religious Affairs Committee, declined to say whether his Committee had the right to refuse registration to the Karakulja Baptists because they had been operating as an unregistered organization. "Karakulja is a special case," he told Forum 18. "The local people there are angry about the Baptists' activity."
Zakirov said officials treat requests for registration by religious minority organizations differently in different places. "If the activity of Christians seems likely to provoke violence by Muslims, then we are against the registration of a religious minority community in that particular place," he told Forum 18. "But if the Muslims don't mind the religious minority, then that church will get registration even if it has previously been functioning without it."
According to Forum 18, Protestants conducting missionary activity in what are perceived to be "Muslim" villages - especially in southern Kyrgyzstan - have faced rising pressure in recent years, including physical attacks and petitions to the authorities to have their churches closed down. In the worst case so far, Saktinbai Usmanov, an ethnic Kyrgyz convert to Protestant Christianity, was murdered in Dec. 2005.
Similar problems have been seen elsewhere in Central Asia, Forum 18 reported. In neighboring Tajikistan Baptist Pastor Sergei Bessarab was murdered in Jan. 2004 In May 2005, a regional court sentenced 12 people found guilty of his murder to 25 years imprisonment.
For background information see Forum 18's Kyrgyzstan religious freedom survey at www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=222.
© 2007 ASSIST News Service, used with permission.
