The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE),
which has as members all the states of Europe, Central Asia and North America,
does not work by coercion but by consensus and persuasion. Membership is not
compulsory: states have the free choice whether to accept the binding OSCE
commitments by joining or not. The commitment of all OSCE states to respect
freedom of religion is clear. The 1990 OSCE human dimension conference declared
"everyone will have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and
religion. This right includes freedom to change one's religion or belief and
freedom to manifest one's religion or belief, either alone or in community with
others, in public or in private, through worship, teaching, practice and
observance. The exercise of these rights may be subject only to such restrictions
as are prescribed by law and are consistent with international standards."
As delegates assemble for the OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting on
Freedom of Religion or Belief, on 17-18 July 2003, many ask how violators of
these fundamental commitments - especially Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Belarus,
Azerbaijan and Armenia - can be allowed to continue as members of an
organisation whose fundamental principles they blatantly flout. OSCE officials
argue off the record that it is better to keep violators in, with the hope that
they can be persuaded to mend their ways, rather than expel them, abandoning
local people to the clutches of their governments. The result is that
persecuted believers Forum 18 News Service www.forum18.org has spoken to in a number
of states now have little faith in what the OSCE can and will do for them to
protect their right to religious freedom.
Forum 18 News Service www.forum18.org surveys here some, but not all, of the
continuing abuses in the eastern half of the OSCE region. This is not a
comprehensive survey of abuses in the countries covered, due to lack of space.
The Forum 18 website www.forum18.org documents abuses in detail. Abuses also
occur in other OSCE countries (such as the About-Picard law in France or restrictions
on newer religious communities in Belgium).
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP: An alarming number of states raid religious meetings to
close down services and punish those who take part. Turkmenistan is the worst
offender: it treats all non-Muslim and non-Russian Orthodox worship as illegal.
Uzbekistan and Belarus specifically ban unregistered religious services. In
Belarus, numerous Protestant congregations - some numbering more than a
thousand members - cannot meet because they cannot get a registered place to worship.
Officials in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan also raid places where
worship is being conducted.
PLACES OF WORSHIP: Opening a place of worship is impossible in some states. In
Turkmenistan is impossible to open a place of worship for non-Muslim and
non-Russian Orthodox communities, and those that existed before the mid-1990s
were confiscated or bulldozwed. Uzbekistan has closed down thousands of mosques
since 1996 and often denies Christian groups' requests to open churches.
Azerbaijan also obstructs the opening of Christian churches and tries to close
down some of those already open. Belarus makes it almost impossible for
religious communities without their own building already or substantial funds
to rent one to find a legal place to worship. An Autocephalous Orthodox church
(which attracted the anger of the government and the Russian Orthodox Church)
was bulldozed in 2002.
REGISTRATION: Where registration is compulsory before any religious activity
can start (Belarus and Uzbekistan) or where officials claim that it is
(Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan), life is made difficult for communities
that either choose not to register (such as one community of Baptists in the
former Soviet republics) or are denied registration (the majority of religious
communities in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan). Registration in Turkmenistan is
all but impossible (the 1996 religion law requires each community to have 500
adult citizen members), but even in countries such as Azerbaijan or Uzbekistan
with less onerous hurdles, registration for disfavoured communities is often
made impossible - officials in the sanitary/epidemiological service are among
those with the power of veto in Uzbekistan. Belarus, Azerbaijan, Slovenia,
Slovakia and Russia are also among states which to widely varying degrees make
registration of some groups impossible or very difficult.
RELIGIOUS LITERATURE: Belarus and Azerbaijan require compulsory prior
censorship of all religious literature produced or imported into the country.
Azerbaijani customs routinely confiscate religious literature, releasing it
only when the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations grants
explicit written approval for each title and the number of copies authorised.
Forbidden books are sent back or destroyed (thousands of Hare Krishna books
held by customs for seven years were recently destroyed). Even countries
without formal religious censorship eg. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan
routinely confiscate imported religious literature (Russian-language Baptist
magazines were recently burnt by Uzbekistan) or found during raids on homes.
Uzbekistan routinely bars access to websites it dislikes, such as foreign
Muslim sites.
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: Believers in institutions such as prisons, hospitals or the
army may face difficulties obtaining and keeping religious literature, praying
in private and receiving visits from spiritual leaders and fellow-believers.
Muslim prisoners in Uzbekistan have been punished for praying and fasting
during Ramadan. Death-row prisoners wanting visits from Muslim imams and
Russian Orthodox priests have had requests denied, even for final confession
before execution.
DISCRIMINATION: Turkmenistan has dismissed from state jobs hundreds of active
Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses and other religious minorities. Turkmen and
Azeri officials try to persuade people to abandon their faith and
"return" to their ancestral faith (Islam). Armenia has ordered local
police chiefs to persuade police who were members of faiths other than the
Armenian Apostolic Church to abandon their faith. If persuasion failed, such
employees were to be sacked. Belarus has subjected leaders of independent
Orthodox Churches and Hindus to pressure - including fines, threats and
inducements - to abandon their faith or emigrate. Officials in Azerbaijan,
Armenia and Belarus repeatedly attack disfavoured religious minorities in the
media, insulting their beliefs, accusing them falsely of illegal or
"destructive" activities, as well as inciting popular hostility to
them.
GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE: Many governments meddle in the internal affairs of
religious communities. Central Asian governments insist on choosing national
and local Muslim leaders. Turkmenistan ousted the chief mufti in January.
Tajikistan has conducted "attestation tests" of imams, ousting those
who failed. Islamic schools are tightly controlled (in Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan, schools have either been closed or access to them restricted).
Turkmenistan obstructs those seeking religious education abroad. Some countries
with large Orthodox communities (but not Russia or Ukraine), try to bolster the
largest Orthodox Church and obstruct rival jurisdictions (Belarus, Bulgaria,
Georgia, Moldova). Russia has prevented communities from choosing their
leadership, expelling a Catholic bishop, several priests, and dozens of
Protestant and other leaders.
PROTECTION FROM VIOLENCE: Law enforcement agencies fail to give religious
minorities the same protection as major groups. Georgia has had violence by
Orthodox vigilantes, with over 100 attacks in the past four years on True
Orthodox, Catholics, Baptists, Pentecostals and Jehovah's Witnesses, who have
been physically attacked, places of worship blockaded and religious events
disrupted. The authorities - who know the attackers identity - have sentenced
no-one. In some cases, police have cooperated with attacks or failed to
investigate them. In Kosovo the Nato-led peacekeeping force and United Nations
police repeatedly fail to protect Serbian Orthodox churches in use and graveyards.
No-one has been arrested or prosecuted, despite over 100 attacks which have
destroyed or badly-damaged churches.
LACK OF TRANSPARENCY: Major laws and decrees affecting religious life are drawn
up without public knowledge or discussion. Examples are the restrictive laws on
religion of Belarus and Bulgaria in 2002, and planned new laws in Georgia,
Azerbaijan and Moldova. International organisations, such as the OSCE or the
Council of Europe may be consulted but governments often refuse to allow their
comments to be published or ignore them. Many countries retain openly partisan
and secretive government religious affairs offices. Slovenia's religious
affairs office has refused to register any new religious communities in the
past three years. Azerbaijan's has stated which communities it will refuse to
register and what changes other communities will have to make to their statutes
and activities to gain registration.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM REPORTING: Those reporting on religious freedom such as Forum
18 News Service www.forum18.org and groups campaigning on the issue face lack
of cooperation, obstruction and harassment. Those suspected of passing on news
of violations have been threatened in Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, with the aim
of forcing silence. In a region without much government transparency or a
genuinely free media, officials involved in harassing religious communities
often refuse to explain to journalists what they have done and why. Local
campaigning groups are denied registration or kept waiting. Demonstrators
protesting in Belarus against the restrictive new religion law were fined.
Government reports on religious freedom issues to bodies such as the OSCE or
Council of Europe are often confidential and closed to public scrutiny.
CONCLUSION: Many of these restrictions predate the 11 September 2001 terrorist
attacks and 1999 Islamic-inspired incursions into Central Asia so
governments cannot validly argue that such restrictions are necessary to ensure
public security. The comprehensive nature of many of these measures shows the
hostility of some OSCE member states to the right to exercise the faith of
one's choice freely, something described by the European Court of Human Rights
in 1993 as "one of the foundations of a democratic society".