The Jewish community in the capital Dushanbe has no idea
whether it will get any compensation when its synagogue – the only one in
Tajikistan - will be demolished next year as part of city reconstruction plans,
Rabbi Mikhail Abdurakhmanov told Forum 18 News
Service from Dushanbe on 26 August. "This has not been discussed." He
stressed that he was not accusing the authorities of demolishing the synagogue
deliberately. "A general reconstruction of the city centre is being
planned, and unfortunately our building turned out to be in that sector,"
he declared. "However, the authorities could have held a meeting with the
Jews and avoided demolishing the only synagogue in the whole of
Tajikistan."
Rabi Aliyev, chief specialist at the government's
committee for religious affairs in Dushanbe, was unable to tell Forum 18 what
compensation would be offered if the synagogue is demolished.
The synagogue, built by the local Jewish community at the beginning of the
twentieth century, was confiscated by the Soviet authorities in the 1920s. In
1958 the Jewish community was officially allowed to use the building again, but
ownership was not transferred back to it and it remains state-owned property.
The small synagogue was reported by the Rujen news
agency on 18 August to be in a "lamentable condition", owing to the
poverty of local Jews in the wake of economic collapse and the civil war in
Tajikistan in the 1990s, during which most Jews abandoned the country.
Rabbi Abdurakhmanov told Forum 18 that the demolition
of the synagogue is set to take place in 2004 under the terms of document no.
18, dated 23 January 2003, which was approved by a commission of the
hakimiat (administration) of the city's Ismail
Somoni district. The area where the synagogue is
located is the future site for a Palace of Nations.
Rabbi Abdurakhmanov told Forum 18 that only about 150
Jews remain in Dushanbe, with about 30 regular worshippers at the synagogue. He
said the community does not have the money to build a new synagogue and that if
the current synagogue was destroyed the Jews would have to look for a sponsor.
In the absence of the chairman of the committee for religious affairs, Said
Akhmedov, who Forum 18 was told is on holiday,
Aliyev seemed uninformed about the plans to demolish the
synagogue. "Rabbi Abdurakhmanov visited the
committee for religious affairs recently, and said nothing about problems with
the synagogue," he told Forum 18 on 26 August. Aliyev
said the synagogue is situated "quite a long way" from the proposed
Palace of Nations and "in my opinion it does not need to be
demolished". But he believed that if the synagogue is demolished, then the
authorities will have to offer the Jews a plot of land for the construction of
a new one.