"Unlawful" ban on amplified call to prayer
Keston Institute (06.12.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (10.12.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net C The authorities in Kyrgyzstan's southern Jalal-abad region have banned the reading of the call to prayer via loudspeakers, the local Muslim leader, Dilmurat Haji Orozov, told Keston News Service on 28 November.
A phone call to the government's commission for religious affairs established that the ban was unlawful, but the authorities are still enforcing it, Orozov complained. The local religious affairs official told Keston that the ban was imposed to protect the rights of non-Muslims, pointing out that people of all faiths had been woken up early in the morning by the amplified calls to prayer. An expert on religious issues at a Jalal-abad human rights organisation believes that the ban is symptomatic of a new policy adopted by the authorities: "Repression of Muslims who refuse to follow the instructions of the secular authorities has increased."
(Keston Institute: http://www.keston.org)
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Religious students to be probed
by Sultan Jumagulov
Institute for War & Peace (RCA No. 89, 30.11.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (03.12.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - The Bishkek government is planning to put Kyrgyz students studying abroad under surveillance, after reports that some of them have joined radical Islamic groups.
The Kyrgyz National Security Service says it holds files on 300 Kyrgyz nationals studying in Pakistan, only 25 of whom are there legally. Some, according to security service official Talant Razzakov, are known to have joined the Taleban.
About 30, he says, are members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, IMU, a rebel group that has staged several small-scale operations in Central Asia in the last two years.
The Kyrgyz authorities are also casting their watchful eye on the contents of Islamic education provided at home. Five Islamic universities and 27 madrasahs have opened since the country gained independence ten years ago. The government is challenging their sources of financing and auditing and revising their curricula.
The greater concern, however, appears to be the prospect of students radicalised in foreign Islamic institutions returning to Kyrgyzstan and taking part in militant actions. "What are those people going to do once their religious and political schooling is over?" asks Razzakov. "Of, course, they will come back to Kyrgyzstan for some 'hands-on' experience."
Prominent Kyrgyz politician Tursunbai Bakir uulu, however, has spoken out strongly against the plan to put Kyrgyz students abroad under surveillance. "Why don't they do something about those well-known religious sects that do incite unrest in the country?" he said.
Parents of students studying abroad deny there is a problem. Abdusamat Adylbekov travels to Pakistan regularly to visit his two sons who are at an Islamic school there. "My kids are getting a real Islamic education that has nothing to do with politics or jihad," he said.
Others disagree. Taalat Masadykov, who used to work for the Soviet embassy in Afghanistan, said that when he was there and in Pakistan last spring he met several of his compatriots who were studying at Islamic institutions.
"You look at them, and you realise right away they are Taleban. I've heard there are dozens of them over there," he said. Bishkek officials, meanwhile, are keen not to seem too alarmist about the threat posed by radicalised Muslim youth. Head of a government commission on religious affairs, Omurzak Mamayusupov, has even sought to downplay the problem.
"Many people left Kyrgyzstan during the first few years after independence in search of Islamic education abroad, as Muslims had been deprived of the opportunity to worship for decades," he said. "But these days, very few people are keen on studying abroad."
The authorities here, it seems, are not opposed to students going overseas, they would just prefer them to stay clear of Pakistan. According to official statistics, some 300 Kyrgyz nationals have been lawfully admitted to foreign Islamic schools in recent years.
More than half of them go to school in Egypt. Both Kyrgyz government and clerical leaders here have a particularly high opinion of the Al-Az'har World Islamic University in Cairo. The Rector of the Islamic Institute in Bishkek, Abdyshukur Narmatov, an Al-Az'har
graduate, believes Egypt provides the best Islamic education to be had. "All Islamic schools in Egypt are public, and are very closely monitored by the government and the community," he said. "That's not the case, however, in other Muslim countries suffering internal religious problems."
Favaz al-Dahir, dean of the Arabic language department at Kyrgyz State University of Civil Engineering, Transportation and Architecture, agrees, citing Pakistan as a particular worry " A higher percentage of Islamic schools are privately owned there. I wouldn't recommend students at their schools because there are too many problems and Afghanistan is very close."
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Missionaries get a hostile reception
Keston News Service (20.11.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (26.11.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - An attempt by a Protestant Christian missionary group to put down roots in the mainly Muslim country has been sternly rejected by local village elders at every turn. Igor Rotar of Keston News Service reports on the confrontations.
A year and a half after first conducting missionary activity in the village of Chon-Tash, 15 kilometres south of the capital Bishkek, a Protestant church which draws its members from the ethnic Kyrgyz population has complained that its new community in the village, which once had 40 members, has almost been destroyed under pressure from local people.
Islambek Karatayev, the chief pastor of the Church of Jesus, said that local villagers had isolated church members and pressured them to return to Islam and that the village's council of elders had "banned" Christianity. A September meeting the church hoped would lead to reconciliation ended amid further condemnation of the Protestants.
This is not the first instance when converts from a Muslim background have faced heavy social pressure to renounce their new faith. Other Protestants and Jehovah's Witnesses have reported similar pressure, especially in villages in southern Kyrgyzstan. When a group of Church of Jesus members arrived in Chon-Tash on 6 May 2000 to preach, the villagers severely beat them.
One church member, Telega Isayeva, had two teeth knocked out. Karatayev told Keston that not only had no criminal case been brought against the offenders, but they were also still "persecuting" church members with impunity. The villagers have isolated the Protestants, refusing to bury their relatives in the local cemetery and to invite them to community events, a great insult in traditional Kyrgyz society.
They tell other pupils not to talk to the children of Syrga Sarukiyeva, the church's pastor in the village. Karatayev told Keston that initially the Chon-Tash church had around 40 members, but because of the "persecution" practically all had renounced the Christian faith.
Under pressure from the villagers, one former church member tore up a Bible in front of
Sarukiyeva and threw it at her feet.
According to Karatayev, on 26 September the Church of Jesus made an attempt at reconciliation, organising a meeting with the villagers. Among those attending were the chief specialist of the Tash-Tyube village council Mamakas Omurzakov (the village of Chon-Tash is within his remit), the village's council of elders, representatives of the local mosque,
Kyrgyzstan's deputy mufti, Ilyas Haji, and members of the Church of Jesus.
According to Karatayev, the meeting turned into a kangaroo court passing judgement on the Protestants. Ilyas Haji declared that a law should be introduced forbidding Kyrgyz from adopting Christianity, and he called the Protestants present at the meeting "dogs". The council of elders decided to ban Christianity in the village and warned the Protestants that if they did not stop preaching they "would not escape the people's wrath".
When the Protestant delegation left the village, the local people pelted them with stones and apples. "I'm not going to deny that the Protestants were insulted at the meeting on 26 September, and that the council of elders resolved that the preaching of Christianity in the village of Chon-Tash was unacceptable," Omurzakov said on 6 November in the nearby village of Vorontsovka.
"But the Protestants must understand that Chon-Tash is a purely Kyrgyz village, where practically all the villagers are Muslims. It is far from simple to preach Christianity in a place like that. We cannot give police protection to every local Protestant. Moreover, if we start to force local people to leave the Protestants alone, that could simply lead to revolt.
"Let the Protestants go to a village where there are a lot of Russians, and then their problems will vanish."
Omurzakov pointed out that a Protestant church operated freely in Vorontsovka, which has a large ethnic Russian population. "I know all about the situation in Chon-Tash," the head of the Commission for Religious Affairs of Kyrgyzstan, Omurzak Mamayusupov, told Keston in Bishkek on 7 November.
"But you must understand that religion is an extremely delicate issue, and legal decisions that have not been thought through could lead to bloodshed." He said his commission therefore tried to act cautiously. "We must first do preparatory work with the Chon-Tash villagers, and then Christians will be able to preach their views freely."
In another instance of pressure on Muslim converts to Christianity, on 29 December 2000 residents of Kuruk-Kul, a village in the Jalal-abad region of southern Kyrgyzstan populated by ethnic Uzbeks, tried to condemn their fellow-villagers who had converted to Christianity under Shariah law.
A crowd of several thousand demanded that the converts be punished. The police only managed to save the Christians by means of deceit, pretending that they were arresting them and removing them from the angry crowd in a police van.
The Islamic clergy have virtually condoned such pressure on Muslim converts to Christianity.
Speaking to Keston in August in the town of Jalal-abad, the mufti of the region Dilmurat Haji Orozov claimed that the Kuruk-Kul villagers had not converted to Christianity for ideological reasons, but because they had been seduced by money.
(Keston News Service: http://www.keston.org/)
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