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Filipino pastor to be deported
Middle East Concern (28.04.2003)/ HRWF Int. (30.04.2003) - Website: www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - A Filipino pastor in Qatar has been ordered to leave the country before May 14, 2003. His superior handed Rev. Nemencio Mendoza Bonton a letter on April 20, but dated April 14, that gave him one month to settle his affairs and leave Qatar. The letter states no reason for his deportation and his superior and colleagues and friends within the Ministry of Interior are unable to tell him why he was told to leave.
Rev. Bonton has been in Qatar for 20 years and never before has he had any problems with the authorities. He is senior pastor of the Qatar International Christian Ministries (QICM), a multi-national church in Qatar. See the attached letter for more details.
Rev. Bonton's situation resembles the deportation of Rev. Stanislas Chellapa, who was deported last January. Arokiyasamy Stanislas Chellapa, an Indian national, was collected from his work place on December 9, 2002 and detained in the deportation center in Doha. He was released on December 23 and given one month to leave the country. Rev. Chellapa had lived in Qatar for 22 years and never before did he have any problems with the authorities.
The authorities refused to tell Rev. Chellapa what the charges were against him. Also his employer and his embassy were not able to find the official charges against Rev. Chellapa. However, one officer of the Criminal Investigation Department told an Embassy official that Rev. Chellapa's deportation was linked to his Christian activities. Rev. Chellapa left Qatar on January 28, 2003.
Christians in Qatar are worried about the similarities between the two cases and are afraid that other pastors might follow. They have requested petitions to be sent to the Emir of Qatar and the Minister of Interior to get clarity about the charges against Rev. Bonton and hopefully to have his deportation order overturned.
Indian Christian family deported by Qatar
Government refuses explanation, diplomatic appeals
by Barbara G. Baker
Compass (29.01.2003)/ HRWF Int. (30.01.2003) - Website: www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net -- Indian Christian Stanislas Chellappa and his family were deported from Qatar yesterday by order of the Qatari Interior Ministry, which still refuses any explanation for his arrest and expulsion.
Chellappa left from Doha International Airport on Gulf Air at 7 p.m. last night with his wife Esther and 12-year-old son Gnayna, flying back to their home near Madras in India's Tamil Nadu state.
"They are not saying what is the reason," Chellappa told Compass two days ago, as he was loading his family's personal effects into a container. "I am a Christian, and that is why they don't want to say why." A practicing Christian who says he spoke openly about his faith, Chellappa pastored a small congregation of Tamil-speaking Christians in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
After working for the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) in Qatar for 22 years, Chellappa was arrested without warning in early December and sent to the Gulf state's deportation center. Two weeks later, the Interior Ministry granted him a one-month "temporary bail," which expired on January 22.
The government refused to implement any due process of law for Chellappa to appeal the unilateral deportation order. Last week, however, Qatari authorities allowed Chellappa a one-week extension on his deportation, since his packing container had not arrived to ship his personal goods back to India.
According to inquiries made by the Christian advocacy group Middle East Concern (MEC), it has not been possible to confirm the role which Chellappa's faith had in his arrest and unilateral ouster from Qatar.
When Indian Ambassador to Qatar Ranjan Mathya asked his Qatari counterparts the reason for the Indian's forced deportation, he was told, "His company didn't want him any more." Chellappa, 51, was working as a technician in the hospital's engineering department.
But if his employers wanted to fire him, Chellappa said, this was not the proper or legal way to do it. "This is not the way, after I worked for this company for almost 23 years," Chellappa said. "I did not expect that I would ever have any treatment like this in Qatar."
According to a consul officer at the Indian Embassy in Qatar, the Qatari Foreign Ministry declined to give the embassy a reason for Chellappa's deportation. "We took it up with the authorities, and asked for the reason," the consul said, "but we got no answer." He admitted, however, that an "informal" reason had been suggested by Chellappa's wife and colleagues, that the action was caused by the lay preacher's Christian activities.
The hospital's director of personnel told Compass last week that HMC policy follows the local laws, which require a minimum two months' notice to any employee whose contract is to be terminated. "Even if we don't want him, we have to give him that notice," he told Compass.
"But if he has been arrested, then this is something to do with the Ministry of Interior," said the hospital representative, who identified himself as Mr. Khalid. However, he said he had no direct information on Chellappa's case, since he had been away on leave recently.
One Western diplomatic source who inquired into the reason for Chellappa's arrest was told it was linked to a publicized corruption investigation involving employees at Hamad Hospital, Qatar Petroleum and the local municipality. Ten days ago the English daily "Peninsula" newspaper reported that a HMC employee was among hree individuals arrested on bribery charges. "No one else has raised religion as a motive for these arrests," the diplomat concluded.
Chellappa told Compass he was shocked at these new claims that he had been accused of corruption. Surely if that was the case, he said, his ambassador would have been told that was the reason for his arrest.
"I personally met my ambassador three times," Chellappa said, "and he told me that each time he asked why I was being deported, they said, 'His sponsor does not want him.'" Chellappa said that during the past seven weeks since his ordeal began, neither the Qatari authorities nor representatives at his workplace had made any mention of corruption charges against him. "Every time when I asked what is the reason, they told me, 'We don't know the reason,'" Chellappa said. "The police asked me several times if I was a Christian," he noted, "but they said nothing about corruption."
The unanswered question, according to one of Chelleppa's local friends, was why a foreign national working in Qatar could be "dumped first in jail, and then advised later that his services were no longer needed?"
"This is an illegal detention," the friend declared, "and inhumane treatment on the part of Hamad Medical Corporation, one of the finest and most modern medical institutions in the Gulf."
Known as one of the more moderate Gulf states, Qatar has expanded its democratic freedoms in recent years by allowing expatriate Christians to meet freely for private worship.
Qatar mulling amendment for freedom of worship to non-Muslims
PTI News (22.01.2003)HRWF Int. (23.01.2003) - Website: www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - In a significant move towards freeing the strict religious regime in the Gulf, Qatar today told India that it was thinking of bringing constitutional amendment to allow freedom of worship for non-Islamic religious communities.
This was conveyed by the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani when visiting Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani raised the issue of right to freedom of religion and worship to Indian minorities in Qatar. Qatar has 1,72,868 Indians, according to latest estimates provided by Interior Ministry to Advani. Some Indian delegations also had made representations in this regard. Winding up his two-day visit to Qatar, Advani told accompanying reporters that he told the Emir that such a freedom was "crucial and vital and under your leadership if it is done, you will be creating history."
"I insisted upon every person living in Qatar having such a right to freedom of religion and worship," Advani told the Emir and Foreign Minister Hamad Bin Jaffim Jabir-Ghani whom he met yesterday.
Sandhurst educated 51-year-old Emir told Advani that they accept the demand and were considering constitutional amendments to give effect to it.
"We want to confer this right on everyone.... It's a conservative society here. We have to proceed slowly and cautiously but we are going to include it in the proposed new constitution," the Qatari ruler said. He said Qatar has already informally allowed Christians to practice their faith.
Qatar is working on a draft constitution for the past four years and the new constitution may be adopted next year when religious freedom is expected to be incorporated into it.
Advani's raising the issue came in the backdrop of representations made recently for such a freedom.
In the Gulf countries, Hindus face the problem of cremating their dead. Many of the countries do not allow burial of the dead even if the Hindu family seeks it. Qatar allows Hindus to bury their dead if sought.
Advani said he was of the view that international opinion should thrust all countries towards this as it was the hallmark of civilisation.
Qatar orders Indian Christian deported
Officials refuse to give reason for pending ouster
by Barbara G. Baker
Compass Direct (16.01.2003) / HRWF Int. (20.01.2003) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - An Indian Christian employed in Qatar or the past 22 years as been arrested and ordered deported back to India by next week. To date, officials of the tiny Gulf state have refused to state any reason for his pending ouster.
Arokiyasamy Stanislas Chellappa, 51, was arrested on December 9 by officers of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Doha, the capital. A technician in the engineering department of a hospital managed by Hamad Medical Corporation, Chellappa had been requested by his acting director to report that afternoon for CID questioning.
But instead of being questioned, he was put under arrest by the police,who drove him to his house, collected his passport from his wife and dropped him at the deportation jail.
"What did I do?" Chellappa asked them. "We don't know," they replied. "It is just written that you have to go back home." He got the same answer, he said, from cell guards and officials at the deportation center, where he was fingerprinted and photographed the following day and locked up in Cell Five. His arresting officer admitted he had just been informed that it was an order "from higher authorities."
"One official even came to me in my cell and asked me, 'Why are you here?'" Chellappa said. "I just laughed at him, saying, 'Don't YOU know why I'm here?'" The man remarked that his case file did not explain the reason he was to be deported, so he was hoping Chellappa himself knew why.
"I was not cuffed, I was not beaten, nothing like that," Chellappa told Compass in a telephone interview today from his home in Doha. "They took me there like to a guest house. And I was never interrogated."
Initially, he said, he was asked several times, "Are you a Christian?"
But it was just one of the routine questions concerning his family and job, he said, nothing more.
According to Middle East Concern, a Christian advocacy group closely monitoring Chellappa's case over the past five weeks, the Indian's wife and Christian friends in Qatar have concluded, "It must be because of his religion."
A practicing Christian, Chellappa has for years pastored a fellowship of Tamil-speaking Indian Christians who meet in his home for Bible study, prayer and worship. "Yes, I witness about what the Lord has done in my life, and in the lives of people in my congregation," Chellappa said. "Jesus Christ has done so many wonders and miracles for us, in answers to our prayers." But he has never been accused of trying to "push his beliefs" on Muslim colleagues, he said.
When Chellappa's wife first appealed for his bail from the deportation center, she learned through representatives of their embassy and his employer that according to an order in his file, her husband was ineligible for bail.
But after two weeks, the Ministry of Interior ordered Chellappa released on "temporary bail" until January 22, when he must either fly with his family back to Chennai, Madras, in Tamil Nadu state, or face re-arrest.
Qatari authorities have consistently refused to give either Chellappa or the Indian Embassy a reason for his forced deportation, despite personal intervention by Indian Ambassador Ranjan Mathya.
Last week, Chellappa was advised by Hamad Hospital's accounting staff to clear his financial accounts, so that he could leave the country. "Somebody is pressuring him to leave Qatar as soon as possible," a friend in Qatar commented.
Chellappa has booked air tickets for his family on the January 22 deadline, he said, pending a final appeal through his employer and embassy to cancel his deportation orders. If the family is forced to leave Qatar next week, their youngest son, 12-year-old Gnayna, will be unable to take his March public school exams in Doha, and too late to enter them in India. Chellappa and his wife Esther have three teenage daughters now studying in India.
Ironically, Chellappa's arrest came just three weeks after Qatar announced the establishment of official diplomatic relations with the Vatican. The Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox churches have enjoyed de facto official recognition since 1999, when government land was set aside for their communities. But with certain conservative Muslim circles opposed to the construction of permanent Christian churches, the government has not issued building permits.
A leader for democratic change in the Arab Gulf states, Qatar has allowed considerable visibility for its expatriate Christian community of Indians, Filipinos, Europeans, Arabs and Americans from Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and other Protestant denominations. Although non-Muslims may not proselytize or meet for public worship, private services are permitted.
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