FORUM 18 NEWS SERVICE, Oslo, Norway
The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one’s belief or religion
The right to join together and express one’s belief
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Thursday 12 June 2008
AZERBAIJAN: "WASN’T ONE PRISON TERM ENOUGH?"
Baptist former prisoner of conscience Zaur Balaev has been summoned and
threatened with a new prison term, he has told Forum 18 News Service.
"Haven’t you learnt from your imprisonment?" Balaev quoted police officers
as telling him. "Wasn’t one prison term enough for you?" One officer added:
"You may not be afraid, but you’ve forgotten you’ve got a wife, daughter
and a son." Police banned Balaeev’s church from meeting, a ban the
congregation has defied. Kamandar Hasanov, the deputy police chief in
Azerbaijan’s north-western Zakatala region, denied to Forum 18 that he had
threatened Balaev. Hasanov also refused to discuss with Forum 18 the
harassment of Balaev’s Baptist congregation, why Muslim men with beards
were forcibly shaved and banned from Zakatala’s mosque in recent years, and
why religious books were confiscated in a raid on a Jehovah’s Witness home.
A local resident told Forum 18 that the pressure to shave off beards has at
present halted.
AZERBAIJAN: "WASN’T ONE PRISON TERM ENOUGH?"
By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service <;
Baptist former prisoner of conscience Zaur Balaev – freed on 19 March
after being held for nearly a year to punish him for leading his
congregation – was summoned and threatened with a new prison term in early
May, he told Forum 18 News Service on 12 June from his home village of
Aliabad in the north-western region of Zakatala [Zaqatala]. "Haven’t you
learnt from your imprisonment?" Balaev quoted police officers as telling
him. "Wasn’t one prison term enough for you?" And, in what Balaev says was
a clear threat, one officer added: "You may not be afraid, but you’ve
forgotten you’ve got a wife, daughter and a son."
Balaev said the threats came from Kamandar Hasanov, the deputy regional
police chief, and two of his colleagues in Hasanov’s office in Zakatala.
"They didn’t hit me but they were very crude."
Balaev said the police banned his church from meeting, a ban the
congregation has defied. Police have continued to visit his church during
worship services. "They realise they can’t drive us out," he told Forum 18,
referring to the fact that all the church members are local people. "But
they observe us closely."
Hasanov denied to Forum 18 that he had threatened Balaev. "There were no
threats," he told Forum 18 from Zakatala on 12 June. "Who said there were
any threats and raids?" He declined to say why the Baptist congregations in
Aliabad cannot meet for worship without harassment, why Muslim men with
beards were forcibly shaved and banned from Zakatala’s mosque in recent
years and why religious books were confiscated in a raid on a Jehovah’s
Witness home in Zakatala in March. "Call me back later," Hasanov said and
put down the phone. He was not in the office later in the day.
Strongly backing Balaev and his congregation is Ilya Zenchenko, head of
Azerbaijan’s Baptist Union. "They used very bad threats against him," he
told Forum 18 in the capital Baku in late May. "This must be reported. They
definitely want to threaten him, telling him ‘this is an Islamic country
and Christians shouldn’t be here’."
Balaev was arrested in May 2007 on charges of attacking five police
officers and damaging a police car that he and his church insist were
trumped up. He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, but was freed
under amnesty in March, perhaps as a result of international attention to
his case (see F18News 19 March 2008
< e_id=1102>). Another prisoner of
conscience, Jehovah’s Witness conscientious objector Samir Huseynov, was
freed on 1 May (see F18News 14 May 2008
< e_id=1129>).
However, Said Dadashbeyli, a Muslim teacher on a 14 year jail term is
still in prison. His lawyer and family have insisted to Forum 18 that he is
"completely innocent." His lawyer, Elchin Gambarov, claims the Azerbaijani
government wanted to show foreign governments that there was a serious
Islamist threat. Dadashbeyli’s family told Forum 18 that he promoted a
"European style of Islam" and rejected fundamentalism (see F18News 28 May
2008 < 1134>).
The 44-year-old Balaev told Forum 18 his health suffered during his
imprisonment. He was held for four months in an investigation cell together
with some twenty other prisoners who smoked constantly and some of whom
suffered from tuberculosis (see F18News 9 August 2007
< e_id=1005>).
Like the overwhelming majority of Aliabad’s inhabitants, Balaev is from
the Georgian-speaking Ingilo minority, which was converted to Islam several
centuries ago. The congregation he leads has existed for more than fifteen
years and has repeatedly been barred from gaining state registration (see
eg. F18News 8 December 2004
< e_id=471>). Forum 18 believes it
to be Azerbaijan’s religious community that holds the record for the
longest denial of registration.
Although police have not punished church members for continuing to meet,
Balaev told Forum 18 that they have continued to visit services both of his
congregation and of another Baptist congregation in the village led by
Hamid Shabanov. "They visited us three times and other congregations
twice," Balaev complained. "Pastor Hamid was also summoned by the police
and threatened." He said police scrutiny had been particularly intense
during a visit some two weeks earlier by fellow church members from Baku.
"Police asked them why they had come and what they were doing. They
demanded to see their identity documents and wrote down their details."
Balaev reported that Christian literature confiscated from Pastor Shabanov
a year ago has still not been returned (see F18News 4 June 2007
< e_id-8>).
After Balaev’s release, church members accompanied by Zenchenko tried once
more to have their signatures on the congregation’s registration
application officially notarised by Zakatala’s notary. "But they absolutely
refused to do this," Zenchenko told Forum 18. "This is how they have
behaved for years."
Jeyhun Mamedov of the State Committee for Work with Religious
Organisations in Baku refused adamantly to discuss the threats to Balaev
and harassment of his congregation and other religious communities in
Zakatala Region with Forum 18 in his office in Baku on 21 May. However, he
pledged to investigate the refusal of the notary to notarise the signatures
on the registration application. Mamedov’s telephone has gone unanswered
every time Forum 18 has called since then.
Najiba Mamedova, Zakatala’s notary, screamed down the phone at Forum 18
when it tried to find out why the notary’s office is refusing to notarise
the signatures on the registration application. "You’ve been going on about
this for years," she told Forum 18 on 12 June. "You’re a provocateur. It’s
none of your business. Armenians have occupied Nagorno-Karabakh for more
than 15 years and we’ve spent blood over it. One Karabakh is enough." When
Forum 18 pointed out that the Aliabad Baptist church has no connection with
Armenians and that its members are Azerbaijani citizens she angrily put the
phone down.
In November 2004 Mamedova angrily threw Forum 18 out of her office during
a visit to try to find out why she was then refusing to notarise the
signatures (see F18News 8 December 2004
=471).
Numerous religious communities of a variety of faiths have been denied
registration over recent years (see F18News 6 February 2008
< e_id=1082> and forthcoming
F18News article).
Children given Christian first names by their parents in Aliabad have been
denied birth certificates by officials angry at their choice of name (see
F18News 19 March 2008 ).
Meanwhile, Jehovah’s Witnesses told Forum 18 that four police officers and
two official witnesses raided the Zakatala home of Matanat Gurbanova and
her family at noon on 25 March. Although she and her husband were out,
police ignored her daughter’s request that they should come back and
insisted on conducting a search. When the daughter fainted in shock the
police gave her water to bring her round then threatened her physically
when she continued to object to the raid, Jehovah’s Witnesses reported.
Police confiscated Gurbanova’s religious literature.
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Protestants in other parts of Azerbaijan also
continue to experience raids and police threats against their members (see
F18News 9 June 2008 < 1140>).
Deputy police chief Hasanov told the media after the raid that 570 books
and 78 brochures – which he described as "banned" literature – had been
removed and that an investigation was underway.
Several days later, when Gurbanova was again out, a police officer again
visited and said she could go to the investigator and collect the
literature. "I did not go since I consider they acted unlawfully,"
Gurbanova wrote in a 2 April complaint to the Zakatala Regional
Prosecutor’s Office and the General Prosecutor’s Office in the capital
Baku. She insisted the raid violated her rights to freedom of thought,
speech and conscience guaranteed in Articles 47 and 48 of Azerbaijan’s
Constitution and Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Zakatala’s Muslim community has also faced official pressure in recent
years. In October 2007 the APA press agency reported local Muslims as
complaining that police officer Nasib Musaev had banned men with beards
from praying at the prayer room at the town’s market. They say he summoned
all the men and ordered them to shave off their beards if they wanted to be
allowed into the prayer room. APA said local Muslims had complained about
the ban to the State Committee in Baku. Musaev denied to APA that he had
issued any ban, claiming that anyone who wanted to could pray at the prayer
room.
Local Muslims had earlier complained of close police scrutiny and pressure
to shave off beards. However, one local resident told Forum 18 on 12 June
that this problem seems to have at present halted. (END)
For a personal commentary, by an Azeri Protestant, on how the
international community can help establish religious freedom in Azerbaijan,
see < 482>.
For more background information see Forum 18’s Azerbaijan religious
freedom survey at <‘ >.
More coverage of freedom of thought, conscience and belief in Azerbaijan
is at <; religion=all&country=23>.
A survey of the religious freedom decline in the eastern part of the
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) area is at
< id=806>.
A printer-friendly map of Azerbaijan is available at
< s/atlas/index.html?Parent=asia&Rootmap=azerba& gt;.
(END)
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