Police raided two worship services in less than a month, pressuring leaders to register with the state. Another church was falsely accused of illegally teaching children.
Taldykorgan Inter-District Specialised Administrative Court. / Baptist Council of Churches via [link]Forum 18[/link].
Authorities in Kazakhstan continue to pressure Christian churches to register with the state, specially the Council of Churches Baptist communities.
Last October, two local police officers raided a Sunday worship service of the Council of Churches Baptist community in the village of Balpyk-Bi in the Koksu District, insisting that the church leaders register the church, reported human rights group Forum 18.
Council of Churches Baptists do not seek state permission to exercise their freedom of religion or belief, as is their right under international human rights law.
Weeks later, eight officials, some in uniform and others in civilian clothes raided the church again. "One of them immediately started filming those present", church members said.
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"When the meeting was over, the officials demanded that all those present write statements. They posted a guard on the doors and allowed no one to leave. When the church members refused to write statements, the officials summoned a vehicle and took about ten people to the local police station", they recounted.
There, the officials filed charges against at least nine members of the church for “violating the requirements of the Religion Law for conducting religious rites, ceremonies and/or meetings”.
The Taldykorgan Inter-District Specialised Administrative Court recently held the hearings for those nine cases. "The local police officer and religious affairs officials could not prove that the accused had committed an offence", Baptists told Forum 18.
Finally, the judge dismissed all of them due to "absence of the element of an offence".
Police also came to the Council of Churches Baptist church in the Shu district of southern Kazakhstan, to inform church leaders that a woman had written a complaint, stating that the church “was holding lessons for children where church members taught them Bible verses by heart and morality based on the Bible”.
According to church members, “the essence of the problem remained unclear, as the Bible study took place in a church in which meetings of believers have been held for 40 years".
The officers demanded that the pastors write statements, but they refused, because the police could not explain why they had to do it, and "because any signature can become a reason to lodge a fine".
Church members also denounced that the police went to the school where the children of one of the church's pastors study and "questioned the child in the parents' absence", asking "all the questions they wanted to know about church meetings".
"Questioning a child in the absence of parents, especially in a school, on questions unconnected to education is a serious violation of children's rights. Police crudely violated this right", they stressed.
Furtheremore, church members reported that the police have photographs of all the children who attend children's events at the church. "The entire current situation is causing great concern among believers. It seems that someone is very unhappy with the believers' meetings".
The woman who had complained to the police about the church works as a teacher in this school and admitted to the child's father that she had written the complaint "under pressure and dictation from the police".
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