Keston News Service Summary: Afghanistan, Russia, Serbia & Slovakia
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Subject: Keston News Service Summary: Afghanistan, Russia, Serbia & Slovakia
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
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Keston News Service Summary: Afghanistan, Russia, Serbia &
Slovakia
KESTON INSTITUTE, OXFORD, UK
______________________________________
KESTON NEWS SERVICE – SUMMARY 22-26 October 2001
Summaries of recent reporting on violations of religious liberty and
on religion in communist and post-communist lands.
______________________________________
SUMMARIES:
AFGHANISTAN: RADICAL ISLAM IN NORTHERN ALLIANCE TERRITORY (2 Nov). On
a visit to Northern Afghanistan, to the town of Khwaja-Bahawudin,
close to the border with Tajikistan, Keston News Service spoke to
Northern Alliance leaders and others about their interpretation of
Islam, comparing this with the way the religion is practised across
the border in the former Soviet Central Asian republics. ‘The Taliban
believes in an over-strict Islam,’ Northern Alliance foreign minister,
Abdullo Abdullah, told Keston on 24 October. ‘We are for a gentler,
more enlightened form of Islam’. Yet a representative of the Afghan
women’s movement declared that ‘it would be a great exaggeration to
say that the influence of Islamic radicals is insignificant on
Northern Alliance territory’, and Keston witnessed a public flogging,
as well as discovering that there is a ban on listening to music in
Khwaja-Bahawudin.
RUSSIA: MOSCOW JEHOVAH’S WITNESS TRIAL RESUMES (1 Nov). The repeat
hearing of the case ‘to dissolve the Jehovah’s Witness religious
organisation in Moscow and to ban its activity’ opened in the
Golovinsky intermunicipal court in Moscow on 30 October, under a
different judge. The court’s previous decision rejecting the case -
brought by the procuracy of the Northern Administrative District of
Moscow, which claims that the Jehovah’s Witness organisation and its
literature ‘inflame religious discord, destroy families and dispose to
suicide’ – was set aside in May by Moscow City Court. The hearing
promises to be just as long as the first, which lasted 45 days.
SERBIA: FURTHER ATTACKS ON PENTECOSTALS (1 Nov). Three young men
attacked the Shalom Christian Centre in Backa Palanka, in Serbia’s
northern province of Vojvodina, during the night of 22-23 October,
spraying graffiti on the walls, Pentecostal pastor Jan Demiter, the
centre’s director, told Keston News Service on 28 October. They were
detained by police but released an hour later, returning to break
windows and doors at the centre, threatening to throw a hand grenade
inside if the pastor did not leave ‘Serbian land’. They also defaced
the nearby Seventh Day Adventist building with graffiti. Local police
confirmed to Keston that it has filed criminal charges against the
men, and the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre issued a strong
condemnation of the incidents. (see full article below)
SLOVAKIA: PROTESTANT FELLOWSHIP TO BE DEREGISTERED? A group of
independent Protestant congregations, known as the Christian
Fellowships, have been warned by the Interior Ministry that they will
lose registration as a civil association if they do not change their
statute to exclude religious activity. The group cannot obtain
registration with the Culture Ministry as a religious organisation, as
it does not have the 20,000 members required by law to apply for such
status. The head of the Christian Fellowships’ board of pastors told
Keston News Service that if they lose their registration they would
have difficulty renting rooms or holding public meetings.
SLOVAKIA: ARE THE CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIPS DANGEROUS? Although the
attempt to deregister the Christian Fellowships in Slovakia as a civil
association appears to be a separate issue, official concern about the
activity of the group of independent Pentecostal congregations may be
at the root of their problems. Officials in Bratislava have denied to
Keston News Service any connection and insist that the denomination as
a whole is not ‘dangerous’.
Thursday 1 November
SERBIA: FURTHER ATTACKS ON PENTECOSTALS
by Branko Bjelajac, Keston News Service
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For the full text, see http://www.keston.org/knsframe.htm
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