BANNED CHURCH NOW OPERATING AGAIN
By Joy Junction (09/15/05)
A Korean-led Pentecostal church in the northern Tajikistan town of Khujand closed down by the government's religious affairs committee is now open again – although its ultimate future appears uncertain.
Tajikistan is in Central Asia, west of China (www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ti.html).
"I don't know whether or not our work has been closed down officially," Pastor Larisa Kagai of the Sonmin Sunbogim (Grace) church told Forum 18 News Service, "but now, thank God, the authorities are not interfering in our activities."
Kagai told Forum 18 the religious affairs committee issued the closure order after one former church member, "who had been exposed as a thief," lied about the church to the committee.
"He grossly distorted the facts," Kagai told Forum 18. "That was when our problems started."
However, Kagai said that she later able to persuade officials at the religious affairs committee to change their minds.
Sanobar Nurova, chief specialist on non-Islamic faiths at the government's religious affairs committee, admitted that her committee halted the work of the Sonmin Sunbogim church in Khujand in April.
"The church had flagrantly flouted Tajikistan's laws - members of the congregation were actively preaching outside the confines of the church," Forum 18 reported she told the news organization. "They had also opened a department offering Tae Kwon-Do courses for children and teenagers, but preached their beliefs at these classes without the permission of the pupils' parents."
Shortly after the closure order, Madhakim Pustiev of the religious affairs committee had told Forum 18 that the activity of the church had annoyed Muslims. Some of them had requested that the church be closed, but had refused to say which laws the church had broken (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=559).
Nurova claimed that Tajiks are tolerant towards Christians, including relatives who had converted to Christianity.
"The only thing that arouses the wrath of Muslims is when representatives of other religions start actively preaching their beliefs in their midst," Forum 18 reported she told the news organization. Nurova alleged that the two groups most often doing this are Jehovah's Witnesses and members of Sonmin Sunbogim.
However, Forum 18 reported that Nurova categorically denied a Sept. 2 report by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) that two other groups - the Baptists and the Jehovah's Witnesses - had been temporarily banned on July 25.
"We are aware of the article in IWPR, and we can say with conviction that the journalist has at the very least partially distorted the facts," Forum 18 reported she said. "We have not put a stop to the activities either of the Jehovah's Witnesses or of the Baptists."
The deputy head of Tajikistan's Baptist Union, Oleg Pilkevich, confirmed that the religious affairs committee has not banned his Church's activities. "So far at least, thank God, we have no problems with the authorities," Forum 18 reported he told the news organization.
Anatoli Melnik, deputy head of the Council of Jehovah's Witnesses in Kazakhstan, who Forum 18 reported is also responsible for monitoring the rights of his fellow-believers in all the Central Asian republics, also denied that Jehovah's Witness communities in Tajikistan had been banned.
"We did hear about the publication of an article saying that the Tajik authorities had halted the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses in the country. I can tell you with authority that this report does not reflect the facts," he told Forum 18.
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