GEORGIA: LEGAL IMPROVEMENTS, BUT LITTLE PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT
GEORGIA: LEGAL IMPROVEMENTS, BUT LITTLE PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT
"Definite improvements for religious minorities have taken place in the legal field, but on the ground little real improvement has taken place," Levan Ramishvili, of the Liberty Institute told Forum 18 News Service. He was commenting on changes to laws covering religious communities' legal and tax status, as well as a new law affecting school religious education. These de jure changes have been broadly welcomed by minority religious communities, but some are unhappy at being treated as NGOs or private legal persons. But de facto the changes have yet to make a significant impact. Fr Gabriel Bragantini of the Catholic Church commented on education that "In Tbilisi it may be better, but elsewhere it's still as it was before." Emil Adelkhanov, of the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, stressed that religious minorities must exercise their rights and noted that religious freedom improvements could be reversed. He cited the results of a survey which found that nearly 47 per cent would support destroying the literature of religious minorities such as Baptists and Jehovah's Witnesses.
GEORGIA: LEGAL IMPROVEMENTS, BUT LITTLE PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT
By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service
"Definite improvements for religious minorities have taken place in the legal field, but on the ground little real improvement has taken place," Levan Ramishvili, head of the Tbilisi-based Liberty Institute human rights group, told Forum 18 News Service from the Georgian capital on
18 May. After long discussion of how religious communities should be offered the possibility to gain legal status as religious organisations, parliament on 6 April approved amendments to the civil code, allowing them to register with the Ministry of Justice. President Mikheil Saakashvili signed the amendments into law on 27 April.
Also in April 2005, parliament removed Article 199 of the Administrative Violations Code, a Soviet-era article which allowed religious communities to be fined for activities such as not being registered and organising youth meetings. "Religious organisations will be put on an equal footing with secular non-profit groups - registration will be voluntary and not mandatory, as the Administrative Violations Code used to require," Ramishvili told Forum 18. "They will be able to register as a union or a foundation."
But some religious communities are unhappy with the status that registering under the civil code will provide. Sozar Subari, the human rights ombudsperson, told Forum 18 that the Catholics, Muslims and Armenian Apostolic Church particularly opposed the idea of registering as if they were non-governmental organisations. "They want the civil code to be changed again to allow them to register as public religious organisations," he told Forum 18 from Tbilisi on 2 May.
Levon Isakhanyan, spokesperson for the Armenian Apostolic diocese of Georgia, describes the possibility of registering the diocese as a private legal person as "unacceptable". "It is unacceptable for the Armenian, Catholic, Muslim and other traditional faiths," he told Forum 18 from Tbilisi on 18 May. He said the issue was raised in April, when a delegation from the Church headquarters in Echmiadzin, Armenia, visited Georgian government and Orthodox Church representatives in Tbilisi.
Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, no religious community had any form of legal status until a controversial 2002 concordat between the Orthodox Church and the state granted the Orthodox Patriarchate legal status and numerous privileges denied to all other religious communities. When the Vatican and the Georgian state were on the point of signing a concordat in September 2003, which would have granted the Catholic Church legal status, huge Orthodox-led street demonstrations led to the abrupt cancelling of the signing ceremony (see F18News 25 September 2003 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=144).
A new Law on General Education, which separates state schools and religion treaching, was also adopted. This narrows the interpretation of article 5.1 of the state concordat with the Orthodox Church, which allowed teaching of Orthodoxy as an elective part of the school curriculum, also giving the Orthodox Church control of the curriculum, and appointments and dismissals of teachers. The new law states that such Orthodox teaching may only take place after school hours and cannot be controlled by the school or teachers. Also, outsiders, including clergy, cannot regularly attend or direct students' extracurricular activity or students' clubs or their meetings.
Religious minorities have broadly welcomed the changes to school religious education. In recent years, many had been unhappy that such religious education took the form of narrow Orthodox education and compulsory prayers in the local Orthodox church (see F18News 19 November 2003 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=189). However, as human rights activists and religious minority leaders point out, practice has not always kept pace with the law. "The education law has been adopted and the legal framework changed, but this has not yet been implemented," Ramishvili of the Liberty Institute told Forum 18.
Fr Gabriel Bragantini, who heads the Catholic diocese of Kutaisi [Kut'ai'si] in western Georgia, complains that school religion lessons in his area are still Orthodox denominational lessons. "Teachers speak only of the Georgian Orthodox Church," he told Forum 18 from Kutaisi on 18 May. "All children have to go to the lessons. In Tbilisi it may be better, but elsewhere it's still as it was before."
These legal moves follow a new Tax Code adopted by parliament last December, which grants certain tax exemptions to religious organisations.
"However, the Patriarchate has more privileges than other religious organisations," Ramishvili of the Liberty Institute noted.
Despite these legal changes - which come after nearly a decade of discrimination against religious minorities and a five year reign of terror against Protestants, True Orthodox, Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses from 1999-2003 - religious minorities still face intermittent threats, obstruction to their right to meet for worship and a de facto ban on building new places of worship (see forthcoming F18News article).
Emil Adelkhanov, of the Tbilisi-based Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, welcomes the possibility for religious communities to gain legal status. But he stresses that they themselves have to take the initiative to exercise their rights. "The problem is that such a law works if not only minorities want it to work," he told Forum 18 on 17 May. Many religious minority leaders told Forum 18 they were unaware of the changes to the civil code which make registration possible.
Adelkhanov believes that the government has the incentive to "please Europe" at the moment. "But our experience has shown that Europe can be indulgent, and the authorities know that quite well." He fears that slow improvements in the religious freedom climate could be reversed.
"As long as the mentality of the general population remains the same, there is no guarantee that the story won't recur after the incentive given by Europe is gone - after the immediate goals have been achieved."
He points to the depth of popular hostility to religious minorities and cites a 2004 survey carried out by the Tbilisi-based International Centre on Conflict and Negotiation. Nearly 47 per cent of respondents said they would support destroying religious minorities' literature, while only 10 per cent would defend religious minority rights.
Nearly 44 per cent of respondents believed that were Georgia to adopt a religion law, it should ban the activity of "sects", such as the Baptists and Jehovah's Witnesses, with a further 34 per cent believing it should restrict their activities. More than 20 per cent of the population believed such a law should ban the activities of Catholics, Muslims and other faiths regarded as more traditional, with a further 38 per cent believing it should restrict their activity. Only 25 per cent believed such "traditional" faiths should be fully protected with only just over 6 per cent believing that "sects" should also be fully protected.
For background information see Forum 18's Georgia religious freedom survey at http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=400
A printer-friendly map of Georgia is available at
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/index.html?Parent=asia&Rootmap=georgi
(END)
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Uzbekistan reaction
http://simonjones1.blogspot.com
Path of faith: Andijan massacre a clarion call to Uzbek Muslims
http://simonjones1.blogspot.com/2005/05/path-of-faith-andijan-massacre-clarion_18.html
http://www.rense.com/general65/uz.htm
The dust may be settling in Andijan after the recent uprising against Uzbekistan's brutal, corrupt dictatorship, but the implications of this heroic and tragic episode will haunt the regime until it falls. The blocking of all foreign TV news and internet news sites for more than a week already will not stop the word of the hundreds of innocent deaths, the firing on peaceful demonstrators from a helicopter, the truck full of trigger-happy soldiers which ploughed into the crowd not once but three times, murdering people who could no longer tolerate the vileness of their government and who had no other option. 600 MUSLIMS, murdered by their secular US puppet dictator, who stashes his gold in the Bank of England, whose daughter was caught with a plane full of gold in Moscow, our man who approves of boiling people alive. The writing is on the wall, Mr Karimov.
The uprising was sparked by the imprisonment and show trials of 23 local businessmen accused of adhering to a non-existent terrorist Islamic movement, Akramiya, but who were simply putting into practice the social justice inherent in Islam - giving to the poor, living modestly, praying... A math teacher, Akramjon Yuldashev, the eponymous inspiration of the nonexistent terrorist group (his friends call themselves Birodar (Brotherhood), was imprisoned 7 years ago for doing this and writing a 1992 pamphlet, Yimonga Yul (Path of Faith), which is not political, but moral, arguing for Islamic practices of charity and brotherhood. Yuldashev's brochure contains no call to seize power violently; a Russian translation by the Andijan-based human rights activist Saidjakhon Zaynabiddinov was posted at http://centrasia.org/newsA.php4?st=93410660 on 25 August 2004. While they are accused of being a terrorist cell, their real crime is acting outside of President Karimov's authority and showing people that there is an alternative to the cutthroat robber baron 'capitalism' of post-Soviet Uzbekistan. There is speculation that they were arrested because local rivals resented their success and authorities decided to confiscate their businesses for themselves.
Yuldashev has found a way to provide human dignity to the local population through his homegrown application of Islamic principles of sharing, charity and the embedding of moral principles in all aspects of life, including economic (and one can only hope - political). This requires no foreign consults earning $100,000 tax-free salaries, no NGOs pushing neoclassical economic textbooks and management skills courses, no foreign loans or control of the economy, no importing of crass, commercial, violent, erotic western culture. It promotes trust and collective well being, reducing the need for cutthroat competition, mass unemployment, mass corruption, a huge bureaucracy taking bribes and taxes at every turn, not to mention the swarms of underpaid crude, cocky militia always on the lookout for baksheesh.
Like Chavez's Bolivarism, or Castro's socialism, where charismatic leaders have adopted socialism to their own countries, Yuldashev’s modest adoption of Islamic economics could point the way to a truly 'independent' path for Uzbekistan, unlike the so-called independent path which K claims the Uzbek people ‘chose’ since the collapse of the SU. This path has been a wreck - impoverishing 80% of the people, creating a vicious westernized elite which acts completely without morals or concern for the people:
*there are no longer any quality controls on food or products;
*even health care is being privatized under the guiding hand of the US;
*contracts or the license to open a business are obtained only through bribes to high officials;
*willful action like the cutting of trees (the country is 90% desert), seizing of public territory, entrapment and blackmailing are everyday occurrences;
**Uzbekistan stands 114th out of 144 in a popular western index of corruption. Everything is solved through bribery and blackmail.
Fighting the beast
I am convinced this morally based self-help system could help peacefully dispose of K’s system - the sclerotic remnants of the Soviet past, which in retrospect actually looks pretty good, but was devoid of spirituality and succumbed to fantasies of western commercialism. K’s Uzbekistan is living off exports of gold and cotton and handouts from the US and Europe. K is not stupid and no doubt realizes he could easily become yesterday's puppet dictator, and counts on terrorizing the population more and more until… That’s the strange thing about these cruel dictators - they don’t look to the endgame. Like Stalin, Hitler or Franco, they think they are immortal, and they just can’t bring themselves to prepare a successor or concentrate on leaving a positive legacy. But this latest massacre and the lies that K is propagating to try to cover it up (“No women and children were killed. All those killed had rifles in their hands.”) will not be forgotten. K has gone too far and there is finally a resolve in the air to get rid of him.
One 'weapon' is to propagate the ideas of Yuldashev (is he even alive?) and continue to press for the lifting of the persecution of ordinary Muslims. K is a cynical secularist, calling the religious prisoners 'addled by the narcotic of religion', a blasphemous thing to say to his Muslim nation.
Another deadly weapon - humor - has been used: last year, some brave prankster managed to erect a huge billboard showing K with women’s breasts and his two daughters sucking at his teats. It came down by dawn, but the word spread like wildfire and provide a wonderful moment of catharsis to all. His daughters’ high life style and arbitrary seizing of prosperous businesses have become notorious.
On the ‘militant Islamic’ front there are also efforts being made. It seems, Mr K, your latest courageous and brilliant show of love for your people inspired some of them to issue a fatwah calling for your death (I’ll bet it’s not the first such). But all the rerouting of traffic and tearing down of buildings to expose snipershttp://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav051605a.shtml , and the additional arrests of thousands of citizens who loathe you wouldn't help in the end. It just increases the hatred of the people and steels their resolve to support all means to rid Uz of its misery.
How ironic this all is. By jumping on this meek math teacher's initiative to try to improve his community's welfare and making him a martyr, and then going after his friends too, and finally by ordering a massacre that belongs right up there with Katyn just days after celebrating the 60th anniversary of victory over fascism, K has unwittingly elevated Yuldashev and his social program The Path of Faith to iconic status. At this very minute, someone is reading or passing on his ideas and vowing to eradicate the foul legacy of K. The scale of the tragedy demands that we read and study his ideas, both to judge for ourselves as free people and to honor the hundreds of people murdered trying to defend him.
But this tragedy is much more than this: it is also a call to Uzbek’s Muslims to honor their religion and embrace the social justice of Islam. In the face of devastating poverty and abandoned by the US and Russia, its supposed ‘friends’, there is nowhere else to turn. But it is not such a bad place to find strength.
Could it be that you've unwittingly put us on the road to genuine democracy with this tragedy, Mr K? But one that is steeped in the principles of Islam?
[azeristudents] URGENT!!!!!!!
DEAR FRIENDS! PLEASE DISTRIBUTE IT AS BROAD AS POSSIBLE!!
LETS EXPRESS OUR SOLIDARITY WITH OUR FRIENDS!!
ZHALA MAMMADOVA
CHIEF
YOUTH ISSUES DEPARTMENT
INSTITUTE OF PEACE AND DEMOCRACY
THE POLICE STARTED ARRESTS OF STUDENTS PROPAGANDIZING THE RIGHTS OF
STUDENTS FOR HIGH QUALITY EDUCATION
On 25 May 2005 the police detained students-activists of the youth
movement "Dalga". Among them were Ramin gadjily- chairman of the
youth movement "Dalga", Shabnam Abdulazade, Zeynal Eldarly, Gamid
Cherkezov, Valekh Muzafarly.
"Dalga' movement was founded in early 2005 by the students of
Economical University and Baku State University. Their goals are to
unite students to increase the quality of education, legal education
of students, struggle with corruption in educational system.
The listed above students were detained at 13.00 by the police in
front of the building of Azerbaijan Oil Academy. They were detained
while distributing to the students memory-leaflets "Know your rights
and try to protect them" where the information about Constitution of
Azerbaijan, protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights
Protection, extracts from the law on Education were
During preparation of the current statement (at 17.30) on 25 May 2005
students were still kept in the police station number 22 of Nasimi
district of Baku.
The student Elchin Mamedov who was distributing the leaflets in front
of Azerbaijan technical University was also detained by the police.
There is a real threat of excluding the students from the Higher
Educational Institutions.
The Human Rights Protection and Youth Issues Department of the
Institute of Peace and Democracy declare – the regime of the legal,
police arbitrariness established in Azerbaijan causes obstacles for
any opportunity of establishment and development of any democratic
institutions of civil society. We demand to urgently release the
students, and bring the policemen who detained the students and made
pressures on them to the disciplinary responsibility, restore all the
rights of the students who were implementing their constitutional
rights for propaganda of the law.
Leyla Yunus
Director
Institute of Peace and Democracy
