A pending court case is refocusing attention on the issue of religious freedom in Azerbaijan. Officials are seeking to revoke the registration of a small Christian community in Baku. If successful, it would mark the first closure of what had once been an officially recognized denomination, since new registration procedures came into force in 2009.
An Azerbaijani court is expected to rule April 26 on a suit brought by the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations (SCWRO). The committee is calling for the closure of the Greater Grace Church, a 400-member, Baku-based Protestant community. Officials insist that the Protestant church failed to file extensive background information for re-registration with the government, as required by 2009 amendments to Azerbaijan’s Law on Religion. Judge Tahira Asadova earlier had suggested that Greater Grace shut down so that it could then re-register with the SCWRO in order to be in compliance with the law.
Under the amendments, religious communities were required to provide details by the end of 2009 about their religious doctrine, traditions, official duties, attitude towards family, marriage and education, as well as details about restrictions on members, and biographical data about the Azerbaijani community’s founders. Worship at locations other than the group’s registered address is banned.
Representatives of the Greater Grace Church maintain that the 2009 amendments are unconstitutional. An appeal has been filed with Azerbaijani Ombudsman Elmira Suleymanova. The ombudsman’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment made by EurasiaNet.org.
The church has been registered in Azerbaijan since 1993, and representatives concede that they did not apply for re-registration when the new rules came into effect in 2009. “Only in January 2010 did [the SCWRO] call us and say that the deadline [for re-registration] has passed and suggested that we make a decision about shutting ourselves down,” Assistant Pastor Chingiz Zeynalov, who has represented Greater Grace in court, told EurasiaNet.org. “We believe that it is interference in the community’s internal affairs and refused.”
The fact that some Azerbaijani Christian communities have been waiting since 2009 for official re-registration does little to encourage Greater Grace to reconsider its stance, commented Pastor Marat Akhmerov.
Christian denominations account for only 10 of the 570 religious communities that the SCWRO has re-registered since the new rules went into effect. Azerbaijan is a predominantly Muslim country.
“Almost all Protestant communities, including all Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist, Pentecostal congregations and Jehovah’s Witnesses, are still waiting for re-registration,” claimed Pastor Ilya Zenchenko, the head of Azerbaijan’s Baptist Union. Representatives for the SCWRO say that they are still considering many re-registration applications. Those communities that have applied for re-registration can operate freely until a determination is made on their status.
A suit by the Jehovah’s Witnesses against the SCRWO over the delay in processing the group’s re-registration request was rejected earlier this year, Zenchenko added. “The State Committee should help believers, but not repress them,” Zenchenko continued.
The SCRWO press office declined EurasiaNet,org’s request for comment.
Sabina Allahverdiyeva, an attorney who is representing the SCWRO in the case, contends that representatives of the Greater Grace Church made no effort to comply with the law. “All the communities which asked us for help were provided the necessary information and documents to fill in the applications,” she told EurasiaNet.org. “But the Greater Grace Church ignored the law.”
According to Allahverdiyeva, the state required the Greater Grace Church to make several changes to its charter, including having the Russian-language document translated into Azeri. Assistant Pastor Zeynalov claimed not to recall such demands, but added that the church was ready to make the necessary changes.
Dissatisfaction with the re-registration process is by no means limited to Christian denominations in Azerbaijan. Ilgar Ibrahimoblu, a cleric and head of DEVAM, a religious rights defense group, argues that the State Committee has not registered Muslim communities that want to function outside of the semi-official Caucasus Muslim Board (CMB). “The Orthodox, Jewish and Protestant communities are functioning independently, while the Muslim ones can exist only under the CMB’s control,” Ibrahimoglu said. Ibrahimoglu formerly headed Baku’s Juma Mosque, which was forced to close in 2004 after a prolonged standoff with the Caucasus Muslim Board.
Ibrahimoglu insists that the re-registration troubles are intertwined with a general state effort to tightly control religious expression. “The situation is close to what we had in Soviet times,” he alleged. “The State Committee has turned into the major censor of religion in Azerbaijan.”
Shahin Abbasov is a freelance reporter based in Baku.
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