Security Agency Goes After Moonies, Jehovah's Witnesses
Security Agency Goes After Moonies, Jehovah's Witnesses
Kazakstan’s National Security Committee is preparing a new blacklist of organisations that will be formally banned. As well as Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese group behind the 1995 Tokyo bombings, the list will include Scientologists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Moonies and others. Civil society activists are urging that a process of public consultations take place before going ahead with such a potentially wide-ranging ban.
The security agency, known as the KNB, has already helped draw up lists of terrorist and extremist organisations, which in 2004-05 resulted in the judiciary banning 12 groups including Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Taleban and al-Qaeda.
In a September 15 announcement, the agency said it was now planning to draft amendments to Kazakstan anti-terror law to name and outlaw other “socially destructive” faith groups and organisations.
The bill will go to parliament by the end of 2006, but even some KNB officials admit it will be difficult to prove how the organisations in question have a negative effect on society.
NGO experts agree that it will be hard to establish criteria for “destructive” behaviour, and warn that if the KNB is given sole responsibility for defining the boundaries, a broad swathe of religious organisations could inadvertently end up on the blacklist.
Therefore, the experts are calling for the parameters to be worked out by means of public consultations that would involve members of parliament, civil society groups, and perhaps also members of the religious organisations concerned.
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
The security agency, known as the KNB, has already helped draw up lists of terrorist and extremist organisations, which in 2004-05 resulted in the judiciary banning 12 groups including Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Taleban and al-Qaeda.
In a September 15 announcement, the agency said it was now planning to draft amendments to Kazakstan anti-terror law to name and outlaw other “socially destructive” faith groups and organisations.
The bill will go to parliament by the end of 2006, but even some KNB officials admit it will be difficult to prove how the organisations in question have a negative effect on society.
NGO experts agree that it will be hard to establish criteria for “destructive” behaviour, and warn that if the KNB is given sole responsibility for defining the boundaries, a broad swathe of religious organisations could inadvertently end up on the blacklist.
Therefore, the experts are calling for the parameters to be worked out by means of public consultations that would involve members of parliament, civil society groups, and perhaps also members of the religious organisations concerned.
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
