Tighter Regulation Worries Kyrgyz Faith Groups

New, more restrictive regulations governing the practice of religion will undermine people’s constitutional rights and antagonise faith groups, according to Kyrgyz lawyers and representatives of various confessions.



The State Agency for Religious Affairs says the current legislation on freedom of religion and on religious organisations is out of date and needs to be amended.



A new bill has been drafted which, if it goes through, will require religious organisations – a classification which includes individual houses of worship - to have at least 200 members in order to obtain the registration they need to operate legally. At the moment, they only need ten members to register with provincial authorities.



Religious colleges will also need to register and have their teaching programmes checked by the State Agency for Religious Affairs. Finally, the government plans to ban the distribution of religious books and material outside places of worship and special shops, and to require anyone wanting to hold a religious event to gain prior permission.



Kanat Murzakhalilov, deputy head of the State Agency for Religious Affairs, says the “overwhelming majority" of religious organisations support the new rules.



Murzakhalilov said changes to the law were needed because of conflicts created by proselytising faith groups coming in from outside Kyrgyzstan, which rode roughshod over local sensibilities. The agency is concerned at the number of such groups active in Kyrgyzstan, he added.



Without explicitly saying so, Murzakhalilov was referring to Christian groups, often evangelical Protestants, which recruit new members among ethnic Kyrgyz, a community where Islam is the traditional religion and attempts to convert people to other faiths are commonly regarded as offensive.



Islam and the other main faith, Russian Orthodox Christianity, have a history of coexistence in Kyrgyzstan, as each has its own ethnic constituency and does not seek converts from the other.



Kyrgyzstan also has a range of minority faiths including Catholics, Protestants and Jews. There are currently some 300 Christian groups including Lutherans, Baptists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists.



While official parlance draws a distinction between “traditional” religions - mainstream Islam and the Orthodox Church – and “non-traditional” faiths seen as imports, post-Soviet Kyrgyz governments have been more tolerant of incoming groups than some neighbouring states.



Murzakhalilov insisted the tighter rules would not undermine people’s constitutional right to freedom of religion.



But faith group representatives, evangelical Christians in particular, are seriously disturbed.



Valentin Shaipov of the Evangelical Christian Union said his confession, which has been active in Kyrgyzstan for more than a century, could suffer badly if the new legislation is adopted because small congregations will not be able to register.



“Many of our groups have only about a hundred people left out of the [former] 300 because so many people have emigrated from Kyrgyzstan,” he explained. “These old men and women who have been coming to our churches for years could find themselves outside the law.”



Other Christian groups say they are in the same boat, as finding 200 people to support the registration application for a new place of worship could be an insurmountable obstacle, especially in rural areas.



In a joint message, several church groups said the planned legislation could shut down many houses of worship as well as bar new ones from opening.



Religious affairs expert Natalia Shadrova understands their concern.



“The 200-person threshold could be really destabilising,” she said. “If state officials don't think about it in a profounder way… relations between state, society and religious organisations could become deadlocked.”



Shadrova predicted that adopting the controversial changes would trigger a wave of emigration by members of smaller faith groups.



Elena Voronina, head of the rights group Interbilim, agreed.



“Why create additional legislation?” she asked. “Any attempt to direct citizens’s views along the lines that ‘this religion is trustworthy but that one isn’t’ is dangerous. The state mustn't divide confessions into traditional and non-traditional, harmful and useful. State policy must unite rather than divide people.”



Member of parliament Rashid Tagaev disagrees with critics of the bill, saying Kyrgyz legislation to date has been lax to the point where it endangers national security.



He argues that the law will be a useful instrument for preventing the rise of Muslim extremist groups.



“Allowing ten people to get together and start a religious organisation is very wrong,” he said.



“Without tighter control we will have a growing number of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Wahhabi and Akromia members,” said Tagaev, referring to various strands of radical Islam identified as dangerous by the authorities. “Why should we allow them to flourish?”



Tolkun Namatbaeva is an IWPR contributor in Kyrgyzstan.