Police Raid the Adventist Church in Gyanja, Azerbaijan
by Felix Corley
At least 20 police, including the local police chief, took part in a raid on Sabbath, May 12, at the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Azerbaijan's second city Gyanja. Protestants who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals told Forum 18 News Service about the raid. Also present was the head of the local State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations, Firdovsi Kerimov. He refused to discuss the raid with a Forum 18 reporter. At least one congregation member was heavily fined.
The raid began at the church in the city's Kapaz District soon after it had begun its Saturday morning service. Police officers initially searched for foreign citizens who might have been present, examining the identity documents of all those attending. When they found no foreigners, police then began checking whether the 50 children present had written permission from both parents.
The 2009 Religion Law in this former Soviet nation does not specifically require children to have written permission to be present at religious meetings, but officials often insist on it when dealing with religious communities they dislike. Also, the presence of foreigners at religious worship is not prohibited by law. However, should they conduct any vaguely defined “religious activity” without government permission they risk punishment and deportation. This can take place without due legal process.
Police alleged that 14 of the children at the Adventist Church that day did not have written permission. Observers told Forum 18 that the children and their parents were attending the Church for the first time. Observers added that the police also refused to accept the written permission some children carried, insisting that parents must have the written permission they give notarized before it was valid.
Church members and their children were questioned for several hours. The police then wrote a report and warned those they questioned that prosecutions would follow, with fines.
At least one Adventist Church member has been summoned by police in the days since the raid. He was told that he was guilty of violating Article 299.0.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences which prohibits special religious meetings for children and small discussion groups. He was ordered to pay a fine of $2,165 US through a bank in order to avoid being taken to court. Because anyone prosecuted for exercising their freedom of religion normally loses the case, he paid the fine. To understand the cruelty of this fine, it must be noted that the minimum wage in this nation is $119 US per month.
The Gyanja Adventist congregation is among hundreds of religious groups which applied for re-registration ahead of the Religion Law's deadline at the end of 2009. Without such state permission to exist, all activity of any kind is illegal under the Religion Law. Large numbers of these applications have been rejected or ignored, including many Muslim mosques.
Felix Corley writes for Forum 18 News Service.
This can't be! Why President Aliev told the world only a year ago that "Freedom of religion, freedom of conscience have been fully established in Azerbaijan."
The reality is that Azerbaijan's Orwellian titled Law on Freedom of Religion has been amended 14 times since 1992, each time imposing tighter restrictions on the sphere of religious activity and freedom of worship. This is how religious liberty is destroyed – not with one big Sunday Law – but with a series of small liberty depriving incursions that shrink the private arena within which conscience and freedom can be exercised.
We have only recently begun this process in the U.S., with court decisions prohibiting private discrimination on the basis of conscience. In California, a physician cannot use sincerely held religious beliefs to refuse in vitro fertilization services to gay couples. A landlord cannot refuse to rent an apartment to a gay couple on grounds of religious convictions. In other states pharmicists cannot refuse the morning-after pill on conscience grounds.Recently the Obama administration has decreed that Catholic institutions providing public services as part of their mission must include contraceptive and abortifacients in their employee health care plans.
None of these Constitutional infringements was voted on by duly elected representatives. All were implemented to protect society from religious discrimination. Already our President and Secretary of State have begun to substitute "freedom of worship" for "freedom of religion" in public statments about religious freedom. Can forcing unions and gay marriage acceptance on Adventist hospitals be far behind? How long will Adventist hospitals be able to carry out their religious mission? How many Adventist Hospitals are there in countries with nationalized health care? What happened to Branson Hospital when Canada adopted national health care? How long before clergy will be required to marry gay couples?
Of course on one level it is preposterous to compare discrimination against Christians in this country with what is going on in Azerbaijan. It was absurd to anticipate that discrimination against the trade unions in pre-WWII Germany would pave the way for the Holocaust. But it did. So it is not only valid, but vital, to look at other countries in our gobalized political world to see how small well-intentioned steps take us down the road to religious oppression. Once the private right to discriminate on the basis of race was outlawed in 1964, the door was opened for a host of other identity groups to come in and claim Constitutional status which also protected them against private discrimination.
This wedge is being pushed farther and farther into the private sphere, with increasing indifference to the impact that protection of special interests and "regulatory moral values" have on the free exercise of religion. As religion cries foul, it is stigmatized as narrow-minded and bigoted. This is all part of a conscious and subconscious process by "progressives" to make religion as highly valued a right as smoking and gun ownership, and to increase the power and reach of the state.
This is not the first time the church in Gyanja has had problems. It was closed down a few years ago by government authorities and was re-opened after an intervention made to the Azerbaijani ambassador at the United Nations.