Page 25 - Conscientious Objection News Today

Officials are harassing an 18-year-old Muslim from Tashkent who wears the hijab. The family complained to the President and others about her being added to the Preventative Register. Police told neighbours that the authorities do not like her and warned them not to associate with her. Muslim men who have had their beards forcibly shaved have also been added to the Preventative Register. "Muslims are indignant that the state is attacking their beards and hijab, which is a very private matter...

Freedom of religion and belief and interlinked human rights are under increasing threat in Kyrgyzstan. Forum 18s survey analysis documents: increasing "legal" restrictions on the freedom of religion and belief; Ahmadi Muslims being prevented from meeting since 2011, and refusal to allow the Falun Gong spiritual movement to exist; state attempts aiming to eventually ban all Jehovahs Witness communities; state officials and imams repeatedly stopping people peacefully burying their dead u...

In December 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Committee asked Belarus to respond in the case of 33-year-old Jehovahs Witness conscientious objector Dmitry Mozol. In February 2021, a court in Pinsk fined him four months wages for refusing call-up to reservist military training on grounds of conscience. He failed to overturn the criminal punishment on appeal. The law allows only individuals who have completed alternative civilian service to be exempted from reservist military training. Alterna...

There was no discrimination based on sexual orientation

The draft Religion Law prepared by the State Commission for Religious Affairs would – if adopted in current form – continue to ban worship meetings and religious education without state permission; make registering small religious communities more difficult or impossible; and might make it impossible to register communities that do not own their own buildings. It would continue to require 200 adults to found a community and apply for compulsory registration, but would require them to...

Russia has used increasingly strict legislation on "foreign agents" (a term which has connotations of spying) and "undesirable organisations" to curtail, complicate, or prohibit the activities of organisations which promote human rights and monitor their violation, including that of freedom of religion and belief. This "indirectly affects the people human rights defenders stand up for", says Aleksandr Verkhovsky of the SOVA Centre for Information and Analysis (brand...

On 2 December, a Bishkek court rejected a General Prosecutors Office suit to ban Jehovahs Witness books and videos as "extremist", saying it had been filed under the wrong procedure. The General Prosecutors Office official who took the case to court said it will not appeal. "The repression is postponed for now," said Syinat Sultanalieva of Human Rights Watch. The NSC secret police – which backed the ban attempt – is also pushing to have Jehovahs Witnesses banned. ...

Police raided the home of Tashkent Muslim Laziz Asadov, seizing two Korans. The search warrant claimed he is implicated in a criminal case against a man he does not know and that they watched speeches criticising Uzbekistans regime and complaining that Muslims have no freedom. He fled abroad. The criminal trial of Muslim prisoner of conscience Fazilkhoja Arifkhojayev might begin in Tashkent on 10 January. He "will probably be given a prison term for crimes he did not commit," says his ...

The UN Human Rights Committee has again found that the authorities violated the rights of Jehovahs Witnesses by arbitrarily refusing their communities in Naryn, Osh and Jalal-Abad state registration. The State Commission for Religious Affairs must review the denials, provide "adequate compensation", "take all steps necessary to prevent similar violations from occurring", and inform the UN of what it has done within 180 days. The SCRA ignored a similar 2019 UN decision. Deputy...

Bernard Dickens (University of Toronto - Faculty of Law) has posted Conscientious Objection and the Duty to Refer (International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics 2021; 155: 556-560) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Medical associations and leading courts reinforce the...