Dushanbe (AsiaNews/F18) – Tajikistan's Jehovah Witnesses have been banned throughout the entire country, after Culture Minister Mirzoshorukh Asrori handed the community a banning order stripping it of legal status in Tajikistan. “Authorities – members of the group told Forum 18 – only told us that we were banned from activities”.
Saidbek Mahmudolloev, the head of the Information Department at the Culture Ministry's Religious Affairs Department, said the authorities' decision was “final” and that their major discontent with the Jehovah's Witnesses is the point in their Charter about refusing service in the armed forces as well as their distribution of religious propaganda in “public places” which is banned by law.
The Jehovah's Witnesses told Forum 18 that they will be writing to President Emomali Rahmon and Prime Minister Okil Okilov to challenge the ban, claiming that the Constitution guarantees the freedom to meet with others and to share ones’ views. The observe that the authorities knew of their activities when they approved them in 1997, that now they have over 600 faithful in 8 different congregations and that just days before the ban, a new Kingdom hall had been approved in Tursunzade, along the border with Uzbekistan, their only place of worship to have been recognised by the state.
But local sources explain that a campaign is under way to stamp out the country’s more independent religions: in 2007 the authorities have been monitoring the activities of all groups, obliging them to reproduce a list of their faithful and the address of there places of worship. They observe that it has become increasingly difficult to practice one’s faith in the country and that all mosques not directly under the power of the Council of Ulemas have been closed.