work with children, the Keston News Service (KNS) reported Thursday June 20. The Baptists in the village of Tlepbergen in north-western Kazakhstan close to the Russian border must first register themselves before their activities can resume, officials told KNS, which monitors religious persecution.
However the Baptists have refused to register themselves in the mainly Islamic republic which has suffered for many decades under Communist dictatorship of nearly 17 million people.
"UNACCEPTABLE"
The chief assistant to the district public prosecutor, Kairzhan Kairgaliyev, warned the Baptists that "religious activities" without permission of the region’s leader, known locally as the akim, was "unacceptable," KNS said.
Last month Agatai Bisembayev, the head of the village council in the nearby village of Zharsai and another official already visited Baptist families and non-believing parents whose children attend Sunday school.
Bisembayev demanded that the religious instruction of children should cease, and threatened to get a group of villagers together and throw the believers out of the village, the well informed KNS reported.
THREATS
Local Baptists said that at least one church member, Aliya Novikova, was threatened with the withdrawal of child benefit for a large and needy family if she did not stop taking her children to the Sunday school.
Prosecutor Assistant Kairgaliyev confirmed that there had been talks with the Baptists who had been summoned to the prosecutor’s office. "We have indeed been talking with the Baptists," KNS quoted him as saying.
"The problem consists in the fact that they categorically refuse to be registered. Let them register their community, and then they will be able to operate in peace."
He admitted that under Kazakj law registration is not obligatory, but stressed that "it would nevertheless be better if the Baptists were registered, and then all the problems would instantly disappear."
However Christians and human rights organizations are not so sure as they have registered growing persecution of believers throughout the former Soviet Union, amidst often nationalistic and political tensions.
