against non registered churches, including several Protestant communities, reports said Monday, November 3.
The statements from the Foreign and Interior Ministries of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has not been recognized as a separate republic, came less than two weeks after reports that police forces were using Soviet era methods to harass Baptists in Stepanakert, the capital.
At least one Baptist, Tigran Nazaretyan, was beaten and threatened with mind-altering drugs and threats against his wife for selling and distributing Christian literature, human rights watchers said Friday, October 24.
The Foreign Ministry said Nazaretyan had been banned from selling books, "on the basis of (a) current law under which trading in literature and other items on the street is forbidden," said Forum 18 News (F18News), which investigates religious persecution.
CONFISCATING LITERATURE
While admitting that police "were forced to move to confiscate his literature," the Interior Ministry denied that threats were made against Nazaretyan, still less against his wife", F18News reported.
However the Ministry added that "the literature in Nazaretyan’s possession was not registered in the Nagorno-Karabakh customs authorities," it declared. "Work is therefore now underway on the subject of the contraband literature confiscated."
Nazaretyan’s Stepanakert Baptist Congregation, which was also reportedly raided by police, belongs to the International Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians/Baptists, which rejects registration on principle in the ex-Soviet republics where it operates.
CHURCH RAIDED
In February 2002 police reportedly raided Baptist meetings in Stepanakert, confiscated books and deported 24-year-old Arsen Teimurov, who had returned to his native Karabakh, after becoming a Baptist whilst in prison in Ukraine.
Pentecostals, Adventists, Baptists and Jehovah’s Witnesses all faced restrictions on their activity in the 1990s, while the Armenian Apostolic Church became the de facto state religion, F18News said.
"I want to draw your attention to the fact that the Armenian Apostolic Church has such registration," the Foreign Ministry told F18News, "while no other confessions have applied with such a request to the Nagorno-Karabakh state justice administration."
SITUATION WORSENS
Human rights watchers say the situation has not improved for Christians, despite a 1994 cease-fire which officially ended the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over who controls Nagorno-Karabakh following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Complicating the situation is the fact that as an unrecognized entity, Nagorno-Karabakh "is not able to accede to international human rights agreements such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," said F18 News.
But as it promised to obey such agreements, the region should "guarantee the full expression of religious rights" as the accords "do not allow religious activity to be restricted just because religious communities have not acquired registration or do not wish to acquire it," the religious rights agency added.
