Zaur Balaev, who had been serving a two year prison term, was released early in March under President Ilham Aliev’s amnesty to mark the spring festival of Novruz. However in a statement released by rights group Forum 18 Balaev said he had been asked by police officers "Wasn’t one prison term enough for you?"
Police reportedly banned services of Balaev’s Baptist church in the village of Aliabad, in Azerbaijan’s remote north-west Zakatala region, but church members continued organizing worship meetings.
One officer angry about his church’s defiance allegedly threatened Balaev’s family. "You may not be afraid, but you’ve forgotten you’ve got a wife, daughter and a son," Balaev quoted the unidentified officer as saying.
POLICE CHIEF
The regional Deputy Police Chief Kamandar Hasanov has reportedly denied that police threatened Balaev, but declined to discuss the alleged harassment of the Baptist church.
He also refused to give comment on reports that other religious groups are targeted, including Muslim men who were reportedly forced to shave their beards and banned from Zakatala’s mosque, while Jehovah Witnesses were forced to hand over religious books during a police
raid in a home, Forum 18 said.
Other Protestant and independent Muslim communities have also seen police and secret service raids on their meetings in recent years, according to human rights investigators.
AUTUMN RAID
Forum 18 quoted one Protestant as saying that since a raid in autumn 2007 on their congregation in Sumgait, about 30 kilometres (19 miles) outside the capital, Baku, police brought in "the local imam and pressured the 30 or so detained church members to renounce their faith [in Christ] under a copy of the Koran."
There has been fresh concerns about an increase in human rights violations under autocratic President Ilham Aliev, who took over as president from his father, Heydar, in 2003.
In May, a court in Azerbaijan banned an election monitoring organisation, six months before a presidential vote, a move the group’s head said was politically motivated.
The Centre for Monitoring of Elections (CME) worked under Europe’s main election watchdog, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has criticised Azerbaijan’s previous elections. (With BosNewsLife’s Stefan J. Bos in Budapest).
