Astana, Kazakhstan - Non-governmental organization activists are encouraged by Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s decision to refer controversial legislation governing religious expression to the country’s Constitutional Council for review. The move has raised hopes among activists that some of the legislation’s more restrictive provisions may end up being removed.
The law had come under fire from a wide range of civil rights groups, Western governments, and global religious leaders, including Pope Benedict. Adopted by parliament in November and submitted for the president’s signature in early December, the legislation as currently written contains several provisions deemed onerous by civil society activists, including mandates for registration for all religious activity, and restrictions on the ability of all faiths to disseminate religious literature. Instead of signing it, Nazarbayev kicked the legislation over to the Constitutional Council, whose members he appoints. The move provides a face-saving way to dilute the legislation.
In a press statement January 8 welcoming Nazarbayev’s decision, the Washington-based democracy monitoring organization Freedom House urged the Constitutional Council "to bear international standards in mind during its review of the proposed law," pointing out that Astana is set to assume the chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 2010. The Constitutional Council has one month to respond to the president’s request for review, but a decision may come earlier. Kazakhstan’s human rights practices are presently under intense scrutiny as this year it joins the "troika," or past, current, and future chairs-in-office of the OSCE.
At a meeting on religious freedom and violence at the Jacob Blaustein Institute in New York on December 8, Cole Durham, director of the Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University Law School and member of the OSCE Advisory Panel on Freedom of Religion, explained that Kazakhstan tightened its law on religion in response to two factors: an influx of various people from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan with a background in extremism and the spread of groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir seeking rule by a caliphate; and increased proselytizing of "new religions" which could be construed as "any denomination formed since [the days of Martin] Luther and [John] Calvin," Durham said.
Authorities lack knowledge about what to expect from such groups, and some overzealous bureaucrats "just don’t feel they are doing their job unless they hassle religious groups," Durham noted. In interacting with Kazakhstani officials, Durham suggested the analogy of environmental legislation intended to prevent air pollution. A government would not preemptively ban all factories, but would prosecute specific acts of environmental damage. "If they have a sound concept of religious freedom, properly understood, of course there are limits; if people are setting bombs, you can go after them using criminal justice to intervene where violence is threatened," he said. "They don’t need to use registration" for such purposes.
Kazakhstan’s law is typical of others in the region; Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, for example, have both passed tougher religion laws as part of anti-terrorism campaigns. Astana’s past practices suggest caution in expectations of any significant reversal, as the government has established a pattern in recent years of manipulation with laws on civic associations, parties, and the media. First, the parliament passes draconian draft laws that succeed in intimidating the public, then various foreign advisors are sought to contribute their views, and finally the president appears in the role of the moderate against domestic hard-liners, thereby making advisors feel they have an impact. In 2003 and again in 2006, for example, there was first a harsh press law passed by parliament and moderated after review, only to resurface again when the government needed to crack down on independent media. Even improved laws are not always enforced, and the message of intimidation is not lost. For instance, Justice Ministry officials attacked unnamed local human rights groups on state television in December for criticizing the new religion law, accusing them of "openly lying," the Forum 18 news service reported.
"Officials are nervous over the new Law, but very angry and aggressive when people complain about it," human rights defender Yevgeny Zhovtis told Forum 18 in late December. Zhovtis, head of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, a critic of the harsh new religion law, currently faces the closure of his NGO in a hostile tax inspection. While he says the move cannot directly be attributed to his group’s critique of the new law, it is part of a pattern of threats his organization and others have faced for their activism and support from foreign donors.