Within days of the official reopening on 12 April of the
Adventist church in Azerbaijan's autonomous republic of Nakhichevan after a
year when the community was banned from meeting, the local Ministry of Justice
wrote to inform the church that it was seeking its liquidation through the
courts. The justice ministry claimed that the community was wrong to have given
its legal address as the church in the capital Baku (of which it was a branch)
when it registered in March 1996. Asked why the Nakhichevan authorities are
again seeking to prevent the church from functioning, one Adventist pastor, who
preferred not to be named, was reluctant to speculate. "We won't give our
view as we don't want to offend the authorities," he told Forum 18 News
Service on 8 May. "But the justice ministry waited a full seven years
before pointing out our mistake and they're the people who registered our
church."
The justice ministry lodged the case to liquidate the church on 7 April in
Nakhichevan city court. No date has yet been set for the hearing.
Idris Abbasov, head of the Nakhichevan branch of the State Committee for Work
with Religious Organisations, strongly denied that Nakhichevan's Adventists
were being obstructed from worshipping. "No-one has informed me of any
liquidation through the courts," he claimed to Forum 18 on 8 May.
"They're engaged in prayers and services. No-one is stopping them from
doing that. We have freedom of religion."
At the same time as the justice ministry is seeking to liquidate the old
registration, the community's application for re-registration with the State
Committee has been stalled for more than a year. "We gave in the documents
to the State Committee in Baku, but they always reply that they're still
thinking about it," the Adventist pastor told Forum 18.
Abbasov told Forum 18 that his branch of the State Committee had never received
any registration application from the Adventists or from any other religious
community and that all such applications were being considered in Baku. He
said no religious groups have yet been re-registered in the autonomous republic
(see separate F18News article). However, he pledged that the Adventists would
get re-registration with the State Committee.
No official of the State Committee in Baku was prepared to talk to Forum 18 on
8 May. Zemfira Rzayeva, the head of the registration department, angrily
refused to discuss anything, complaining that Forum 18 publishes "untrue
information" and misquotes State Committee officials after conducting
interviews with them. Committee deputy chairman Namik Allahverdiev simply put
the phone down after hearing that Forum 18 was on the line. Samed Bairamzade,
head of department for relations with religious bodies, refused to give any
information, claiming that he did not know whether it was true that the person
calling him was a journalist or someone pretending to be a journalist.
The Adventist pastor pointed out that new moves from the Nakhichevan
authorities seem to follow anything the church does. He said that after eleven
church members wrote to the prime minister of Nakhichevan last December
requesting to be allowed to meet for worship, the justice ministry wrote to
warn them of the mistake in the registration document (the church received the
letter only in January).
In February the community restored the Nakhichevan church and in March a new
pastor, Ivan Uklein, arrived to lead the community. It was on 16 April, four
days after the reopening of the church, that the justice ministry wrote to the
church to inform it that the ministry had lodged the liquidation case in court
(the church received the letter only on 22 April).
The Nakhichevan Adventist church has faced a long history of harassment. The
previous pastor, Vahid Nagiev, was hounded out of Nakhichevan with his family
in June 2002 (though Abbasov denied to Forum 18 that they had been driven out
of the autonomous republic). Keklik Kerimova, Nagiev's wife, told Forum 18 from
Baku on 8 May that the family is "living like refugees" in the
Azerbaijani capital, wanting and praying to be allowed to return home. She said
they have no work and only one of their four children has been able to find a
school.
The Adventist pastor stressed that the Nakhichevan congregation which has
eighteen adult members holds all its services in Russian. "Officials
react very badly when Azerbaijanis convert," he told Forum 18.
Only two Adventist congregations have been allowed to re-register with the
State Committee since the re-registration drive was launched in August 2001,
one in Baku and one in Azerbaijan's second city Gyanja. The re-registration
drive saw hundreds of congregations of a variety of faiths failing to gain the
new registered status.