Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Kazakhstan: Criminal Conviction, Large ‘Moral Damages’
And Possible New Criminal Case
By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries
ASTANA, KAZAKHSTAN
(ANS) – Retired Presbyterian Pastor Bakhytzhan Kashkumbayev was this afternoon (February 17, 2014) given a four-year suspended prison term in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana.
Pastor Bakhytzhan Kashkumbayev
(Photo: www.persecution.org)
According to Felix Corley of Forum 18 News Service (www.forum18.org), he was convicted of harming the health of a church member, even though that church member has repeatedly insisted to state authorities that her health was not harmed.
He also has to pay his alleged “victim” large “moral damages” of 2 Million Tenge (about $10,800 US Dollars).
Lyazzat Almenova, the only person whose heath the state claims was harmed told Forum 18 in July 2013 that Kashkumbayev is “totally innocent and has not harmed my health at all”. She had earlier written to Astana Prosecutor’s Office to say she is psychiatrically healthy, that a 2012 assessment of her was conducted illegally, and calling for the case to be abandoned.
Prosecutors for reasons they did not explain dropped four other criminal charges levied during the two year investigation. Forum 18 notes that on one of the charges a new criminal case could be launched. The state Agency of Religious Affairs (ARA) has also stated that Grace Presbyterian Church’s legal status may be under threat.
“In my experience as a lawyer, this is one of the strangest cases I have seen in terms of legality”, Pastor Kashkumbayev’s lawyer Nurlan Beysekeyev told Forum 18 News Service after the verdict was handed down orally.
“It was not just strange, but from the standpoint of the law, all types of violations occurred, when the case was opened, when it was being investigated and during the trial.”
Corley said that Kashkumbayev will appeal against the verdict. Other violations of freedom of religion or belief continue, including ongoing raids on meetings for worship without state permission.
“The retired Pastor’s Grace Presbyterian Church has long been a target of state hostility. For example, after an October 2012 police raid on the Church, detained church members noted that police questioning displayed a curious lack of interest in the alleged harm they were supposedly investigating,” said Corley.
The 67-year-old retired Pastor Kashkumbayev was freed in the court room after eight months’ imprisonment, but will live under at present unclear restrictions. He will challenge the conviction.
A Kazakhstan church
The case against Pastor Kashkumbayev, who led Astana’s Grace Church until his retirement in October 2011, originated in 2011 amid claims he had harmed the health of church member Almenova, and the criminal case was formally lodged on February 11, 2012. The defense has strongly contested the legality of the trial.
New criminal case?
Felix Corley went on to say that by the time the case reached court on January 22, 2014, prosecutors had added accusations that retired pastor Kashkumbayev had harmed the health of another church member, had committed two counts of “religious extremism” and leading a religious organisation that harms individuals’ health.
However, during the trial Prosecutor Olzhas Shalabayev withdrew all but one of the charges with no explanation. The specific accusation of harming another named church member was handed back to prosecutors, the lawyer Beysekeyev told Forum 18. “A new criminal case could be launched against Pastor Kashkumbayev,” he warned.
Atheist writer Aleksandr Kharlamov, who has like Pastor Kashkumbayev also been subjected to arrest, detention and forcible psychiatric examination, welcomed Kashkumbayev’s release from prison. “They shouldn’t have violated his rights,” he told Forum 18 from Ridder in North Kazakhstan Region on February 17. “I’m glad he’s now been released.”
Like Kashkumbayev, Kharlamov spent one month’s forced detention in a psychiatric hospital in Almaty in 2013, a doctor telling him that he had been sent to the psychiatric hospital “because you are an inconvenient person for the authorities”.
Kharlamov is still facing criminal charges for articles he wrote in defense of atheism. He is alleged to have broken Criminal Code Article 164 Part 1 by allegedly “inciting religious hatred”.
Other violations of freedom of religion or belief continue
“The conviction of Kashkumbayev came as the criminal investigation against New Life Pentecostal Church in Almaty may have been behind the exit ban (since removed) which prevented Pastor Maksim Maksimov and his wife Larisa from leaving Kazakhstan on February 13, 2014,” said Corley.
Raids on meetings for worship continue, most recently with a raid on a Baptist Sunday service on February 9, in Aktobe. On this occasion, about 10 police officers and at least one Prosecutor’s Office official raided the local congregation of the Council of Churches Baptists. They refuse to apply for state registration in all the formerly Soviet states where they operate. In 2014 alone four Baptists have been jailed for exercising freedom of religion or belief without state permission
“Officers arrived soon after the service had finished,” one church member told Forum 18 from Aktobe on February 17. “They filmed us for about an hour and a half, took books from our library and from individuals – one copy of each title – and checked the identity documents of six church members. The usual type of thing.”
Corley said that Council of Churches Baptists are frequent victims of police and prosecutor’s office raids. Over 150 people from many faiths, including members of the Aktobe church, were fined after such raids in 2013.
“The church was raided because it was meeting without state registration, the Regional Prosecutor’s Office said in a February 17 statement on its website,” he continued. “About 70 people, including children, were present at the church. It said 43 seized books were being sent for “religious expert analysis”. It said cases were being considered against church members under Article 374-1 of the Code of Administrative Offences.”
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Dan Wooding, 73, is an award-winning journalist who who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 50 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS) and he hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on the KWVE Radio Network in Southern California and which is also carried throughout the United States and around the world. He is the author of some 45 books, the latest of which is a novel about the life of Jesus through the eyes of his mother called “Mary: My Story from Bethlehem to Calvary”. (Click to order)
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<!–BYLINE:By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries–>