Police Raid Religious Gathering in Azerbaijan Private Home

By Jeremy Reynalds, Correspondent for ASSIST News Service

AZERBAIJAN – Police in the central town of Agdash, near Göycay in Azerbaijan, have refused to explain why eight officials, including their officers, raided a peaceful religious meeting in a private home.

Azerbaijan is located in Southwestern Asia, bordering the Caspian Sea, between Iran and Russia, with a small European portion north of the Caucasus range

A story by Felix Corley for the Forum 18 News Service reported that the police declined to discuss the March 25 raid with the news organization, while the head of the Department for Communications with the Public at the National Security Ministry secret police in the capital Baku, Arif Babaev, denied that his ministry had been involved.

“We never engage in such acts,” he told Forum 18. “We don’t carry out such operations – this is false information.” Told that local press reports quoted the local police as declaring that ministry officers were also involved in a “joint operation,”he repeated his denial.

Babaev also denied that his ministry is involved in the refusal to allow the Abu Bekr Mosque in Baku to reopen. “It is not within our competence to open or close mosques,” he claimed.

Others remain skeptical about the ministry’s blanket denial of involvement in these two cases and other religious freedom restrictions. “Their work is in secret – they never say when they are involved in activity against religious organizations,” one commentator who asked not to be identified told Forum 18.

As is their practice, officials at the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations refused to speak to Forum 18. Yagut Alieva, the Committee spokesperson, repeatedly hung the phone up when Forum 18 called. The office of the State Committee representative covering the Sheki-Shirvan region, which includes Agdash, also terminated a telephone call when a reporter from Forum 18 introduced himself.

On the afternoon of March 25, eight men raided the Agdash home of long-standing Baptist Vera Zhuchaeva, who is in her seventies. Church members told Forum 18 that the seven officers were accompanied by the local official of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations (the only one to identify himself). Accompanying the eight were two cameramen.

The Baptists told Forum 18 that officers insulted them for their faith. During the raid, one of the police officers told them, “We have long been after you and now we’ve caught you!”

Baptists claimed that parents had been invited to send their children to Zhuchaeva’s home to listen to Bible stories over the Novruz spring festival holiday. They said the 12 children were all there with their parents’ specific permission.

“The police came in and put all the children in one room,” Lilia Hudaverdieva, a visiting member of the Baptist congregation in Baku, told Forum 18. “A police officer, the State Committee official and a teacher questioned the children without allowing the parents to be present, even though some of the children were crying and parents in the homes round about could hear them. They refused to allow the parents to collect their children.”

Only once they had written down all the children’s names did they allow their parents to take them away.

Forum 18 reported that police confiscated 508 books and 40 film recordings, as well as a player for the recordings. Baptists insisted there was nothing illegal among the books and films – they pointed out that many were Hollywood films on Biblical themes.

Forum 18 said that Hudaverdieva and two other visitors from the Baku congregation, Sara Babaeva and Ofelia Yakulova, were taken to the police station. There they were questioned for four hours, and their identity documents were seized.

Hudaverdieva said police asked them “provocative” questions, but that she and her friends “told them the exact truth.” She said they were not released until midnight.

The three were told to return the following day to the police station to collect their documents. The police took them to the Prosecutor’s Office next door, where they were again insulted for their faith and fined.

Agdash District Prosecutor Munis Abuzarli told Forum 18 from the town that the three were found guilty of violating Article 299 of the Code of Administrative Offences for “illegally spreading Christianity and other faiths.” He said each was fined 10 Manats (or 12 U.S. Dollars).

Asked how the three Baptists had violated the law, Abuzarli complained that they taught religion to children.

“You can’t attract children to religious activity,” he told Forum 18. Asked why the women had committed an offence, given that the children were present with the specific permission of their parents, he responded, “The law regards this as an offence. If they committed this offence they should be fined in accordance with the law.”

Hudaverdieva complained that because banks were not open over the Novruz holiday, police told the three women that they had to hand over the fines to them in cash.

“We were given no documents about being fined or any receipt when we paid,” she told Forum 18.

She also complained about how the Agdash police presented information about the Baptists’ activity to the local media. The raid was shown several times on television, including on the private ATV channel’s evening news broadcast on March 27.

Forum 18 said a report also appeared on the website of the Azeri Press Agency (APA) on March 26 (widely picked up by other news outlets), which said the raid had been a “joint operation” of the Agdash District Police and the Agdash District Ministry of National Security.

Included in the APA report were the ages and full home addresses of Zhuchaeva and the three women from Baku. “This was very unfortunate,” Hudaverdieva told Forum 18.

The General Secretary of Azerbaijan’s Baptist Union, Elnur Jabiev, went further. “This is dangerous,” he told Forum 18.

He added, “Nationalists will know their addresses. The police should not have given journalists this information.”

Forum 18 said given the refusal of Agdash Police to discuss the raid with the news service, it remains unclear whether this was done deliberately to intimidate the Baptists even further. The authorities have often used journalists to intimidate members of religious minorities, including children.

Hudaverdieva faced further problems when she returned to work after Novruz. She told Forum 18 that the National Security Ministry had informed the parent company of the state-owned firm where she works about her activity in Agdash and the administrative penalty. She said the parent company had contacted her boss, telling him that the company could not have employees who behave in this way.

“I was threatened with losing my job,” she told Forum 18. “But my own boss is good and I was able to explain to him that this was all slander and tell him what actually happened. I told him I’m no criminal.”

Ilya Zenchenko, the head of the Baptist Union, told Forum 18 that leaders from the Baku Baptist church will continue to visit church members in their branch congregation in Agdash.