{"id":844,"date":"2011-11-03T11:40:50","date_gmt":"2011-11-03T11:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/news\/2011\/11\/03\/new-religion-law-restricts-religious-freedom-in-kazakhstan\/"},"modified":"2011-11-03T11:40:50","modified_gmt":"2011-11-03T11:40:50","slug":"new-religion-law-restricts-religious-freedom-in-kazakhstan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/new-religion-law-restricts-religious-freedom-in-kazakhstan\/","title":{"rendered":"New Religion Law restricts religious freedom in Kazakhstan"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">ASTANA, Kazakhstan\u2014Despite serious concern expressed by the international community, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan signed the proposed Religion Law entitled \u201cThe Law On Religious Activity and Religious Associations.\u201d The law came into effect after October 25, 2011.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">The new law will force all existing religious organizations to submit reregistration documents within one year and will require each organization to have at least 50 members. Without reregistration it will be illegal to publish, import or distribute religious literature within the country. Violations of the law will lead to severe fines and can result in the complete ban of an organization.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">Provisions in the new law appear to be open to interpretation, allowing strict oversight of religious activity, obligating missionaries to reregister annually, and granting officials broad authority to approve or decline the importation of religious literature.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">A statement issued on October 13, 2011, from the United States Mission to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) urged \u201cthe government of Kazakhstan to work with [the] ODIHR [Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights] to address these concerns in order to ensure that this law does not improperly restrict freedom of religion or belief in any way that is inconsistent with the country\u2019s OSCE commitments and its international obligations.\u201d<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">There are over 17,000 Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in Kazakhstan and more than 7.5 million Witnesses around the world.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">Media Contacts:<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">J.R. Brown, Office of Public Information, tel. +1 718 560 5600<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">Kazakhstan: Polat Bekzhan, tel. +7 727 232 36 62<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">Belgium: European Association of Jehovah\u2019s Christian Witnesses, tel. +32 2 782 0015<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">Britain: European Association of Jehovah\u2019s Christian Witnesses, tel. +44 208 906 2211<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">Source: http:\/\/www.jw-media.org\/kaz\/20111101.htm<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ASTANA, Kazakhstan\u2014Despite serious concern expressed by the international community, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan signed the proposed Religion Law entitled \u201cThe Law On Religious Activity and Religious Associations.\u201d The law came into effect after October&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}