“CHRISTIAN POPULATION OF AZERBAIJAN IS SUBJECT TO REPRESSIONS”

PanARMENIAN.Net - The spiritual leader of the Baptist world asks the U.S. political authorities to make Heydar Aliyev change his policy towards the religious minorities. “We hope that your conversation with the President of Azerbaijan will be useful and will bring serenity to suffering Baptists,” the message reads. The Secretary General of the World Baptist Alliance shares with George Bush his indignation with the fact that the leader of Azerbaijani Baptists, pastor Sari Mirzoyev was put under a house arrest. Denton Lots urges the U.S. President not to shut eyes to the fact of “persecutions of Christian minorities in Azerbaijan”.

This message is only one of the proofs of the fact that there is a large international resonance about the persecutions by Azerbaijani authorities of the Christians. Not long ago the Bureau on Democracy and Human Rights of the U.S. State Department spread a document where the fact that in Azerbaijan “the members of untraditional religious organizations are being arrested and persecuted” was fixed. The report dedicated to the freedom of religion reads about the hostile attitude of the official Azerbaijan towards the missionary groups and evangelists. It also reads that “the Muslims adopting other religion are being condemned”. This concerns first of all the Baptists, among which there are lot of ethnic Azerbaijanis. The document notes that the Baptists are one of the most unprotected religious confessions.

According to the experts of the Department of State, the Azerbaijani force structures put pressure upon the leaders of untraditional religious groups (in this country the untraditional religious groups are the organizations of Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Molokans, Adventists, Evangelists, etc.). The report contains facts proving that the police regularly examine the members of Christian religious organizations. Everyone who practices any religion apart from Islam, Orthodoxy and Judaism is under the control of the special services. (Only these three religions are considered traditional by the Azerbaijani authorities). The document describes an incident when an employer of law-enforcement structure was dismissed only for being noticed at a Christian ceremony.

The report of the U.S. Department of State emphasizes that the state committee working with religious organizations, which is aimed at protection of the rights of all the believers, in fact dos not impede the activity of the authorities persecuting the members of religious minorities. Concrete facts are brought concerning repressions and discrimination towards the representatives of untraditional Christian confessions. Such cases, particularly, where fixed in Baku, Gyandja, Nakhichevan, Sumgait, Khachmaz, Ismailla, Neftchal.