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| Police take away a protestor |
Authorities in the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan have ordered the demolition of homes and confiscation of 50 hectares (118 acres) of land (without compensation) owned by ISKCON members.
The order was made on 24 April and the demolition crew and police made an unsuccessful attempt to remove the home owners on 25 April. ISKCON members in Kazakhstan claim the action is unlawful and contrary to religious and civil rights. The land in dispute is the proposed site of a large cultural centre, The Palace of the Soul.
It appears that the ISKCON community is caught up in the process of transferring land ownership from a Communist system to one more closely resembling Western standards. An unnamed official from the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) believes that ISKCON is being singled out for special treatment for cultural and religious reasons: “It is unlikely that anyone would dare to take away the land from the Hare Krishna community so brazenly unless the authorities were irritated by the presence of an exotic Hare Krishna commune so close to Almaty [a major city]. Many Kazakh officials are irritated that most people in the Hare Krishna village wear saris."
The state authorities claim that the reason the land is being taken is that the former owners sold the land to the ISKCON devotees under a false pretext. Forum18, a religious freedoms watchdog, believes the case against the Hare Krishna devotees breaks the country's own laws, but that this is being ignored by the courts.
According to a spokesperson for the ISKCON community, “The state is trying to reduce the whole action to an economic dispute. However, it is obvious that the rights of dozens of Kazakh citizens belonging to a religious minority are being violated. In all the court documents the religious adherence of the respondents is emphasised, which is a violation of their constitutional rights.”
Kazakhstan is the largest and one of the wealthiest of the ex-USSR central Asian republics. Although its religious freedom laws were initially amongst the most liberal of these states, there have been allegations that these laws were regularly ignored by the authorities. Over the last year the laws have grown increasingly stringent. Forum18’s Religious Freedom Survey for Kazakhstan notes that Protestant Christian, non-state-controlled Muslims, and Hare Krishnas suffer most form these laws. Kazakhstan remains the only country in the region that was not a state party to the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
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