Mr. Mustafa Ibrahimov

Interviewed by Human Rights Without Frontiers about such restrictions, Mustafa Ibrahimov, the Administration's acting chairman for Religious Affairs, answered « People do not like to be proselityzed and public order must be respected.That is why we only allow the import of publications according to the needs of the concerned religious group. » He also claimed that the same policy was applied to Shiite and Sunnite Muslim groups to avoid any interreligious conflicts.

In January 2000, Azerbaijani Baptists who had been operating a Christian street library in the western town of Gyanja were threatened twice by police « to halt preaching the gospel among Muslims. » Two of them were detained and held for nine hours in the local police station.

At Christmas 2000, the Administration for Religious Affairs tried to prevent visiting German Lutheran pastor Reinhard von Loewenich from conducting Christmas services at the invitation of Baku's Lutheran congregation.Mustafa Ibrahimov claimed that his activity would violate the country's ban on ‘religious propaganda' by foreigners.However, the pastor was due only to conduct services in the Lutheran church for those who had chosen to attend.The administration's decision was finally overridden by Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry after a phone call from the German Embassy in Baku.

In late 1999, German pastor Günther Oborski was expelled from the congregation and since then the Lutherans have been without a resident clergyman.This congregation has been repeatedly denied registration by the Justice Ministry.Every time, Fazil Mamedov, the director of the Department for registration of religious and social organisations, refers to the split in the congregation as a reason for refusing the application.
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Mustafa Ibrahimov told Human Rights Without Frontiers that he had controlled religious groups for 30 years and that at the time of communism he knew everything about their activities because there were regular meetings between the Departments of Religious Affairs of the various Soviet republics.

Since the fall of communism, a number of new religious movements have settled in Azerbaijan : the Apostolic Church, the Church of Greater Grace, Word of Life, Cathedral of Praise, Nehemia Church, Jehovah's Witnesses.Mustafa Ibrahimov said they were not taken seriously by the population because their names were too bombastic, they were not stable and split into several groups, they were too numerous and too small in membership (just a few dozens or a few hundreds).« Every time these groups practise proselytism, they intrude on the right to privacy of other people and we want to avoid that », he said.

Interviewed by Human Rights Without Frontiers about such restrictions, Mustafa Ibrahimov, the Administration's acting chairman for Religious Affairs, answered « People do not like to be proselityzed and public order must be respected.That is why we only allow the import of publications according to the needs of the concerned religious group. » He also claimed that the same policy was applied to Shiite and Sunnite Muslim groups to avoid any interreligious conflicts.
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Mustafa Ibrahimov claimed that his activity would violate the country's ban on ‘religious propaganda' by foreigners.
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Mustafa Ibrahimov told Human Rights Without Frontiers that he had controlled religious groups for 30 years and that at the time of communism he knew everything about their activities because there were regular meetings between the Departments of Religious Affairs of the various Soviet republics.

Since the fall of communism, a number of new religious movements have settled in Azerbaijan : the Apostolic Church, the Church of Greater Grace, Word of Life, Cathedral of Praise, Nehemia Church, Jehovah's Witnesses.Mustafa Ibrahimov said they were not taken seriously by the population because their names were too bombastic, they were not stable and split into several groups, they were too numerous and too small in membership (just a few dozens or a few hundreds). « Every time these groups practise proselytism, they intrude on the right to privacy of other people and we want to avoid that », he said.

Although both Lutheran and diplomatic sources in Baku have confirmed the attempted gagging to Keston News Service, administration acting chairman Mustafa Ibrahimov initially denied the events.‘I didn't see the pastor, didn't speak to him and had no contact with him,' he told Keston by telephone from Baku on 2 January.Sounding angry, he refused to discuss the events further, confining himself to spelling out the ban on ‘religious propaganda' by foreigners.‘There is Azerbaijani law and the Azerbaijani constitution.All foreign citizens have to abide by it.We banned no one,' he declared, before putting the phone down.

Dilara Ahmedova of the Lutheran congregation told Keston from Baku on 26 December that the congregation's chairwoman Natalya Gaidarova telephoned Ibrahimov on 22 December about another matter and it was then that Ibrahimov had issued his ban on the visiting pastor leading services or preaching, telling her that under Azerbaijani law religious ‘propaganda' by foreigners is forbidden.

Chairman (acting): Mr Mustafa Ibrahimov

12 Akhmed Djavad

str. Baku

Azerbaijan

Tel:

+ 994 12 92 93 33 Tel/Fax: