Click for larger viewA draft Religion Law now before the Tajik parliament would ban religious organisations with fewer than 400 members.  The bill would also bar provision of religious education for children under 7 and all religious instruction in private homes.  All missionary and evangelistic activity would be completely banned.

The proposed law would impose exceedingly difficult and meticulous requirements for registration of religious bodies.

To gain legal status, Article 15 states that a "church" requires 400 adult members in a district, 800 in a city away from Dushanbe and 1,200 in Dushanbe itself. Again, no justification is given for these restrictions.
. . .
Even if a religious community can meet the exceptionally high number of signatures required to apply for legal status, Article 20 also requires a large number of documents – from both the state and the religious community – to be appended to the registration application. Crucially, as well as the statutes and official record of the founding meeting, all the founding members have to give their full names, addresses, dates of birth and confirm that they are Tajik citizens. They also have to submit a copy of their official identity document. Amongst the numerous documents that must be submitted are a "confirmation from the local government body of the size of the population and address of location of the religious organisation." and a "positive legal opinion of the judicial bodies on the founding documents of the religious organisation." This article gives ample opportunity for officials to "legally" refuse legal status applications, and also for official and unofficial intimidation of people who sign registration applications.

After giving five reasons why legal status applications can be refused, including that "the name of the religious organisation offends the morals, national and religious feelings of citizens," Article 21 declares: "It is not permitted to deny registration of a religious organisation on the ground of inexpediency of its establishment." Religious minorities have told Forum 18 that they fear that the draft law makes it very easy for officials to deny legal status – even to any religious communities who manage to meet the Law's absurdly rigorous requirements.

The draft law requires all existing religious organisations to be registered under the new provisions within a year.

Some observers have suggested that the largest single Christian church in the country, the Russian Orthodox Church, would find it very difficult to meet the stringent registration requirements.

Previous related posts: