Tag Archives: religion

Georgia court convicts priest of attempted murder

TBILISI, SEPT. 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A judge in Tbilisi convicted Archpriest Giorgi Mamaladze of trying to murder the secretary of Patriarch Ilia II, a case that has grip the nation for the past eight months.
Mamaladze was arrested in February trying to board a flight to Berlin, where the Patriarch and his entourage were staying, carrying cyanide. Initially, it was thought the poison was meant for the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church but later it emerged that Mamaladze had intended to poison his secretary Shorena Tetruashvili because of a grudge he held. Ms Tetruashvili is the influential confident of the 84-year-old Patriarch.
Ilia II is one of the most powerful people in Georgia. He has been in this position since 1977.
The bearded and bespectacled Mamaladze has denied the charges and said that he will contest the verdict at the European Court of Human Rights. He chose not to be present in the court when the verdict was read out by the judge. There was no jury in this case. His lawyers stormed out, though, saying that the judge had been pressured into making this decision.

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(News report from Issue No. 342, published on Sept. 7 2017)

Georgia closes second school linked to Gulen

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TBILISI, AUG. 360 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Georgia closed a second school linked to Turkey’s Gulen movement, nearly four months after they detained one of its senior staff members and accused him of being linked to terrorism.
Turkey has pressured its neighbours into arresting and deporting people it has linked to a failed coup last year that it blames on so-called Gulenists. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have, so far, refused to bend to the pressure but Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and, increasingly, Georgia have acquiesced.
In an interview with the Georgia-based Open Caucasus Media, Gia Murghulia, deputy head of the education ministry’s Council of Authorisation of Secondary Schools said that it had revoked a licence for the private Demirel College in Tbilisi.
He insisted, though, that the school had been closed for teaching failures and not for any political reasons.
“We are not interested in political aspects,” he was quoted as saying.
Others were sceptical and said that the closure was political.
In May, Mustafa Cabuk, a Turkish manager at the school was detained for his alleged links to the Gulen movement. He has since been fighting extradition attempts, saying that he would be tortured if he was sent back to Turkey.
Georgia has also revoked the licence of a school in Batumi linked to the Gulen network and detained a Turkish businessman.
In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gulenists, followers of the exiled of the exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, headed out from Turkey and set up a series of schools and universities across Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
Georgia has been fostering increasingly close ties with Turkey. It jointly hosts a gas pipeline running from the Caspian Sea to Europe, is developing commercial interests and hosts joint military exercises.

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(News report from Issue No. 342, published on Sept. 7 2017)

Tajikistan increases anti-headscarf campaign

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AUG. 2 2017 (The Bulletin) — Police in Tajikistan have detained and fined women for wearing hijabs, Islamic headscarves, the Forum 18 News Service reported. Last month, the authorities said they were launching an official campaign against what they described as non-traditional clothing. Forum 18 reported that women have felt “humiliated” for having to remove their headscarves in public.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on Aug. 5 2017)

Jehovah Witness holds meeting in Uzbekistan

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JUNE 28 2017 (The Bulletin) — A delegation of senior officials from Jehovah Witness chapters in Europe and the United States travelled to Tashkent for a meeting with the Uzbek government. Very little detail on what was discussed was released by the Uzbek government but the Jehovah Witness officials may have been complaining about an ongoing crackdown against its members.

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(News report from Issue No. 335, published on July 3 2017)

Tajikistan bans Hajj for under 40s

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JUNE 20 2017 (The Bulletin) — The authorities in Tajikistan have banned people under the age of 40 from travelling to Mecca this year for the Hajj, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Officials said that ban was designed to give older people the chance of completing the Hajj but analysts said it could be designed to try and prevent young people from becoming radicalised. Tajikistan and other Central Asian countries are worried about the spread of radical Islam.

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(News report from Issue No. 334, published on June 26 2017)

Uzbekistan’s Pres. Mirziyoyev reaches out to Muslims

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TASHKENT, JUNE 15 2017 (The Bulletin) — Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev hosted an iftar, a religious dinner eaten after sunset during the Islamic festival of Ramadan, for the first time in Uzbekistan, possibly a sign that he is trying to woo pious Muslims.

The dinner featured 1,200 people and was televised, a medium widely used by the Uzbek authorities when they want to get a message out to the population.

One Uzbek man in his 20s said that this was a clear signal that Mr Mirziyoyev was trying to make a clean break with the policies of former president Islam Karimov who distrusted and marginalised Islam.

“It seems that our president began taming imams with soft power,” he said.

Another young Uzbek was more direct and said that Mirziyoyev may have other priorities.

“Putin was also a Communist and a KGB agent and now he manipulates the masses via the Russian Orthodox Church,” he said of Russian President Vladimir Putin who promoted the Orthodox church and rebuilt cathedrals once he took power, in direct contrast to the Soviet Union’s treatment of religion.

“So does Mirziyoyev, I think.”

Although there has been a gradual increase in some civil liberties in the past nine months or so, people in Uzbekistan are still wary of discussing politics and both men declined to be named.

Uzbekistan is officially a secular republic, although its population is predominantly Muslim. After independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Karimov argued with leaders of a popular Islamist movement. He ended up banning them, leading to the creation of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) which launched a series of bomb attacks in the 1990s.

Karimov also blacklisted hundreds of pious ordinary Muslims and tried to ban some practices, such as the iftar.

On a trip to Bukhara in the south of the country earlier on June 15, before his iftar, Mr Mirziyoyev also suggested that he was going to roll back some of the Karimov-era restrictions on Muslims.

He said that he wanted to rebuild the 15th century madrasah Mir Arab and also that it might be time to move some people off an official blacklist of Muslims.

“All the blacklisted can’t be radicals. You should speak to them, recheck their views and learn if there are any innocent who were blacklisted inequitably,” he told an audience of thousands on a conference call that lasted several hours with religious and secular leaders across the country.

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(News report from Issue No. 333, published on June 19 2017)

Turkmenistan has imprisoned Gulenists, says HRW

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JUNE 9 2017 (The Bulletin) — The New York-based Human Rights Watch accused the Turkmen government of illegally detaining and imprisoning 18 men allegedly linked to the Gulen network that Turkish President Recep Erdogan accuses of plotting a coup.

In its report, Human Rights Watch said that the men were part of a group of 100 men arrested in September and October last year after a request from Turkey.

“The men’s families found out about the arrests in Turkmenistan only through unofficial contacts. They were allowed no contact with their loved ones until after the trial, which was closed and held at the pretrial detention centre. Four state- appointed lawyers served as the men’s defence counsel,” HRW said in its press release.

In Turkey, the security forces have rounded up thousands of supporters of the exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen. In Central Asia and the South Caucasus, Turkey has asked the authorities to detain and deport people linked to Gulen, mainly in the education sector.

Gulenists travelled to these newly independent former Soviet republics in the 1990s and set up what are now some of the region’s best-regarded universities and schools.

Human Rights Watch said it had seen a summary of the verdict handed out to the men which said that the court had found them guilty of offences linked to the incitement of social, ethnic and religious hatred and also involvement in criminal organisations.

Turkmenistan has one of the worst records for human rights and free speech and is considered a secretive, closed-off country. It has not commented on the Human Rights Watch allegations.

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(News report from Issue No. 332, published on June 12 2017)

Trial of Archpriest begins in Georgia

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MAY 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The trial began of Archpriest Giorgi Mamaladze who is accused of trying to kill the Patriarch’s Secretary, Shorena Tetruashvili. In a case that has captivated Georgia, Archpriest Mamaladze was arrested trying to board a flight to Germany carrying cyanide earlier this year where Patriarch Ilia II was receiving medical treatment. It had been thought that the Archpriest had wanted to kill Ilia II but this has now been rejected. Instead, prosecutors believe that he had a vendetta against Ilia’s secretary.

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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)

Archpriest planned to kill Patriarch’s secretary, say Georgian officials

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APRIL 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s Prosecutor’s Office said that they are going to charge Archpriest Giorgi Mamaladze with plotting to murder the secretary of Patriarch Ilia II, ending weeks of speculation that the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church had been the intended target. Archpriest Mamaladze was arrested in January carrying cyanide as he boarded a plane bound for Germany where Ilia II had been receiving hospital treatment. Prosecutors now believe that he had a vendetta against Patriarch Shorena Tetruashvili, Ilia II’s secretary.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Priest accuses Georgia of unfair trial

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APRIL 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Archpriest Giorgi Mamaladze, the priest waiting for his trial on charges of attempting to poison a senior member of Patriach Ilia II’s inner circle, has said that he is going to apply to the European Court for Human Rights against what he has said is an unfair process. Archpriest Mamaladze was arrested this year trying to board a flight to Germany with cyanide, a case that has captivated the Georgian public.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)