Three churches in Kazakhstan have been fined by police this year, without a court hearing, for meeting for worship without state permission, it emerged in July.
Police acquired the power in January 2015. Prosecutors subsequently annulled one of the fines. Baptists and human rights defenders are concerned that the new state tactic of summary police fines, to punish the exercise of freedom of religion or belief, might be used more widely.
One Baptist told Norwegian human rights organisation Forum 18 on 12 July that such summary police fines haven’t been used against them before. He has himself been fined and given short-term prison terms through the courts previously. ‘No one explained to us why they've suddenly started doing this.’
One of the cases involved a former Soviet-era Baptist prisoner of conscience, Yegor Prokopenko. On 22 May he was again fined for leading a meeting for worship in Zyryanovsk in East Kazakhstan Region. The local police officer imposed the fine under Administrative Code Article 489, Part 9. He gave Prokopenko the prescribed fine of 100 MFIs, 212,100 Tenge (approximately £450), after raiding the church’s Sunday meeting for worship. The officer gave him a form explaining how to pay.
The power to impose summary fines without initial due process was first given to police under the latest 2015 revision of the Code of Administrative Offences
President Nursultan Nazarbayev has ordered even harsher revisions of the Religion Law and other laws to be prepared by mid-August 2016.
