Arrests of banned religious organisations’ supporters increasing

By Alisher Karimov and Ulan Nazarov
For CentralAsiaOnline.com
2010-02-02

Muslims pray in Kyrgyzstan in this file photo. The Kyrgyz government has cracked down on religious groups, notably the Hizb ut-Tahrir movement. But some say this is only radicalizing the faithful and disenfranchised. [VYACHESLAV OSELEDKO/AFP/Getty Images]

OSH – There is no denying the relationship between the government and religion has worsened in Kyrgyzstan. The question seems to be why.

Government officials say radical Islamists present a threat.

“The situation in the sphere of religion in Kyrgyzstan is explosive and requires the immediate adoption of appropriate measures and the mobilisation of the public”, Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for National Security Rustam Mamasadykov said in October 2009.

The worsening of relations between Islamic faithful and the government began in 2008, when authorities in Nookat refused permission for a public celebration of Eid al Fitr, the end of Ramadan. Protesters tried to seize the District Administration Building, and the government arrested and convicted more than 30 people, including women and children.

Authorities have focused on the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir movement, which organized this and other protests.

“In Kyrgyzstan, the politicisation of Islam is a fact”, independent political analyst Murat Kazakov told Central Asia Online. “Recently, the country’s Muslim community has been increasingly drawn into domestic political processes, becoming the object of the authorities’ intense attention”.

Fearing that politicisation, the government has begun to persecute religious movements, Kazakov said. But this might have consequences.

In October 2009, at a meeting of the ruling Ak-Jol party, parliamentary deputy Alisher Sabirov said, “Just putting these Hizb ut-Tahrir supporters in prison is dangerous: out of their union with the prisoners, we could get an explosive mixture that would be difficult to control. In many prisons, there are already mosques. This is precisely why the principal work needs to be done in the ideological mainstream”.

Religious expert Kadyr Malikov said Hizb ut-Tahrir is gaining support among prison inmates, but the destruction of records means no numbers are available.

As for why its members keep going to prison, Abdumalik Sharipov, an expert on ethno-religious issues at the human rights organisation Spravedlivost, said, “The police and special services ... do not know how to fight (Hizb ut-Tahrir) supporters. Arrest is the only weapon they know”.

Sharipov said authorities can easily identify and arrest many Hizb ut-Tahrir backers because they do not hide their affiliation; the police and security services know many of them by name. Danish journalist Michael Anderson, who has worked in Central Asia for many years, says the problem is political leaders in Kyrgyzstan and other Central Asian countries don’t understand Islam, cannot identify who is a radical and who is a moderate, and therefore repress all believers. In a film that aired on Al Jazzera TV, he said that leads to the spread of radical Islam.

But members of Hizb ut-Tahrir say they are no threat to peace.

“We are not extremists. We do not kill anyone and we do not call for violence. Our crux lies in peaceful change”, said Bakyt, a believer.

Sharipov agreed. “Hizb ut-Tahrir is fundamentally different from other similar organisations precisely in that it flatly rejects violent methods of fighting. Its members call for the establishment of a caliphate—but by peaceful means”, he said.

“There are known cases, it is true, when not only religious literature, but also weapons and drugs, were found during the arrests of party members. In reality, these people are against all of this. The police have to present them as fervid enemies of society, as very dangerous enemies. All these bullets and guns and this heroin are simply planted by the police officers themselves during the search so they can be put in prison for a long time, whereas the term for the possession of literature of an extremist nature would be small”, he alleged.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs' press service, in 2009 police seized about 14,000 copies of printed materials and more than 2,000 electronic media devices with religious literature of an extremist nature from representatives of religious movements. In addition, they seized 13 firearms, three grenades and 40 detonators. The ministry did not explain how police found the weapons.

In explaining the growth of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Aleksandr Knyazev, director of the Bishkek branch office of the Moscow-based CIS Countries Institute, said, “The economic situation is a catalyst for the increased activity of banned religious organisations.”

Knyazev said poverty, unemployment and social insecurity have led people to turn away from the government and toward religious propagandists, who tell them that only religion can give them true freedom and prosperity.

“People are disappointed in such things as democracy and the free-market economy” said the imam-khatyb of Shakir-Ata mosque in a southern Kyrgyz village. “And often they are disappointed in ‘pure faith’ too. And what members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir party offer them harms not only faith but also the government”.

Political analyst Murat Suyunbayev said the reason for Hizb ut-Tahrir’s popularity among the dispossessed is that supporters offer a version of social justice in the form of the caliphate they want to create in Central Asia.

“Islam is the most socially oriented religion in the world. The believers’ sense of social responsibility is very high. Banned religious organisations’ propagandists are focused primarily on this in recruiting new members, exploiting the weakness of representatives of official Islam”, said Suyunbayev.

Suyunbayev said that among Kyrgyz the position of religious radicals is not that strong.

“Kyrgyz were never religious. For them, Islam is as much a part of culture as music and literature. Tengriism, the ancient pagan religion, is more acceptable to Kyrgyz than Muslim thinking is”, said Suyunbayev.

A member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, who declined to give his real name even though he has openly declared his membership in the party, said in a telephone interview from Russia, where he now lives and works, “If only this were just about me! But now some of my acquaintances are being arrested just because they know me, and this means, according to the police, that they also belong to Hizb ut-Tahrir”.

Sharipov explained the sweeping approach by officials.

“It happens that under the pretext of fighting extremism, people who are not connected to underground religious organisations are arrested — those who are undesirable to the authorities and [in the authorities' view] need to be isolated”, said Sharipov. “This is also a way to ... show the world the danger of radical religious organisations and to justify the methods of controlling them, including the violation of human rights”, he said.

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