What is happening in Kazakhstan? That country that occupies a space between Russia and China?
Kazakhstan is a landlocked country in Central Asia that shares borders with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, and also adjoins a large part of the Caspian Sea.
Kazakhstan is 70% Muslim. In spite of claiming religious freedom, human rights abuses against religious groups are common. Those of the Baptist faith have been particularly targeted in religious investigations, along with various Muslim sects and the Jehovah's Witnesses.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/17072016-kazakhstan-how-many-punished-for-exercising-religious-freedom/
In 2013, "Nearly 50 Jehovah’s Witnesses from Kazakhstan [have] joined complaints to the Human Rights Committee against fines (and deportation for foreigners) imposed for sharing their faith with others."
Besides running afoul of the restrictions on missionary and evangelizing activity, the Jehovah's Witness literature was also seen as suspect.
In the Report of the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, submitted to the Human Rights Council United Nations, December 2014, it was stated that
...in 2012 and 2013, Jehovah’s Witnesses submitted an application for importing several religious publications, including some monthly magazines produced by their community. Reportedly, the Agency for Religious Affairs banned the importation of some of those publications. In its decision of 31 January 2013, the Agency claimed that the banned publications discouraged secular education, encouraged family break-ups and contained positions that might outrage members of traditional Christian denominations (e.g. the position that the Holy Trinity is not mentioned in the Bible). The Agency directed Jehovah’s Witnesses to modify the content of the publications and submit the modified editions for approval.
The actions of Kazakhstan authorities against the Jehovah's Witnesses (and others) has not abated since that time.
http://forum18.org/archive.php?country=29
Currently, there is a court case in Kazakhstan underway that is prosecuting a Jehovah's Witness. 61 year old Teymur Akhmedov is on trial for "discussing his faith" with others and for "inciting religious hatred or discord".
Akhmedov's co-accused was sentenced in February:
Of two Jehovah's Witnesses arrested in January in Kazakhstan's capital Astana for "inciting religious hatred or discord" for talking to National Security Committee (KNB) secret police agents about their faith, one has already been punished. Asaf Guliyev was given a five-year restricted freedom sentence on 24 February.
On March 27, 2017, at the very same time that the Jehovah's Witnesses around the world were penning letters to Russia protesting the upcoming seizure of the Administrative Center in St. Petersburg Russia, Mr. Ahkmedov was sitting in a Kazakhstan court room, relying on his lawyers to help him "defend his faith".
http://www.rferl.org/a/kazakhstan-jehovah-s-witness-hate-charges/28393870.html
Instead of things going in Akhmedov's favor, though, his preliminary trial did not go well when both of his lawyers were criminally charged for revealing information to authorities concerning material in the trial.
http://forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2269
Kazakhstan's National Security Committee (KNB) secret police has opened a criminal case against two lawyers defending a Jehovah's Witness on trial for exercising freedom of religion and belief. Vitaly Kuznetsov and Natalya Kononenko are facing criminal investigation seeking to punish them for appealing to Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev for the charges against their client to be dropped. Charges were brought against the lawyers even before the trial they were working on began in the capital Astana.
Rather than a global letter writing campaign, the JW lawyers were the ones who were pleading with the president of Kazakhstan on behalf of a Jehovah's Witness facing prosecution for his behavior. And they received criminal charges for doing so.
On 20 February the lawyers Kuznetsov and Kononenko sent a 23-page appeal (plus numerous attachments) to KNB Investigator Major Duszkaziyev, who led the investigation against Akhmedov and Guliyev. The appeal asked for the case against Akhmedov to be halted "because of the absence of the elements of a crime".
The lawyers argued that the "expert analyses" of the literature confiscated from Akhmedov and Guliyev should be "completely rejected as contradicting international law". They gave documentary evidence that officials and leaders of so-called "traditional" religions have made statements that are far more insulting and critical than the statements Akhmedov is accused of making.
The lawyers noted that law enforcement officials stated that the words used by officials and so-called "traditional" religious leaders were lawful.
The lawyers also sent copies of their appeal to several officials and state agencies, including President Nursultan Nazarbayev and the Foreign Ministry.
On April 6th, the day after the Russian Supreme Court hearing into the Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia started, Mr. Ahkmedov's trial began in Kazakhstan. It is unclear who was representing Ahkmedov as this most recent article included the same photo of his two lawyers, and yet the caption does not name who they are. It is possible that Temyer had different lawyers at that point.
http://www.rferl.org/a/kazakhstan-jehovahs-witness-trial-/28414799.html
ASTANA -- The trial of a Jehovah's Witness charged with inciting interethnic enmity has begun in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana.
The court on April 6 began hearing the case of Teimur Akhmedov, 60, who was arrested in January for what the Committee for National Security (KNB) described as propagating ideas that "disrupt interreligious and interethnic concord" in the country.
The U.S. Embassy in Astana has sent a representative to monitor the case.
Likewise, Diana Okremova, the director of the local Media Law Center NGO, attended, as well as relatives of the defendant and local Jehovah's Witnesses.
An RFE/RL correspondent was the only journalist present at the trial, and the judge allowed her to make written notes.
Akhmedov, who is undergoing cancer treatment, pleaded not guilty at a preliminary hearing on March 27.
If convicted, Akhmedov faces up to 10 years in prison.
What is happening with the criminal proceedings against the two lawyers, Vitaly Kuznetsov and Natalya Kononenko, is not known.
The outcome of Jehovah's Witness Akhmedov's trial is not known.
The JWorg website has eagerly and promptly updated the world about the Administrative Center in Russia being liquidated and the JWs there being placed under ban...but....no updates or news about the JW martyr in Kazakstan or the fate of the two JW lawyers there.
