Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Rteacher]

I think that many people from western countries take freedom of religion for granted. Fortunately, South Korea also has religious freedom, but many "anti-U.S" elements here ignore or condone the repression of religion by officially atheistic governments like North Korea and China. In Central Asia, authoritarian "Moslem" regimes like Turkenmenistan - still within Russia's sphere of influence - also have little-or-no tolerance for religious freedom. The following is quoted from a recent news report:

by Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service

Posted November 21, 2005

Turkmenistan has today [17 November] jailed a Hare Krishna devotee, Cheper Annaniyazova, for seven years on charges of illegally leaving the country, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. "Cheper tried to get an exit visa to go to Kazakhstan to stay in the temple in Almaty, but was refused," a source close to the Hare Krishna community told Forum 18. "She went anyway, crossing the border to Uzbekistan." Despite a claimed abolition of exit visas, Turkmenistan is to Forum 18's knowledge preventing three religious believers - two Protestants and a Hare Krishna devotee - from leaving the country. Forum 18's source insists that the heavy sentence was imposed at the behest of the MSS secret police to intimidate the Hare Krishna community. Turkmenistan also has the religious prisoner of conscience with the longest jail sentence in the former Soviet Union, former chief mufti Nasrullah ibn Ibadullah who is on a 22 year jail sentence.

One of the first converts to the Hare Krishna faith in Turkmenistan, Cheper Annaniyazova, was sentenced today (17 November) in the capital Ashgabad [Ashgabat] to seven years' imprisonment for illegally crossing the border three years ago. "Cheper tried to get an exit visa to go to Kazakhstan to stay in the temple in Almaty, but was refused," a source close to the Hare Krishna community told Forum 18 News Service. "She went anyway, crossing the border to Uzbekistan." But the source insists the heavy sentence was imposed at the behest of the Ministry of State Security (MSS) secret police to intimidate the Hare Krishna community.

Annaniyazova stayed in Almaty until earlier this year, returning to Turkmenistan when her father fell ill. She arrived home in Ashgabad in May, just too late to see her father before his death. However, when the MSS secret police later discovered she had crossed the border illegally three years earlier she was summoned for interrogation. While admitting she had left without obtaining the necessary exit visa (these are claimed to have been abolished), Annaniyazova protested that many others who had done likewise were not being tried. She insisted she was being persecuted for being prominent in the Hare Krishna community. The Hare Krishna community, along with other religious believers, has experienced continuing persecution (see the F18News religious freedom survey at Click Here) . Born in 1968, Annaniyazova became a devotee in the late 1980s when Soviet controls on religion were loosened.

Despite the claim to have abolished exit visas, Turkmenistan still denies religious believers permission to leave the country and is currently barring two Protestants and a Hare Krishna devotee (see F18News 9 November 2005 Click Here.

In early August Annaniyazova was compulsorily detained in a psychiatric hospital in Ashgabad, where she was held until early September. "She was not injected with anything there - they just did tests and observed her," Forum 18 was told. Prosecutors then lodged a criminal case against her, though she was not arrested in the run-up to her trial, which began on 16 November.

Sources expressed concern that the sentence, handed down by Ashgabad city court, exceeded the five year maximum penalty under Article 214 section 2 of the Criminal Code, which punishes illegal border crossing "committed with preliminary planning and in a group, or using violence or threats". The sources say that Annaniyazova had originally planned to cross with another Hare Krishna devotee, but she changed her mind before they reached the border with Uzbekistan. They say Annaniyazova's lawyer tried to call witnesses who could testify to this, but the court refused to allow this. Had she been tried under Article 214 section 1, which punishes people who cross the border illegally on their own, she would have faced a maximum two year term.

Annaniyazova's friends are now concerned about how she will fare in prison, as she is a vegetarian and no provision is made in prison for vegetarians. They say those punished under Article 214 are also not eligible for amnesty (each year President Saparmurat Niyazov declares a large-scale amnesty during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan). However, her friends say that even were she eligible for amnesty she would not be prepared to swear the oath of loyalty to the president on a copy of the Koran required before prisoners are amnestied.

The oath of loyalty is considered by many religious believers to be blasphemous and reads: "Turkmenistan, you are always with me in my thoughts and in my heart. For the slightest evil against you let my hand be cut off. For the slightest slander about you let my tongue be cut off. At the moment of my betrayal of my motherland, of her sacred banner, of Saparmurat Turkmenbashy [Father of the Turkmens] the Great [i.e. President Saparmurat Niyazov], let my breath stop."

The religious prisoner of conscience with the longest jail sentence in the former Soviet Union is in Turkmenistan. The former chief mufti, Nasrullah ibn Ibadullah, was sentenced to 22 years' imprisonment at a closed trial in Ashgabad in March 2004. The Turkmen government has refused repeated international requests to make the verdict public.

[Ya-ta Boy]

Freedom of conscience is a pretty rare thing but most of us take it for granted most of the time.

The oddest thing is that the people mentioned in the article want to leave the country and the government won't let them. You would think they would be happy to see them go if their ideas are so abhorent. Well, I would think, anyway.

[Rteacher]

It's probably a vestige of the old commie totalitarian idea that the state owns everything - and everyone (people need to be rehabilitated if they're not subservient to the almighty state...)

Reportedly, by the mid-70's Communist Party leaders identified Krishna Consciousness and rock music as the two biggest threats to their ideology. When officials allowed the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust to take part in a major book fair in Moscow (thinking that they were merely a "yoga" group) Krishna devotees freely distributed 10,000 books (translated into Russain) that circulated among young intellectuals, planting seeds of doubt re Marxist-Lenin ideology and seeds of devotion to the real owner and controller of everything (Krishna). They also could not stop the influence of the Beatles as rock stars like Billy Joel - and Paul McCartney - visited Moscow and drove home musical messages of freedom to captivated concert-goers (commercial plug: http://www.iskcon.net/hktv/ ) Actually, many Krishna devotees were tortured under the old regime, and there are still some repressive practices...

[cert43]

Are you German? They were the oppressors..

The only reason , Russia got that rap was because the Nazi party renamed the Владимир Ильич Ульянов regime as the "red devil" ( if you have ever seen the Russian propaganda pic of him sittng in a red t-shirt with his "Anti-Christian" cross) while the "lefist" sit below him.
Lenin was a full supporter of what is known as the Marxist Revolution.
The Lenin party "Bolsheviks", or Jews were considered the lefist opposers

Who is the one Nationality in 1917 that would have opposed the Jews?

mmmm

[comm]

[cert43]

Guess so. But,it all boils down to this:

Untermensch.

Although, it goes way deeper then what was considered to

be "subhuman"in Nazi Regime and Anti-Soviet Propaganda.

Do you think Germans are still really opposed to having that kind of regime? Absoluty not.