Kazakstan Persecution of Krishna Devotees

07-28-2003, 09:54 PM

No Love for Kazak Krishnas

Religious group subjected to growing hostility from officials and
ordinary people alike.

By Aitken Kadyrbekov in Almaty (RCA No. 219, 23-Jul-03)

Followers of the Hare Krishna movement in Kazakstan say it is being
victimised by police and unfairly depicted as fanatics in the press.

The group has won little sympathy beyond its immediate followers in
Kazakstan, and is the target of suspicion and hostility from
officials, bigger religious groups, media and the general public.

In the latest incident, Hare Krishna member Seit Sadykbekov was
fined 150 US dollars and deported on July 19 for violating residence
regulations in Almaty. Although migration officials later confirmed
that Sadykbekov, a Kyrgyz national, did have the right to be in
Kazakstan, the Kazak police authority did not relent.

The movement's leader in Kazakstan, 39-year-old Shri Hare –
originally Sergei Kornilov – says the case is typical of official
prejudice towards recently arrived religious groups such as the
Krishnas.

"This prejudice manifests itself with regard to everything we do,"
he told IWPR.

The authorities have kept a particularly close eye on the farm which
the Hare Krishna commune runs in Karasai district, just outside
Almaty. Group supporters say people there have been threatened, sued
and deported.

In April, the local authorities tried to close the commune on a
technicality, claiming in a lawsuit that as the Krishna movement was
formally registered as a city organisation it could not operate in
the countryside. But although they won the case, a higher court
later overturned the ruling because the farm had been given to the
group as a donation.

Now Shri Hare says that police are screening anyone who wants to buy
properties around the farm so as to stop the Krishna followers
acquiring any more land.

"Everyone who wants to buy a dacha [summer house] close to our farm
has to provide the local police department with a letter signed by
people who know them – neighbours, for example," said Shri
Hare. "Only then are they allowed to go ahead with the purchase."

Local dacha owners confirmed that this was happening. "The
authorities don't want to see Hare Krishna acquiring more land,
getting more powerful and expanding its influence among the local
population," said one resident who asked to remain anonymous.

When IWPR approached the police to ask about the practice, they
refused either to confirm or to deny it.

The Hare Krishna movement - more properly the International Society
for Krishna Consciousness - has grown to about 500 members in
Kazakstan since 1989 when it first appeared.

They tend to be young and from poorer families. Although they do
charitable work such as providing meals for underprivileged groups,
they have won few friends by devoting themselves to the group to the
exclusion of their families.

The group's isolation and its recruitment of young people from
Kazakstan's two mainstream faiths - Islam and Orthodox Christianity -
has exposed it to growing hostility from officials and ordinary
people alike.

"This religious group has definitely been subject to a wave of
negative press from both print and electronic media," said Amangeldy
Shormanbaev, who acts as lawyer for the commune.

The state Kazakstanskaya Pravda newspaper, for example, has
described the movement as "antisocial elements such as hippies and
drug addicts", whose teaching damages people's minds.

According to Shormanbaev, this kind of negative publicity, together
with the police harassment, followed last year's attempt by the
Kazak parliament to amend the law on religion. All religious
organisations were to be placed under the control of the official
Islamic or Orthodox structures. Although this move was supposed to
be a response to the threat from Muslim extremists, human rights
groups said other minority religions were also being targeted.

The bill was eventually rejected, but Hare Krishna member say they
still face abuse.

"Drunks are always coming up to me and saying, `You're young and
healthy, but here you are begging for alms, dressed like an idiot,
and trying to make us depart from the faith of our forebears'," said
commune member Namachareya Das.

Das says that several of his colleagues have been attacked by
private security guards while collecting alms outside shops.

"They say we're not allowed to be on the path outside their shop.
When we tell them it's public property and anyone can walk on it,
they start threatening us," he said.

"One of our brothers was beaten up last month in front of a shop in
the city centre."

After such incidents, Hare Krishna members refuse to go to the
authorities for help because it is against their beliefs. But they
say they would not be averse to the police doing more to look after
their rights.

Although the group is tolerated if not loved by the government, it
has little chance of airing its views in mainstream publications.
There was thus something of a scandal when it was recently
discovered that a textbook used in secondary schools across
Kazakstan was apparently the work of a Hare Krishna devotee.

The book, a biography of the most important Kazak poet, Abai,
claimed that he was in fact the country's first Hare Krishna
adherent – and that people should follow his example.

This is fairly controversial stuff, considering Abai is a national
icon in Kazakstan, and was a Muslim like most Kazaks. What is more
surprising is that the book has sat in school libraries for nearly
five years, presumably because education officials never read it
before approving it for use.

A group of literary heavyweights has now demanded that the book be
withdrawn from schools.

Aitken Kadyrbekov is a journalist with Nachnyom s Ponedelnika
newspaper in Almaty.