By Bob Allen
A Baptist in Kazakhstan could face up to three years in prison for refusing to pay a 2013 fine for handing out uncensored religious literature on the street, according to an international news service that specializes in stories involving religious liberty.
Nikolai Novikov, a 34-year-old father of four, told Norway-based Forum 18 that a police investigator wants to imprison him for from one to three years for an act of civil disobedience in March 2013.
Novikov is a member of the Council of Churches Baptists. The group has a policy of refusing to pay the numerous administrative fines placed on them, claiming Kazakhstan’s constitution affords them freedom of religion.
Kazakhstan imposes strict state censorship on all religious materials, including restrictions on who may sell or distribute material and where it can occur. Novikov has been fined three times in two years, jailed for five days, placed on Kazakhstan’s exit ban list, and has had a restraining order placed on his car.
“I didn’t pay because I don’t consider myself guilty,” Novikov told Forum 18 in January. “These fines were illegal.”
A prosecutor told the news service Novikov’s offenses weren’t serious enough for prison, but if convicted he could face restrictions like curfew for up to three years. Forum 18 was unable to reach the officer investigating the case.
Once considered one of the most liberal countries in post-Soviet Central Asia regarding religious freedom, in recent years unregistered Baptists and Muslims in Kazakhstan increasingly have been treated as a terrorism threat. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom designates Kazakhstan a Tier 2 country — those in which violations of religious freedom are on the rise but not yet to the threshold of the “particular concern” label for the world’s worst offenders.
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