Ayagoz, Kazakhstan — Two grandmothers in their late seventies were among seven Baptists fined in early April for participating in an unregistered religious meeting in a private home in the town of Ayagoz in East Kazakhstan Region. Each was fined between one and two months’ average wage for a local state employee.
The oldest of the fined Ayagoz Baptists is 77. However, another Baptist — former Soviet-era religious prisoner Yakov Skornyakov — was 79 when he was given a massive fine for his religious activity in April 2006.
The seven fines bring to eight the number of members of the Council of Churches Baptist Church in Ayagoz fined in 2013. Another is awaiting trial. Members of the Council of Baptists have a policy of not seeking state registration, insisting that Kazakhstan’s Constitution and the country’s international human rights commitments cannot require communities to have registration before they can meet for worship. They also have a policy of not paying the many administrative fines handed down to their members across Kazakhstan.
After widespread outrage among believers and human rights defenders in Kazakhstan, an appeals court has cancelled the part of the lower court decision ordering that Bibles and other Christian literature confiscated from Baptist Vyacheslav Cherkasov should be destroyed. However, it left the fine unchanged.
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