For Kazakhs seeking religious enlightenment, a telephone hotline is now available to guide them toward god. Twenty-four hours a day, a dedicated team of specialists is on call to answer burning questions about the divine – and to ensure authorities are kept abreast.
On the surface the hotline – 114 – serves people with genuine inquiries about religious matters. But, says one of its government backers, it will also be useful for ratting on those who deviate from Kazakhstan's myriad restrictions on religious practice.
“Information about breaches of legislation in the religious sphere and illegal and destructive religious activities […] is forwarded to the law-enforcement bodies and departments for religious affairs of the akimats [local government offices] for investigation,” Yulia Denisenko, head of the Association of Centers for Victims of Destructive Religious Organizations, the government organization behind the hotline, told a media briefing in Astana on November 28.
Kazakhstan experienced its first suicide bombing in May 2011. Since then, terror-related incidents have left at least 67 dead, mostly suspects and law-enforcement officers. This September Astana announced a new state program to fight terrorism and extremism amid fears of growing links between homegrown radicals and international terror groups. Kazakhstan's intelligence services estimate around 100 Kazakh citizens are waging jihad in foreign countries.
Within months of the first attacks in 2011, President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a law that mandated burdensome new registration conditions for all religious communities. Astana has two categories for religion: “traditional,” including Islam, Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Judaism, and Buddhism; and “non-traditional,” including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baptists, Hare Krishnas, and Muslims who do not follow the state-sanctioned clerical hierarchy.
The law made it a crime to hold religious gatherings without state registration. It also became an offense to sell or distribute religious material that was not vetted by state censors, to invite others to attend religious gatherings, or to share one’s faith without being registered as a missionary. Authorities have handed down 148 fines so far this year for such offenses, the Oslo-based religious-freedom watchdog Forum 18 reported on November 11.
With so many ways to end up on the wrong side of Astana's definition of faith, the hotline should be a useful tool for monitoring believers indeed.
Paul Bartlett is a journalist based in Almaty.
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