AZERBAIJAN violating Human Rights
AZERBAIJAN: "WE WANT FREEDOM OF FAITH AND
FREEDOM TO WORSHIP"
AZERBAIJAN: "WE WANT FREEDOM - FREEDOM IN SOCIETY, FREEDOM OF FAITH AND
FREEDOM TO WORSHIP"
By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service
"We want freedom - freedom in society, freedom of faith and
freedom to worship," a Protestant pastor in central Azerbaijan told
Forum 18 News Service. "Freedom from the state so that it no longer
interferes." Protestant and religious communities have all told Forum 18 that
they want an end to harassment and freedom to worship as they cannot
function freely and openly, especially away from the capital Baku, citing police
raids, intimidation, fines, bans and occasional beatings.
Registration as a religious community, with the State Committee for
Work with Religious Organisations, is difficult to obtain and can be a
protection against such harassment, though not always.
"Registration is like permission to operate although under the
constitution there are no obstructions to free religious practice,"
Alakbar Gasimov, vice president of the Baptist Union, told Forum 18.
"Without it you can be arrested." Another Baptist pastor told
Forum 18 that "Our constitution guarantees us freedom of religion, but
in reality we don't have it" (see F18News 9 December 2004
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=473). Alakbar said an
official of the State Committee's legal department had told the
Baptists that no more than ten people could meet without registration.
"Of course we want to register," one Protestant pastor based in
the capital Baku who preferred not to be named told Forum 18 on 21
November of his three associated congregations. "If we meet without
registration and the authorities find out, big problems will follow.
The police, secret police, local administration officials will come,
probably with a hostile television crew as well."
The pastor told Forum 18 that during the summer a local police chief
visited a Protestant leader at his home in Baku, halted the service
that was then underway and questioned all those present. The congregation
- made up of ethnic Azeri Protestants - has been unable to meet
for worship as one community since. The police summoned the leader and,
says the pastor, placed him under "great pressure". "They
asked who was paying him, then tried to recruit him as an informer."
The pastor said the leader then gave up his position as leader of the
church. "He said he has a family - his wife and children - to
worry about."
The pastor noted that in summer 2003 the congregation in the town of
Sumgait [Sumqayit] north of the capital Baku was raided by two police
officers, one in uniform and one in civilian clothes. "What are you
doing?" one police officer asked. "Who's your leader?" The
Protestants asked the officers why they were talking to them like that,
given that they were citizens of Azerbaijan. They insisted that they
had the right to meet together as believers. The police disagreed, taking
two of the Protestants to the local police station, where they were
interrogated as to why the church was meeting without registration.
The pastor recounted that the police ordered meetings in private flats
to stop and began pressuring and threatening members of the congregation.
"They now have to meet in very small groups to avoid problems -
they must be so cautious," he told Forum 18 sadly. "Sumgait is a
different town. The authorities are a law unto themselves."
The two Baku congregations still cannot meet publicly all together, the
pastor noted. "We don't want attention from the authorities at the
moment." Although all three congregations have the required ten
members prepared to sign the registration applications (and indeed, one
of the Baku congregations has tried to register - in vain - for
the last two years), the pastor says officials of the residency
registration office refuse to hand over a certificate confirming that
applicants live at their registered home address.
Although the State Committee is nowhere empowered to do so, it demands
certificates from the place of work of each of the founding members to
confirm that each is a member of the community. "Without such a
document for each founding member you won't get registration," the
pastor noted. "It is a system of control."
This pastor reports that controls on freedom of worship are much
tighter outside the capital, a view shared by many other leaders of different
religious faiths. "Things have gradually got better in Baku, but in
Sumgait and Gyanja for example, it is much worse," members of Baku's
Lutheran congregation told Forum 18 on 29 November. Mila Ibrahimova,
pastor of the New Life Protestant church in Baku, said that the harassment her
church experienced three years ago is now at an end. "Police raided
our services back then, but have not done so for a long time," she
told Forum on 29 November. "We haven't been given registration, but we
can meet to praise God at any time."
One particular blackspot is the exclave of Nakhichevan [Naxçivan]
- wedged between Armenia, Turkey and Iran - where believers
face intense pressure, with Adventists and Baha'is complaining that
their
communities have been "crushed" (see F18News 10 December 2004
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=474
). Three Baptist
communities in the village of Aliabad in north-western Azerbaijan have
also faced years of threats, harassment and denial of legal existence (see
F18News 8 December http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=471
).
Incidents in towns and villages in other parts of Azerbaijan are
numerous, and many believers involved are too frightened to describe the
incidents publicly. In the town of Sheki [Saki] in northern Azerbaijan, one local
Protestant was interrogated by the police in mid-November after
missionaries from Baku had come to give out Christian literature in the
town. "Police look badly at Protestants," another local
Protestant told Forum 18 in the town. "They want to know what we are
doing and where we meet." Local Protestants told Forum 18 they want to
register a church but do not know how the authorities would react.
"Many church members are too frightened to come forward -
sometimes their own relatives don't even know they've become
Christians."
Forum 18 was told that a Protestant community in Shemakha [Samaxi], a
town west of Baku, was banned from meeting in its house of prayer this
summer.
One Protestant pastor working in a town in central Azerbaijan told
Forum 18 he and his congregation have faced repeated harassment. "The local
secret police have followed me in a car," declared the pastor -
who asked for his name and location not to be revealed. "My flat was
raided in 2003 at the same time as other believers' homes. They had no
search warrant. They seemed well-informed and asked me where we met for
worship. But so far they haven't raided any services."
The pastor said his main aim is to gain registration for the church to
try to protect it from further harassment, but few church members are
prepared to give the authorities their names for fear of retaliation. "We have
enough people in theory to register, but the authorities would do all
in their power to prevent such registration," he told Forum 18.
The pastor recounted that local Baha'is and Jehovah's Witnesses had
faced the same pressure from the authorities. Hare Krishna devotees report
that restrictions on meetings outside Baku are now easing, with the
harassment they received two years ago now much reduced. "Five people getting
together is OK, but ten is not," devotees told Forum 18 at Baku's Hare
Krishna temple on 24 November. "This is not official - local
authorities tell us this verbally." They complained that outside Baku
they are unable to distribute religious literature.
The Baptist Union complains that small congregations outside Baku are
often harassed and denied the possibility to register. The church in
Neftchala, which has existed since 1966, has been repeatedly denied registration.
"A year and a half ago we were banned from meeting in the church for
three weeks," Baptist leader Timur Aliev told Forum 18 on 24 November.
"Now we can at least meet, though we have to be very quiet. If we're
quiet, the authorities are quiet." He said there is no sign to
indicate that the building is a church.
Sumgait's 20-strong Adventist community has been banned orally from
meeting in its house of prayer, reported Yahya Zavrichko, head of the Adventist
church in Azerbaijan. "The congregations repaired the church this
spring and was about to hold the official rededication," he told Forum
18 in Baku on 24 November. "Just a week before officers from the
town's fourth police department warned our pastor, Khalid Babaev, not
to go ahead." Babaev was then fined 82,500 manats (104 Norwegian Kroner, 13
Euros, or 17 US Dollars ) - Zavrichko showed Forum 18 the receipt for
the fine - on charges of living in the town "illegally".
The average monthly salary in Azerbaijan is around 147,300 Azeri Manats
(186 Norwegian Kroner, 23 Euros, or 30 US Dollars).
"This was all an excuse to pressure the church not to hold the
dedication and not to meet for worship," Zavrichko insisted.
"Babaev was forced to sign a receipt to say the church would not meet
without registration." He said the State Committee demands that the
congregation's leader be from Sumgait itself, not from elsewhere in
Azerbaijan, although this is nowhere specified in registration
regulations.
Zavrichko recounted that a small group of Adventists live in the town
of Mingechaur in western Azerbaijan. "There have been problems with the
police and the secret police - we can't preach there," he
noted.
"The authorities are doing everything to prevent the spread of our
faith," Zavrichko lamented. "We can only work in Baku and Gyanja
- the towns where we have registration. We can't open new church as
leaders have to be locals and we can't train people up. The authorities
know this and are doing this deliberately."
Azer Sharafli, head of the general department at the State Committee in
Baku, brushed aside any suggestions that religious believers were
restricted in being able to worship. "They just need to register with
the authorities and then they can function legally," he told Forum 18
in his office at the committee on 24 November. He rejected accusations
that the authorities harassed unregistered religious communities, insisting
that officials were merely upholding the law. He declined the say whether
religious communities without registration could meet.
Some local religious leaders have tried to clarify whether unregistered
religious meetings are legal or not (the law nowhere bans unregistered
religious meetings, but officials, the police and the secret police
usually treat such unregistered meetings as illegal). When Zavrichko wrote to
Rafik Aliev, head of the State Committee, seeking clarification on whether
the Sumgait Adventist congregation can meet without registration, he
received an evasive reply. Aliev's 17 May 2004 response, seen by Forum 18,
merely explained how communities register and failed to answer Zavrichko's
question.
"In mid-November Rafik Aliev appeared on Space TV and said it is OK
for religious groups to meet without registration," Zavrichko
declared. "But in practice this is not the case."
AZERBAIJAN: POLICE DISPERSE AND HARASS ACADEMIC RELIGION RESEARCHERS
By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service
Azeri authorities have repeatedly obstructed a local research group
engaged
in a project to measure the state of religious freedom in Azerbaijan,
project leaders told Forum 18 News Service in the capital Baku. "We
have faced serious official obstruction to our work, although we are
conducting purely academic research," project leader Hikmet Hajizade
told Forum 18 at the offices of the Baku-based FAR Centre on 25
November.
He said police in different towns across the country stopped people
gathering for focus groups and participants often backed out citing
fear of retaliation from the authorities. "We wanted about eight people in
each group, but even such a small group was not allowed to meet - the
police often drove us out of town."
The research on the state of religion and relations between religion
and the state in Azerbaijan in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist
attacks in the United States is being conducted by the FAR Centre under
a grant from the US-based National Endowment for
Democracy. The project
began this summer with focus groups made up of local religious leaders and
non-governmental group activists in Baku and in other towns across the
country, to be followed up by a public opinion survey with 1,000
respondents and finishing with scholarly conferences on the state of
religious freedom.
Haji Hajili, a FAR Centre researcher who led many of the focus groups,
told Forum 18 that his centre wanted the authorities to know about the
project and the way it was proceeding. "Each time they gave verbal permission,
but when we began to discuss the religious situation the police
arrived," he reported. "They told us unofficially they had
received instructions to drive us out and said it would be better if we
left peacefully of our own accord. The government is very sensitive on
religious questions."
He insists their survey questions are "normal, simple enquiries",
such as how many members there are in a participant's religious
community, whether the authorities intervene in communities' religious life, how
believers regard other faiths and how local people regard them. Hajili
told Forum 18 that many respondents were often afraid to respond openly even
to such apparently innocuous questions.
Hajili pointed out that research was not too difficult in Baku, but was
obstructed almost everywhere else. He believes the real power on the
ground in the regions is the local executive authority, and it was these
leaders who organised the breaking up of focus groups in their towns.
As Hajizade and Hajili told Forum 18, problems began with the first
focus group meetings outside Baku, held in July in central Azerbaijan in the
second city Gyanja [Gänca], as well as Shamkir [Şïmkir],
Tovuz and Kazakh [Qazax]. When the eight focus group members arrived
with the moderator at the House of Culture in Kazakh on 21 July as arranged,
an employee of the venue informed them that only the day before the local
authorities had instructed the House of Culture not to make its
premises available.
Participants then decided to talk in a nearby teahouse in a park.
"However, it soon became clear that participants' words were being
listened to by people nearby who had quietly sat themselves as close as
they could to our table," survey organisers reported. Of the three
apparent eavesdroppers, one participant recognised one as a well-known
local informer for the authorities. When the moderator remarked to them
that it was not polite to listen to other people's conversation, the
eavesdroppers responded that they were interested in what was going on.
"It became clear that the local authorities were interested in the
identity of the focus group participants and the theme of the
discussion." Participants then decided to cancel the focus group
meeting and resume elsewhere.
When the group reconvened in the chess school in the nearby town of
Shamkir, several participants refused to attend further, fearing
retaliation from the authorities, Hajili told Forum 18. The rump focus
group was in mid-discussion when the director of the chess school told
them that the authorities had demanded that he should immediately halt the
meeting. Organisers were forced to meet individual participants
privately.
Even at this early stage of the research, FAR organisers noticed that
participants were afraid to speak freely and responded with terse
answers. "It was obvious that they were
afraid." Some even believed it was
a trap devised by the authorities. "They all demanded that the content
of the meetings and their names be kept confidential." Participants
later told the researchers that on their return home they were
immediately subjected to police surveillance.
Between August and October focus groups were due to take place in
northern Azerbaijan, but with even less success. "Despite our approaches to the
executive authorities of four northern regions - Balakan , Zakatala
[Zaqatala], Oguz and Sheki [Şaki] - not even in one of them
were we given permission to hold meetings with representatives of
religious communities and other interested individuals," the organisers report
sadly. "Therefore, as on previous occasions we had to work without
official permission." Organisers were finally able to hold meetings in
the local administration building in one village in Sheki region,
though the administration leader asked the organisers to keep the meeting
secret.
"The representatives of the clergy present at the meeting refused
point-blank to give their names, citing the unfriendly attitude towards
them of the law-enforcement and state security agencies." (For an
example of the local authorities hostile attitude see F18News 1
December
2004 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=466
).
For more background information see Forum 18's Azerbaijan religious
freedom
survey at http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=92
A printer-friendly map of Azerbaijan is available at
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/index.html?Parent=asia&Rootmap=azerba
AZERBAIJAN: THE BOY WHO (OFFICIALLY) DOESN'T EXIST
By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service
Although officially he does not exist, 18-month-old Luka Eyvazov
appears to be real enough. Observed by Forum 18 News Service on 26 November, Luka
laughed, cried and played with his parents' telephone in their home in
the village of Aliabad in the north-western region of Zakatala [Zaqatala]
close to the border with Georgia. Despite repeated attempts by his parents,
who are Baptists, the local civil registration office has consistently
refused to issue a birth certificate because they do not wish to register
children with Christian names. "We have letters from village residents and 98
per cent are opposed to registering Christian names," Aybeniz
Kalashova of the local registration office in the regional centre
Zakatala told Forum 18 on 1 December.
"This is ridiculous," remarked a member of a Christian community
in the capital Baku, who works in the legal field, on being told of the
problems in Zakatala region. "You can call your child 'Communist' or
'Tractor'," she told Forum 18 on 29 November. "Why not a
Christian name?" Believers of a variety of faiths and human rights
activists told Forum 18 they were not aware of such restrictions in any
other part of Azerbaijan, even those populated by ethnic minorities.
"Luka is not an Azerbaijani name," Mehman Soltanov of the Justice
Ministry's civil registration department told Forum 18 from Baku on 1
December. "Why did they choose a religious name?" Soltanov, who
wrote to tell Luka's father Novruz Eyvazov on 5 April that he had
issued "appropriate instructions" to Kalashova's office, speculated to
Forum 18 that it was not the parents who had chosen this name but
"some religious sect".
Indeed, in her 1 May response to Novruz Eyvazov, which Forum 18 has
seen, Kalashova complained that "during the chaos and anarchy in the country
in 1989-90, foreign missionaries came to the village of Aliabad and
tried to conduct subversive activity, spreading the Christian faith of the
Baptist sect among the population, and tried to change surnames and
first names, changing them into Georgian and Christian names, strengthening
separatist sentiment and setting friend against friend". She claimed
local villagers had protested against such activity. She asked Eyvazov
to "respect and honour the desire and wish of the inhabitants of
Aliabad".
Kalashova refused to explain to Forum 18 why the complaints of other
local residents affected Eyvazov's right to register the birth of his child
with the name he and his wife have chosen. "Why are you interfering in the
internal affairs of Azerbaijan?" she asked Forum 18.
In a second interview later on 1 December, Soltanov told Forum 18 he
had spoken to Kalashova at the Zakatala civil registration office and that
Luka's parents should go once again and would receive the birth
certificate. "They won't have any problems now," he pledged.
Children's births in Azerbaijan are generally registered at the place
where their parents are registered to live. As Azerbaijani citizens and
registered residents of Aliabad, the Eyvazov couple originally tried to
register Luka's birth at the local village administration, which is
where they first encountered a refusal. They failed too at the regional level
in Zakatala, both before and after taking their case to Soltanov at the
Justice Ministry in Baku.
"We told the officials we had chosen the name Luka, but they refused
to register it, complaining that we were spreading Christianity,"
Novruz Eyvazov recalled. "We went many times to ask what basis they
had to interfere in our family life. They indicated there was pressure
on them from on high."
He insists that a child is from God. "When they told me to choose the
name of a famous Azerbaijani poet or writer instead," he told Forum
18, "I responded that Luke, as one of the Gospel-writers, will still
be famous when all the poets and writers are long forgotten."
Speaking to Forum 18 on 27 November in his office at the village
administration, village leader Gasim Orujov claimed that the refusal to
register Christian first names had been resolved. "The civil
registration office has corrected this in the past year," he claimed
(wrongly). "It is no longer a problem." Reminded of the
continuing refusal to give a birth certificate to Luka Eyvazov, Orujov
declared: "Let his parents come. I'll give them the certificate."
However, when Novruz Eyvazov went to his office on 29 November, Orujov
said the decision lay with the regional office at Zakatala.
The Eyvazov family - like the vast majority of Aliabad's 10,000
inhabitants - are members of the Ingilo minority, ethnic Georgians
who were converted to Islam several centuries ago. Most retain their
Muslim faith with varying degrees of observance. The village mosque remains
the only registered religious community, as the three existing Baptist
communities do not have registration.
Since Christianity took hold in the village a decade ago, adherents
have faced strong pressure from the village authorities. Although the
Eyvazovs' church is part of a Baptist network that refuses on principle to
register with the authorities in any of the former Soviet republics where it
operates, two other Baptist communities in Aliabad have been repeatedly
denied registration (see forthcoming F18News article).
"Without a birth certificate, Luka will not be able to go to
kindergarten or to school, get treatment in a hospital if he should
need it or travel abroad," Zaur Balayev, pastor of one of the Baptist
communities which is seeking registration told Forum 18 in Aliabad on
26 November. He related that Luka's case is only the latest in a string of
similar refusals to register the births of children given Georgian
and/or Christian first names by their parents.
Novruz Eyvazov told Forum 18 that when his third child was born, it had
taken him three months to register his birth with the name Moisei
(Moses).
Another local Baptist, Ramiz Osmanov, told Forum 18 on 27 November that
the civil registration authorities only issued a birth certificate for his
son Daniil (who is now aged three) when he was six months old. Osmanov said
he had been forced to take his case to officials in Baku before he was
given the birth certificate. Baptist villager and pastor Hamid Shabanov told
Forum 18 that the civil registration authorities had rejected the name
Samson for his grandson. In the end the parents chose Daud (David),
knowing they would never get a birth certificate with the name Samson.
Members of the Georgian Orthodox minority in the neighbouring Kakh
[Qax] region told Forum 18 at Kakh's Orthodox church on 27 November that they
had no problem registering the births of their children with Georgian
religious names. Aliabad's Baptists say such problems do not exist either in the
Balakan [Balakän] region north of Zakatala, which also has an Ingilo
minority.
Balayev pointed out that members of neighbouring Georgia's large ethnic
Azeri minority do not have problems freely choosing names for their
children.
Minority in Azerbaijan gets rid of Armenian Politically Incorrect Landmark
NIJ, Azerbaijan (AFP) - Feb 17/05 - When a Christian people in this predominantly Muslim republic ground away the Armenian inscriptions from the walls of a church and tombs last month to erase evidence linking them to Azerbaijan's foe, they thought they had the interests of their small community in mind
But now the tiny Christian church in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan has become the focus of a big scandal as the Udi minority struggles to find its identity in an ideological minefield.
The church, which has not been used since Azerbaijan became part of the Soviet Union, has become the center of a dispute between the Norwegian backers of the reconstruction, who consider the alterations to be vandalism, and the Udi community.
"We have no God, our people lost their religion under communism and this church is our only hope of reviving it," said Georgi Kechaari, one of the village elders who doubles as the ethnic group's historian.
"But we live in Azerbaijan, and when people came into the church and saw Armenian letters, they automatically associated us with Armenians," he said.
The Udi, who once used the Armenian alphabet, have struggled to separate their legacy from that of their fellow Christians, the Armenians, who fought a war with Azerbaijan and have been vilified here.
Erupting just before the break-up of the Soviet Union, the war cost both countries tens of thousands of lives but Azerbaijan lost Nagorno-Karabakh - an ethnic Armenian enclave - and seven other surrounding regions which have been under Armenian control since the two countries signed an uneasy ceasefire agreement in 1994.
Since then nearly everything associated with Armenia in Azerbaijan has been wiped away, although hundreds of thousands of Armenians lived here before the war.
Armenian-sounding city names have been changed, streets named after Armenians have been replaced with politically correct Azeri surnames, while Soviet history glorifying Armenian communist activists has been rewritten in school textbooks.
But the white-stone church in Nij, some two centuries old, had not been tampered with until the Udi undertook to reconstruct it with help from the state financed Norwegian Humanitarian Enterprise (NHE).
"It was a beautiful inscription, 200 years old, it even survived the war," Norway's Ambassador to Azerbaijan Steinar Gil told AFP. "This is an act of vandalism and Norway in no way wants to be associated with it."
But the Udis insist they erased the inscriptions to right a historic wrong.
Kechaari alleged that the Armenian inscriptions, which stated that the Church was built in 1823, were fakes put there by Armenians in the 1920s so that they could make historical claims to it.
The Udis are the last surviving tribe of the Caucasus Albanians, a group unrelated to the Mediterranean Albanians, whose Christian kingdom ruled this region in medieval times before Turkic hordes swept in from Central Asia in the 13th and 15th centuries.
They number under 10,000 people and Nij is the only predominantly Udi village to survive to this day, and although they call themselves Christian, there is little that Christians from other parts of the world would find in common with them.
The Udis have not had a pastor for nearly a century and celebrate Islamic holidays together with their Muslim neighbors.
But while the Udis soul search for an identity, Azerbaijan has used their legacy to strengthen its claims to Karabakh.
Armenians argue that the multitude of churches in the occupied region proves that they as a Christian people can lay a historic claim to it. But Azeris, who consider themselves to be the descendants of Albanians who were assimilated into a Turkic group, say the area is rightfully theirs because the churches were actually built by their ancestors the Albanians.
To the Udi, who used Armenian script when their church was built, toeing the official Azeri line has become more of a priority than historical accuracy.
The perception that they are one with the Armenians has meant that there has been little trust from the authorites; Udi men for example were only allowed to start serving in the Azeri Army two years ago.
But their use of power tools to fit the status quo took their Norwegian sponsors by surprise.
"They think they have erased a reminder of being Armenian ... instead they have taken away the chance to have a good image when the church is inaugurated," the director of the NHE in Azerbaijan, Alf Henry Rasmussen said, adding that a visit to the church by Norway's prime minister will probably now be cancelled.
"Everyone will stare at the missing stones, I'm not quite sure if we can continue our work there," Rasmussen said.
Military ties substitutes for Helping Human Rights on the ground
"We intend to continue [our] military to military relationship with the new administration here," Donald Rumsfeld said on a visit to the capital Baku.
He appeared to evade a press question about the alleged vote-rigging which handed Ilham Aliyev the presidency.
The US, he said, would do more to help Baku fight terror and drug trafficking.
"The goal would be to work with the Azerbaijani navy and maritime forces," Mr Rumsfeld told reporters after talks with the Azerbaijani Defence Minister, Safar Abiyev.
Earlier, he had talks with President Aliyev who described the US as a "strategic partner for Azerbaijan".
Washington is believed to view the oil-rich Caspian state as an alternative source of fuel to the unstable Gulf region and there is speculation that it would like to base troops in the ex-Soviet republic.
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THERE IS NOT ONE CHRISTIAN NATION ON EARTH WHERE MUSLIMS ARE PERSECUTED.
Yet in most nations where the majority of the population are Muslims, there is systematic government persecution of Christians.
"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."
--Article 18 of the Universal
Declaration of
Human
Rights--
Christian Conversions - According to the Bible - Can NEVER be forced.
Any Conversion to Christianity which would be "Forced" would NOT be recognized by God. It is in
His True and KIND nature, that those who come to Him and choose to believe in Him, must come to Him OF
THEIR OWN FREE WILL.
Don't Let anyone tell you that Christians support Forced Conversions.
That is False. True Christianity is NEVER forced.
Core Universal Rights
The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one's belief or religion
The right to join together and express one's belief