16th June, 2006
STEFAN BOS

BosNewsLife.com

Energy rich states in the EU’s eastern neighborhood demonstrate an "alarming decline in democracy and accountability," according to a new study - a development which is expected to also impact religious minorities, including evangelicals and other Christians.

Published by Freedom House - a well known organization lobbying for the expansion of freedom throughout the world, the study Nations in Transit 2006 suggests that states such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan, "while increasing their economic power based on energy resources, are plagued by weak institutions, deteriorating governance standards, worsening media and judicial freedom, and rising corruption."

The study researchers urged German and other European as well as American leaders to keep pressuring the former Soviet republics to improve "good governance and regional reliability" amid fears energy needs will become more important for Western politicians seeking strategic partners than promoting democratic values.

Freedom House Europe (FHE), a Budapest-based group dedicated to promoting democratization in the greater European region which was involved in releasing the report, says that "as those states' energy resources are becoming more strategically important for Europe, this trend suggests uncertainty ahead both for the energy providers and consumers".

Anita Orban, deputy director of the International Center for Democratic Transition (ICDT) in Budapest, who supported the study, says that countries that are involved in democracy promotion may favor countries less than democratic to secure their own energy supplies."

"In the next decade one of the biggest enemies of democracy will be energy," she said in a statement to BosNewslife.

Nations in Transition editor Jeannette Goehring added that national leaders in the countries named "appear not to understand that improving accountability will provide what citizens want - prosperity and rule of law - and would give their states more options internationally"

"Instead, they are taking advantage of high energy prices by building authoritarian regimes that are unresponsive to their citizens and unreliable in the international sphere," she claimed.

She stressed that the study data "clearly shows a multi-year trend for these countries of moving away from democratic governance and toward authoritarian practices. Leaders are limiting or extinguishing freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom for citizens to have a say in the structures that govern their lives."

The report comes at a time when religious rights watchers fear authorities in these nations are attempting to control groups deemed dangerous to their power base, including evangelical Christians.

Religious rights group Forum 18 said in recent reports that Azerbaijan "tries to restrict" minority faiths, "including Evangelical Christians" as well as Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Hare Krishna community.

"Many religious communities have been denied registration," the group said.

In Kazakhstan, Forum 18 report, "religious communities - notably Protestant Christian and Hare Krishna religious minorities, as well as non-state controlled Muslims - continue to experience state hostility and attacks on their freedom to carry out peaceful religious activity. They added that the passage in 2005 of new "extremism" and "national security" laws has significantly worsened the de jure religious freedom situation Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile Forum 18 report that in Russia, "symbolic appearances of solidarity between President Putin and Russian Orthodox Moscow Patriarch Aleksi II - sometimes with representatives of the other 'traditional' confessions (Islam, Judaism and Buddhism) - often translate into regional state officials taking decisions in the interests of only these faiths, to the detriment of other confessions."

"This even takes place in areas, such as eastern Siberia, where Protestants have a longer tradition than some 'traditional' confessions."

The group said it was "unclear how deeply the symbiotic relationship between the state and 'traditional' confessions will develop".

"Should a state policy against 'non-traditional' confessions be pursued, Jehovah's Witnesses and Pentecostals are likely targets."

Ivan Krastev, the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, who contributed to the Nations in Transit 2006 report, suggested that "oil nationalism" in oil-rich Russia also added to the trend.

"In Russia, the new oligarchy is state officials. The transition has been from a one-party state to a one-pipeline state," he said.

In Turkmenistan, a country also prominently mentioned in the secular Freedom House study, Forum 18 says there are an "increasing number of Turkmen residents banned from leaving the country, because the authorities do not like their religious activity."

"Protestants are frequent victims of the exit ban policy, but others known to have been banned from exit are Hare Krishna devotees and Jehovah's Witnesses. The number of Muslim hajj pilgrims is also severely restricted."

The group said there had been an increase in attempts to impose a "state religious personality cult of President Niyazov" and added that Baptist and other churches and groups have been raided by security forces.

While Freedom House is concerned over developments across the region, its latest report makes clear that "Russia warrants special attention because it has enormous implications for the former Soviet region".

The Nations in Transit 2006 study rates national and local governance, media and judicial independence, electoral process, civil society, and corruption for 29 countries and territories in the EU and its eastern neighborhood, the authors said.

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