NEWS IN MARCH 2021
19 March
USCIRF: Religious freedom in Azerbaijan remains severely impeded by problematic legislation
The U.S. religious freedom body USCIRF urges the Azerbaijani government to amend the 2009 law “On Freedom of Religious Beliefs” to bring it into conformity with international standards.
The bipartisan commission, created in 1998 to make policy recommendations to the U.S. President, Secretary of State and Congress about global religious freedom, has recommended last year that the Department of State place Azerbaijan on its Special Watch List for its ongoing and systematic religious freedom violations.
USCIRF on Thursday released a country update on religious freedom conditions in Azerbaijan. While the authors welcomed news coinciding with the release of this report that Azerbaijan pardoned and will release a number of political prisoners, including as many as 31 religious activists, it also mentioned that religious freedom in the country “remains severely impeded by problematic legislation, particularly the country’s 2009 law “On Freedom of Religious Beliefs,” which the government has shown little interest in revising.”
The latest country update also details the many obstacles posed by mandatory registration and other restrictions on religious communities, the continued imprisonment of religious activists, and recent violations committed in the context of the renewed conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
25 March
Controversy over the Armenian church demolished in the town of Jabrayil
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The Zoravar Surb Astvatsatsin church at its opening in 2017 and in March 2021.
On 25 March, quoting the BBC journalist Jonah Fisher, the Armenian National Commission of UNESCO spread a report about the complete destruction of the Armenian Zoravar Surb Astvatsatsatsin Church in the town of Jabrayil. The journalist’s videoreport stated that he had seen on the Internet how the Azerbaijani soldiers demolished the cross placed on the church on 16 November, 2020, and thus partially destroyed the church. Afterwards, J. Fischer visited Jebrail and saw that the church had been completely destroyed. There was only a graveled flat area in the place where the church had once been located.
The fact provoked a considerable reaction in the Armenian and international mass media. The Azerbaijani authorities did not deny the fact, but claimed that it had not been a church there but a chapel that had been built on the occupied land in 2017. It was constructed for the Armenian soldiers stationed there and had no cultural value whatsoever. The Azerbaijani authorities further stated that as soon as the chapel construction on the occupied territory became known, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs lodged a protest. Based on the Azerbaijani request, in October 2017, the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs visited then occupied Jebrail and documented the illegal construction of the chapel.