If it is adopted unchanged it would be the most repressive religious law in the Central Asia as reported by Igor Rotar (Forum 18).
Therefore in July 2007 Christian leaders addressed the President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon http://woltj.my1.ru/news/2007-07-09-4 the Chair of the Parliament and the Deputy Minister of Culture with an appeal signed by 22 religious minorities to amend the draft Law at a meeting in the capital Dushanbe on 28 June.
Presently international communities continue to address the Chair of the Committee on Religious Affaires M. Davlatov (author of the draft Law) to amend it as it violates the rights of believers and especially Christians who is minority in Tajikistan and compose 3% with Protestant Christians about 0.02 per cent of the population while 97% belong to Muslim confessions www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/35488.htm.
According to Felix Corley “The first ten articles of the draft Law affirms the equality of all faiths before the law, non-interference of the state in religious communities' activity, the rights of religious communities to manage their own affairs and select their own leadership, and the rights of individuals and religious communities to conduct worship, teach religion and use religious literature.
Article 30 specifically allows individuals and religious communities to hold worship services in private homes and to establish dedicated places of worship. However, many articles of the draft go on to undermine and contradict all these rights.”
For example Article 7 of the new Law (on the non-interference of the state and its agencies in the activity of religious associations), saying that …”actions aiming to convert people from one faith to another are forbidden, as are any other charitable or missionary works that appear to put intellectual, psychological or any other kind of pressure on citizens for the purpose of proselytism”… wasn’t abolished despite pressing requests of the Christian leaders expressed to the Committee of Religious Affaires in 2006.
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