Kazakhstan: Church Meeting Banned

Two church groups that have been meeting at a university in central Almaty, Kazakhstan, are now prohibited from using the school’s facilities. City officials told staff at the International University of Information Technology that renting space to religious communities is now banned. University officials had no choice but to comply with the ban. “We want to continue to rent to them,” a university official said. “It was profitable for us.”

The two Protestant churches rented a conference room in the university building on Sundays, when the building was otherwise empty. The churches had rented the room from the building’s previous owners, but shortly after the university acquired the building, officials told university staff that the religious meetings had to cease.

The head of the district’s Internal Policy Department, which handles religious issues, denied that the university had been banned from renting to religious communities. Another senior religious affairs official said that “it could well be” that churches are not allowed to meet on university property. “The reason is very simple,” he told Forum 18. “Education is completely separate from religion.” He declined to explain how renting space in an unoccupied university building on a weekend violates the separation of education and religion.

Source: Forum 18 News