(Forum 18) – In what may be linked moves, public prosecutor’s offices in central and southern Kazakhstan have both attacked the statutes of Protestant organizations, Forum 18 News Service has been told. In central Kazakhstan , the prosecutor is trying to close down a Baptist charitable fund which ran an orphanage that the authorities previously closed, and in the southern city of Almaty , prosecutors are trying to force a Protestant community’s statute to be re-written, which may result in its closure. Baptists in central Kazakhstan insist to Forum 18 that the moves are part of a recently toughened central government policy. But Protestants in Almaty have told Forum 18 that they are unsure whether the legal move against them is the result of central policy, or the result of local decisions.
