The two are accused of swindling money out of two old women. For local Jehovah's Witnesses, the charges are designed to push the community outside of the law.

Bishkek (AsiaNews/Forum18) - Two Jehovah's Witnesses in Kyrgyzstan's southern Osh Region were arrested on 20 March on charges of defrauding two old women. As a result, a judge placed 33-year-old Oksana Sergienko Koryakina and her mother Nadezhda under house arrest pending the conclusion of the investigation. Local Jehovah's Witnesses reacted immediately, calling the accusations "bizarre" and "ludicrous".

According to police investigator Major Nurdin Joroev, an elderly woman was tricked into handing over her savings of 130,000 soms (US$ 2,700) in order to be rid of a curse. However, nothing points to the Jehovah's Witnesses as the culprits, and the victim of the fraud was unable to identify Nadezhda Sergienko as the woman who came to her home on 15 March with her daughter.

Oksana Koryakina was also accused by police investigator Nargiza Abdrahmanova of involvement in another scam in Osh on 9 December 2012. In this case, the alleged victim claimed to have recognised Koryakina as the woman who visited her house that day, taking, in a similar fashion, a sum of 106,400 soms (US$ 2,200). However, the young woman has an alibi: on that day, she and her husband were attending a Jehovah's Witnesses meeting in Jalalabad.

For anonymous sources in the community, the incident is part of a wider policy of government intimidation against the religious minority. "The real motivation for the charges seems to be an effort by local officials to have one or more Jehovah's Witnesses convicted for some type of criminal activity in order to brand their religious activity as being illegal," a Jehovah's Witness told Forum 18.

However, for Kanybek Mamatalivev, of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, there is no "pressure" against the community.

Such incidents are not new. In 2011, two young Jehovah's Witnesses were sentenced to seven years in prison, where they spent nine months before their conviction was overturned.

Jehovah's Witness sources note that, in all these cases, their members were arrested after local authorities refused to consider their community's application for official registration.

The same sources added that the government is also tightening restrictions against all religious minorities.

 

• kyrgyzstan
• jehovah’s
• witness
• repression
• oppression