President Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan will not be challenging the finding of the Constitutional Council that the proposed new law amending various laws on religion is unconstitutional, reports Forum 18 News Service.
The Constitutional Council told Forum 18 News Service that the Presidential Administration has informed it that President Nazarbaev agrees with its finding and is not planning to challenge it.
However, Nikolai Golysin, the President’s deputy spokesperson, told Forum 18 that “the head of state has given no official information on this. I don’t know what official gave these remarks to the Constitutional Council.”
Many in Kazakhstan remain wary, certain that officials will try again to impose harsh new restrictions on freedom of religion and belief. “This is not the end of the attempt to adopt such a law,” Yevgeny Zhovtis, head of the Almaty-based Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, told Forum 18. “I think they will try again.” He believes fresh attempts could come in 2011 or 2012, after Kazakhstan has completed its chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). “But I’m not sure that they won’t try again in 2009.”
Report from the Christian Telegraph
Random Thoughts 