IRFN (July 16-23): Cambodian Ban on Monks’ Right to Vote Lifted

 

Feature: Mr. Steve Cohen (D.-TN) has introduced legislation, titled HR6146, which is designed to protect Americans from the defamation judgments of foreign courts that violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. If passed the legislation may remedy to a U.N. proposal which would prohibit “defamatory” speech of an idea rather than a person. Read more here. 

 

Serbia has arrested ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who has been in hiding for more than a decade and was responsible for organizing the deadly siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of thousands of Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica. AP has more.

 

Update: David Wells, a Canadian Chaplain, discusses the challenges and government restrictions he will face in administering to the athletes at this years Olympics. The Canadian Press has more.  

 

 

PHNOM PENH – On July 27 Cambodian monks will have the opportunity to vote in their first general election since they led anti-government demonstrations again Prime Minister Hun Sen’s election a decade ago, AFP reported on July 22. The Supreme Patriarch Tep Vong, who initiated the ban, retracted it this past year on the grounds that it is important for Cambodian democracy that monks have the right to vote. There are reports however, that government officials have met with monks instructing them to vote for their party.

 

MOSCOW – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will no longer send US missionaries to Russia due to new visa restrictions, The Salt Lake Tribune reported on July 16. Russia now requires foreigners on humanitarian visas to leave the country every three months to renew their visas. There are currently 19,180 Russian LDS members in the nation. National Security Adviser Alexander Lebed condemned the LDS Church in 1996, saying its missionaries, like all foreign churches, should be forbidden access to the country. 

 

 

THIMPHU – On July 18 the King of Bhutan officially recognized the nation’s constitution, which has taken seven years to formalize, Reuters reported on July 18. The new constitution establishes the nation as a democracy. It provides special national status to Buddhism, but bars monks from voting. The constitution guarantees freedom of speech, thought, conscience and religion. The King remains as head of the state.

 

 

ROME - Italy's Interior Ministry issued guidelines for a census of the country's Roma (Gypsy) population on July 22, the AP reported on July 22. The census includes taking fingerprints of individuals who do not have valid ID, and, in Naples, authorities collected information on religion and ethnicity. The European Union and human rights groups in Italy have criticized the government on the grounds that the census singles out a minority group.

 

 

MINSK – The Grodno Regional Court found Valentin Borovik guilty on July 9 of violating Article 14 of the Belarusian Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religion (LFCR) and Article 9.9 of the Administrative Violations Code and he has been find 315,000 rubles, BosNewsLife reported on July 23. Belarus’ religious legislation requires that new religious organizations have at least twenty members over the age of eighteen present at services. Valentin Borovik has defended himself saying that he “was merely organizing a meeting with other Christians to read the Bible and discuss religious questions,” not to set up a new religious branch.

 

 

YEKATERINBURG – On July 16 the Federal Security Service (FSB) searched a building used by Jehovah’s Witnesses in Yekaterinburg, during which they confiscated books, flyers and magazines owned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, The Other Russian reported on July 21. The FSB believes that the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ literature contains “extremist” views. The FSB agents seized the literature, to investigate the prosecution’s assertion that it is “overtly, clearly and directly aimed at inciting hatred, propaganda of the exclusivity of the Jehovah faith, and the humiliation of human dignity on account of a person’s attitude towards religion.” There has been an increase in the number of targeted Jehovah’s Witnesses’ groups over the past couple years in Russia.