Updated Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Baptist pastor arrested in Azerbaijan

Baptist World Alliance

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Hamid Shabanov, a Baptist pastor in Aliabad in the Central Asian country of Azerbaijan, was arrested June 20.

Elnur Jabiyev, General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Azerbaijan (BUA), reported that the "police claim to have found an illegal weapon in his home."

Denying the allegations against Shabanov, and suggesting that the weapon was planted by the police, Jabiyev stated that the arrest "was a provocation by the police," and that it was "a deliberately targeted action." The BUA leader asserted that "the police's aim is to halt Baptist activity and close the church in Aliabad."

Shabanov's arrest follows on that of Zaur Balaev in May of last year, who also pastors a Baptist church in Aliabad. Balaev was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison in August 2007, but was released in March after protests from the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) and the European Baptist Federation (EBF), one of six continental unions of the BWA.

Both Balaev and Shabanov pastor house churches with memberships of between 50 and 60 members each.

BWA president David Coffey stated that "the BWA will do all we can to publicize among the world family what has happened in Aliabad" and that "the global family" will be praying for the Shabanov family.

General Secretary Neville Callam expressed his disappointment at the arrest. "We are registering our grave disappointment at the denial of religious freedom that is evident in Azerbaijan," the BWA leader said. "Our Baptist brothers and sisters in Azerbaijan should be completely assured of the BWA commitment to pray for them as they struggle in the context of oppression, and, as an expression of our historic commitment to personal liberty, freedom, and justice, to make representation on their behalf."

General Secretary for the EBF, Tony Peck, said, "The EBF is shocked and dismayed to learn that another pastor, Pastor Hamid Shabanov, has been arrested in Aliabad, Azerbaijan, by the police on what clearly seem to be false charges." Peck, who is also BWA Regional Secretary for Europe, appealed to Baptists on the continent to "contact the Azerbaijani Embassy in your own country if there is one, and protest this latest violation of religious freedom."

He also called "on all the member unions and conventions of the EBF to pray for this situation, that Pastor Hamid might be freed quickly." He urged Baptists "to pray that the Azerbaijani's declared commitment to religious freedom might translate into an ending of the harassment and persecution of Baptists and other minority churches in their country."