wfn.org | Azeri TV Channel Slanders Local Adventist Church

[APD <APD_Info_Schweiz@compuserve.com>]

July 8, 2001
Adventist Press Service (APD)
Christian B. Schaeffler, Editor-in-chief
CH-4003 Basel, Switzerland
Fax +41-61-261 61 18
APD@stanet.ch
http://www.stanet.ch/APD

Azeri TV Channel Slanders Local Adventist Church -
Religion Minister Says Some Foreign Missions Will 
Lose Registration

Istanbul, Turkey. (Compass/APD)    A Television news 
program deliberately misrepresenting a Seventh-day 
Adventist church in Azerbaijan in early June has 
prompted strong objections from local church leaders.

Calling the TV report "an insult to our members," the 
executive committee of the Ganja Adventist Church 
fired off a protest letter five days later to
top government and media officials in the Central 
Asian republic, including President Heidar Aliyev.

The June 12 letter declared that the untrue and 
sensationalized report was "incompatible with the 
ethics of journalism," and demanded that the ANS TV
channel "apologize for the lie they spread regarding 
the Adventist community."

ANS TV, one of Azerbaijan's leading independent TV 
stations, broadcast a five-minute "documentary clip" 
on the Ganja Adventist Church on its prime-time 
"Xaberler" program on June 7. The program, which was 
repeated several times over the next three days, had 
been secretively videotaped by an Azeri journalist 
and her cameraman over a period of two weeks.

According to Adventist Pastor Ivan Zavrichko in 
Ganju, some 215 miles west of the capital Baku, a 
woman named Shahla Abdinova and her friend
identified only as Ilgar visited their weekly worship 
service on May 19.

When the two announced they wanted to join the 
religious community just a week later, Zavrichko 
asked her directly if she was a journalist. When she
denied it, the pastor suggested that before making 
such an important decision, the two first learn the 
church's teachings, based on the Bible.

Over the next three weeks, the two attended all the 
church's services, visited the homes of several 
Adventist believers, and then attended a
church wedding on June 2. At the ceremony, Ilgar 
brought along a video camera, offering to videotape 
the entire celebration as a present to the
bridegroom. Although the man shot considerable 
videotape, even asking people to pose with their 
Bibles and children to pretend they were praying,
he failed to give the video to the new couple.

Two days later, Zavrichko said the journalists joined 
in a youth outing in the countryside, where "without 
forewarning Ilgar started to video everything." When 
Ilgar started asking people to explain how they had
become Adventists, the group asked jokingly, "What TV 
channel is this going to appear on?" Ilgar also 
denied any media links, replying he was just
videotaping this for himself, in order to convince 
his parents why he wanted to become an Adventist.

Three days later, ANS TV broadcast the program about 
the Adventist community of Ganja, with Abdinova as 
narrator and Ilgar as cinematographer.

"The program . propagated intolerance and served to 
create a disrespectful attitude toward these 
citizens, based only on the fact that they meet on a
religious basis," the church's June 12 protest letter 
stated.

It also rejected ANS TV's misrepresentation of their 
church as "an unknown, secret and almost covert 
organization." Seventh-day Adventists trace their
existence in Azerbaijan back 100 years, and were 
registered as a legal religious community 32 years 
ago. After the republic declared its independence, 
the Adventist church was reregistered by the Azeri 
Ministry of Justice in May 1994 and again in December 
1999.

ANS TV also claimed that thousands of Azeri citizens 
were accepting Adventist teaching, whereas the church 
said their numbers did not exceed 400 nationwide. 
Less than a third of those are in Ganja, Compass was 
told.

Implying that Adventists were a "threat to the 
nation," the news show claimed that all church 
members were required to bring 12 converts into the
church, and that their adherents "do not love the 
motherland or the government."

During the broadcast, Abdinova declared that the 
Adventist church was being financed in Azerbaijan by 
the Adventist Development and Relief Agency
(ADRA). The relief agency has been working in the 
country since 1993 to provide relief aid for 
refugees, migrants and the physically disabled
caused by the war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. 
But according to church leaders, the local Adventist 
community is "totally separate" from ADRA, and 
depends on it "neither financially nor morally."

Concurrent with the "Xaberler" show, daily newspapers 
came out with articles and interviews during the 
second and third weeks of June, denouncing by name a 
number of Christian groups accused of being involved
in "dangerous foreign missionary activity." 

In an interview with Mustapha Ibragimov, the minister 
of religious affairs in the Cabinet of Ministers, 
"Our Age" newspaper stressed on June 12 that
foreign mission groups were thriving in the areas of 
Azerbaijan most sensitive to ethnic separatism, 
particularly in the north of the country. Ibragimov 
stated that due to Azerbaijan's socio-economic 
standards, Western-funded missionaries were using 
financial enticements to get "greedy people with a 
weak will" to change their religion.

Noting that Azerbaijan was in the process of 
toughening its laws against foreigners propagating 
religion in the country, Ibragimov admitted the
Ministry of Justice was already planning to cancel 
the registration of some foreign mission 
organizations which "somehow were registered in 1993-
1994,"although he declined to give any specific 
names. (Editor Barbara G. Baker for Compass Direct)