Testimony of Felice Gaer, Chair, United States
Commission on International Religious Freedom
Before the Subcommittee on
Human Rights, International Organizations, and International Terrorism of the
Committee on Foreign Affairs, June 10, 2009: The Uighurs: A History of Persecution.
Kazakhstan: Tougher Religion Law Under Constitutional Review.
At a meeting on religious freedom and violence at the Jacob Blaustein Institute in New York on December 8, 2009, Cole Durham, director of the Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University Law School and member of the OSCE Advisory Panel on Freedom of Religion, explained that Kazakhstan tightened its law on religion in response to two factors: an influx of various people from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan with a background in extremism and the spread of groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir seeking rule by a caliphate; and increased proselytizing of "new religions" which could be construed as "any denomination formed since [the days of Martin] Luther and [John] Calvin," Durham said.