Algeria shuts down Protestant churches, police arrest worshipers
“This last notification is not the result of coincidence, but a provocative response to the sit-in of October 9 in front of the Bejaia Province headquarters,” said EPA head Pastor Salah Chalah.
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALA Protestant Berber woman sings during a mass at a church in the Berber capital of Tizi Ouzou, 100 km (60 miles) east of Algeria's capital Algiers, October 2, 2010. Under Algerian law, all faiths are allowed to practise if they meet certain conditions. But there has been tension between the Christia(photo credit: REUTERS/ZOHRA BENSEMRA)
The arrests of Protestant worshipers in Algeria coincided with the closure of three Protestant churches, which were shuttered by authorities as a retaliation against the Protestant Church of the Full Gospel of Tizi Ouzou because of a sit-in that Christians organized at the Bejaia Province headquarters, according to Pastor Salah Chalah, head of the Protestant Church of Algeria umbrella group l’Église Protestante d’Algérie (EPA).The Morning Star News, a Christian media website, reported earlier this month that Protestants protested the closure of two churches.Human Rights Watch said Algerian police raided the Full Gospel Church on October 15 and assaulted worshipers, including Chalah. Police then arrested dozens of Protestant protesters on October 17, who were demonstrating against the repression of their faith in front of the Tizi Ouzou governorate, according to Human Rights Watch.The Full Gospel Church is the largest Protestant church in Algeria, with 1,000 members. Algerian authorities closed two additional churches in Tizi Ouzou, including a 500-member church in Makouda.“To shed light, this last notification is not the result of coincidence, but a provocative response to the sit-in of October 9 in front of the Bejaia Province headquarters,” Chalah said.The Morning Star News reported that Chalah and “fellow pastor Tarek Berki arrived at the police station to find the church closure notice dated October 9, when leaders of various EPA-affiliated churches staged the sit-in.”“After Tarek read the notification, they asked me to sign it, which I refused to do,” Chalah explained. “But they said they were going to act anyway. Then I told them, ‘Anyway, on your arrival, we will wait for you [with as many people] as possible inside the room of worship in praise and prayer.”’The Makouda church was packed with worshipers protesting its closure.“Today, two of the largest churches in Algeria have been closed,” an EPA church spokesperson told the US-based International Christian Concern organization on condition of anonymity, adding that: “We do not understand the relentless injustice of the Algerian government towards us. They refuse to hear us or listen to us.”The news outlet wrote that the governor of Oran Province, some 400 kilometers west of Algiers, “filed a court complaint against the re-opened churches for non-conformity with law.”“Reports of rising levels of religious intolerance in Algeria are once again causing a great level of concern for ICC and our partners,” said Matias Perttula, ICC’s advocacy director. “These church closures are completely baseless and clear indicators of persecution and harassment of Algeria’s Christians, who represent a significant religious minority. ICC plans to raise this issue with our partners as well as members of Congress on Capitol Hill to make them aware of these human rights violations.”The EPA has 46 affiliate churches, and officials from the organization have departed to France, Belgium, the UK and the US “to explain their plight and seek support. They seek reopening of the worship places, the end of Law 06/03 and freedom to import Bibles and other Christian literature,” it reported.Also known as the 2006 Law, Law 06/03 requires churches to secure permission from a federal committee to be registered. Religious freedom advocates say the Algerian authorities refuse to grant applications.“The closure of churches is an unacceptable attack on human rights,” Volker Beck, an associate lecturer at the Center for Religious Studies at Ruhr University in Germany, told The Jerusalem Post. “It shows that the human rights of minorities, whether religious minorities or LGBTQ people, are not well off.”He added that it “shows that the idea of the federal [German] government to declare Algeria to be a safe country of origin is unjustified.”Beck, a former Green Party politician, said he wishes that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas would “raise their voices for the religious freedom of repressed protestants and free church worshipers in Algeria.”According to Human Rights Watch, these three closures bring the number of Protestant churches shut down by the government since November 2018 to 12.“Algerian authorities should allow religious minorities the same freedom to practice their faith as the Muslim majority,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “All churches that have been shut arbitrarily should be allowed to reopen.”Algeria’s has a population of 42 million and the state religion is Islam. Morning Star News reported that “Algerian officials estimate the number of Christians at 50,000, but others say it could be twice that number.”
