KAZAKHSTAN: “We have experts to check icons”
ICC Note: 
Twelve icons and three Bibles were confiscated from a bookstore in Kazakhstan and have not yet been returned. “The Kazakh state must defend our citizens from harmful materials,” an official said. The bookstore owner faces an administrative case and heavy fines.
 
By Felix Corley
1/8/2014 Kazakhstan (Forum 18)-The owner of a bookshop in Oral (Uralsk) in West Kazakhstan Region is facing an administrative case after he was discovered during “verification measures” to be selling icons and Bibles without the required state licence, Forum 18 News Service has learned. “Everything is OK now – he has agreed not to sell religious materials,” Salamat Zhumagulov, the state religious affairs official who seized the items from him in October 2013, told Forum 18 from Oral. The bookseller, Aleksandr Surkov, is likely to be fined. The 12 icons and three Bibles have not been returned.
Saktagan Sadvokasov, spokesperson for the government’s Agency of Religious Affairs (ARA) in the capital Astana, defended the seizure of the icons and Bibles. “These can only be sold with a licence,” he told Forum 18 on 6 January.
Asked why selling religious materials requires a state licence under Kazakhstan’s harsh state-imposed religious censorship system, Sadvokasov insisted: “The Kazakh state must defend our citizens from harmful materials. Religious materials need to be checked.” Asked whether he has ever encountered icons which are harmful, he responded: “We have experts to check icons.”
An employee of Surkov’s shop confirmed that as of 3 January the confiscated Bibles and icons have not been returned. “We can’t sell such things now,” the employee lamented to Forum 18.
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