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Hostility Toward Humanitarian Foundations Last Updated 1/20/2008 |
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From 1999-2001, we got our visas through a church in Petropavlovsk. Beginning in 2002 we started getting our visas through a humanitarian foundation called: "My Sheep Hear My Voice" of which I am the director and founder. Molly and the kids are volunteers. Now that our church is registered I am working on getting our visas through the church. But the process requires me to first obtain "permission to conduct missionary activity" every year. Getting that permission is a long process and has to be done every year. In the mean time our visas come through our humanitarian foundation.
In the last 5 years it has become more and more difficult to operate foreign controlled Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) here in Kazakhstan. Our humanitarian foundation (which is of these foreign controlled NGOs) was investigated by the Justice Department twice in the space of 11 months. Both investigations found that we were squeaky clean even though the investigator was ordered (right in front of me) to find problems even if there weren't any. Every NGO in Kazakhstan went through the same investigations. Official Policy seems to be anti-NGO (if it is foreign controlled) . The current harassment seems to be aimed at shutting down all foreign controlled NGO's or at least making it very difficult for them to operate.
For example: - All of our foreign doctors have either left or are only seeing American patients. They refused to pay the bribes that are necessary to gain permission to practice here. - The Korean-run hospital which had served the poor of Kazakhstan since the fall of communism was shut down and sued by the government of Kazakhstan for about 1 million dollars. - The parliament is attempting to pass a law taxing all foreign aid to the tune of 30%. - Procedures for obtaining visas through NGOs have also become much more lengthy and difficult. Some years we have an easy time of it and some years we don't. You can read more about this process and find out about our long term plans for visas at: The Road to Bishkek: How We Spent Our Summer Vacation Getting Visas.
Our NGO's name "My Sheep Hear My Voice" was read (along with the names of several others) on the floor of the national parliament of Kazakhstan by an irate parliamentarian arguing that NGO's are harmful and introduce dangerous "western" ideas that disturb the peace. They showed him reading the list on national TV here. He never contacted me to ask what we did here. But, the justice department did contact me. They asked me to provide an explanation of the name of our NGO, which I did in writing and in person to the investigator. We read through the passage in John 10 that the name is taken from. A few weeks later I had to sign a document agreeing to allow a special committee in the capital to research the issue and abide by their decision. They did their research and decided that the name does come from the Bible. They also decided that since it comes from the Bible we don't have to change it. Only God could cause a government committee in Kazakhstan to study the tenth chapter of John. Specifically to verify that that Jesus did say: "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand." After many years of harassment and questioning whether giving our foundation such an overtly Christian name was the right decision, I'm so glad we did it.
Please Pray that the hostility will cease. For now, we will continue to operate the NGO and transfer all of the humanitarian work over to the church when it reaches the point at which it can be registered. I am also going to try to get visas through a good Russian friend of mine named Renat. For more info on that see: The Road to Bishkek: How We Spent Our Summer Vacation Getting Visas.
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