KHUJAND, March 27, 2012, Asia-Plus — Local authorities in the northern Sughd province are monitoring mosques to prevent children from attending prayers in school hours.
“Raids that have been made on mosques since March 12 have revealed 69 schoolchildren who visited mosques in school hours,” Azam Kholmirzoyev, the head of the Sughd commission for child’s rights, told Asia-Plus in an interview.
The children were not taken to police stations. “We respect religious feelings of children, but they must not spend too much time in mosques, to the detriment of their education,” Kholmirzoyev noted.
According to him, representatives from local authorities, education departments and police stations are participating in those raids. “The purpose of the raids is to insect the implementation of the law on the parental responsibilities that took effect on August 6, 2011,” Kholmirzoyev said.
He further added that the raids are made not only on mosques. “We also monitor public places, bazaars as well as buses and minivans, in which children are frequently used as conductors,” the Sughd official noted.
As a result of the raids, four criminal proceedings have been instituted under the provisions of Article 164 of Tajikistan’s Penal Code – preventing pupils from obtaining basic secondary education, which is punishable by a fine in the amount of 1,000 minimum wages or two years in prison, Kholmirzoyev said.
