May (Web-only) 2000

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Documents alleging the detention of a Mongolian citizen of ethnic Kazakh descent on religious grounds have been termed "a complete hoax" by translation experts who examined them in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar today.The handwritten documents claimed that Marat Kojash had been arrested and sentenced to 13 years in a prison camp last November for spreading Christian propaganda in the remote Bayan-Olgey province of western Mongolia.The packet of official-looking documents was mailed to a group of Christians in Kazakhstan who had been corresponding with Kojash for a year, after he wrote in to a Christian radio broadcast. Although the certificates were stamped with red seals and signed by purported police officials, none were in fact legal documents."All of these are private documents," noted a translator who studied copies of the entire set of papers, "and there is no police seal or court seal on any of them." In contrast to official documents, he said, they were all handwritten, instead of typed; the seals were round, instead of square in shape; and none were on official letterhead stationery of a court or police department.An alleged receipt marked in the corner as Kojash's "fine" was in fact a standard checkbook stub for a bank withdrawal, and the red-ink seals were from Branch 3029 of the privately run Agricultural Cooperative Union.In addition, the texts of supposedly parallel Mongolian and Kazakh statements were not inclusive, he said. The Mongolian text merely stated Kojash had been sent into exile, while the Kazakh text specified he was to be exiled for 13 years for his "crime." A letter in the Kazakh language from Kojash's father claimed his son had been sent to prison."This is a deliberate attempt to deceive ...