A/HRC/7/10/Add.2 page 11 C. Acts of intolerance and other forms of discrimination with regard to religious minorities 28. In past years, several members of religious minorities have been murdered and there are indications that these acts were committed because of the victims’ religious affiliations. In 2004, the head of the local division of the Union of Baptist Christian Evangelicals in Isfara was shot dead in front of his house. Furthermore, in 1999 and 2001, three Baha’i followers were assassinated in Dushanbe. 29. There also have been violent attacks on places of worship of different religious minorities. On 18 August 2006, unidentified persons started a fire in the Dushanbe synagogue and, on 13 September 2006, two youths hurled a Molotov cocktail into the synagogue courtyard. The authorities allegedly refused to provide protection for the site and indicated that it was the Jewish community’s responsibility to pay for security. Russian Orthodox churches were also attacked in 2000 and 2006. A Seventh-Day Adventists’ church has also been attacked. When the Grace Sunmin church in Dushanbe was bombed in October 2000, seven people were killed and many more injured. Several Muslim students were arrested for this attack and they reportedly confessed to the bombing, indicating that they opposed foreign missionaries converting Tajik Muslims to Christianity.3 30. Following conversion from Islam to another faith, many converts face problems in everyday life, predominantly on the social level. They encounter problems within their families and in their neighbourhood, which is sometimes characterized by pressure from community and religious leaders to no longer talk to the so-called “apostates”. For the individual, converting may imply jeopardizing his or her whole network of family, friends and neighbours, and thus the risk of a kind of “social suicide”. Furthermore, especially when people of different faiths are involved, wedding ceremonies and questions linked to the upbringing of children can pose social problems. In some cases, even the place of burial and the burial rites involved can be contentious issues. 31. Some interlocutors have raised concerns that the draft law on freedom of conscience and religious association would give priority to the Muslim community in explicitly recognizing the particular role of Islam in the social and spiritual life of the people of Tajikistan. Moreover, they pointed to the possibility that the draft law would give legislative support for the suppression of religious minorities. The proposed definition of religious worship as “forms of religious activities based on the body of ideas and actions deriving from customs and professed at a domestic level” may ultimately lead to an exclusion of minority religions in Tajikistan or of those whose spiritual origins come from foreign countries. 3 On these allegations, see also the views of the Human Rights Committee under art. 5, para. 4, of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, communication No. 1042/2001, Mustafakul Boimurodov v. Tajikistan (CCPR/C/85/D/1042/2001).