International Christian Concern reports that a 67-year-old pastor was charged with religious extremism and imprisoned just hours after he had been released to house arrest for supposedly harming the health of his parishioners.
After his arrest in May, International Christian Concern reported that Pastor Bakhytzhat Kashkumbayev has been severely mistreated by the Kazakhstan government while it continues to hide his whereabouts.
Last month, a Christian children’s camp in Uzbekistan was raided by riot police; all the children were subjected to questioning and the homes of the camp’s organizers were searched, according to BarnabasAid.
International Christian Concern is calling for the immediate release of a pastor in Kazakhstan who has been falsely imprisoned.
A pastor in Kazakhstan was arrested last month for allegedly serving hallucinogens to his congregation while wielding a powerful psychological influence over them.
Sharofat Allamova, a Protestant from the Khorezm Region of Uzbekistan, has been sentenced to one and a half years of corrective labor for the “illegal production, storage, import or distribution of religious literature,” according to Forum 18 News Service.
An appeals court in Kazakhstan has overturned a previous ruling to destroy Bibles and other Christian literature seized from a street evangelist, according to Barnabas Aid.
In Kazakhstan, anyone who shares their faith could be jailed under proposed new laws that would increase the penalties for those practicing their religion.
A court in Kazakhstan has ordered the destruction of Christian literature, including Bibles, seized from a street evangelist.
Belarus continues to keep its religious communities confined within an invisible ghetto of regulations, according to Forum 18.
This month in Uzbekistan, a dozen Bostanlyk policemen raided a gathering of 80 Protestants on holiday together at the Phoenix resort near the capital.
Churches and mosques in Kazakhstan are being forced to close as that nation’s deadline for mandatory re-registration expires, but many religious communities have complained that the procedures for their closures were both arbitrary and flawed.
A Protestant pastor who faced deportation from Kazakhstan to his native Uzbekistan and up to 15 years imprisonment for leading an unregistered house church has been flown to safety, his supporters confirmed.
One of the largest evangelical congregations in Belarus confirmed that authorities at the last moment decided not to evict them from their building, following years of judicial wrangling.
An oppressive religious law adopted by Kazakhstan last year has reduced the number of officially recognized religions from 46 to 17, according to Eurasianet.
Some churches in Turkmenistan have literally come under fire after the Baptist House of Prayer in Turkmenbashi was recently razed, according to Slavic Gospel Association spokesman Joel Griffith.
Uzbekistan is seeking to extradite refugee Makset Djabbarbergenov from Kazakhstan on charges that carry a maximum 15-year jail term.
Authorities in three Central Asian nations have launched a crackdown on evangelical Protestant churches and several believers are reportedly mistreated, fined and detained.
In Uzbekistan, having more than one Bible can make you a missionary, and being a missionary in Uzbekistan can get you five years in jail.
A congregation of evangelical Christians in Russia’s capital Moscow were without a church building Tuesday, September 11, after workers with bulldozers and other equipment destroyed their Holy Trinity Pentecostal Church complex, protected by local police, witnesses said.