Christian Persecution – Russia & Former USSR

International concern was mounting Thursday, June 30, over the plight of Protestant Christians in Uzbekistan amid new reports of torture and apparent police reluctance to investigate the murder of an American Christian.

Christian Nail Kalinkin of Uzbekistan’s embattled Baptist leaning Bethany Church in the capital Tashkent was believed to be in jail Saturday, June 18, after he was sentenced to 15 days in prison last week for “illegally” teaching his faith, a human rights groups said, citing Protestant sources.

Now that the early May state holidays are over, the Minsk authorities are again pursuing measures against the charismatic New Life Church, ASSIST News Service has learned according to a report from Forum 18 News Service.

Dozens of opposition supporters were in jail Thursday, April 28, after a Belarusian court sentenced them for anti government protests, and Christians warned of more tensions in the troubled former Soviet republic.

Authorities in Minsk are close to obtaining sufficient grounds under Belarusian law to close down the charismatic New Life Church, after issuing it an official warning on 30 December against using a cowshed the church owns for worship.

This week members of For Zion’s Sake, a ministry of Calvary Chapel Jerusalem, hoped to send another team from Jerusalem to the town of Beslan, North Ossetia, in southern Russia to comfort the survivors and families of victims of the terror attack on the school there.

Police in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent raided a Baptist church during Sunday worship on October 17, declaring the service an “illegal religious meeting” and demanding the pastor promise to stop all the church’s activities.

Overwhelmed with messages of prayer and support, two pastors in Beslan, North Ossetia in southern Russia, have expressed their heartfelt thanks to all those who have written to them since the siege at the school in which hundreds, mostly children, were killed.

Jerusalem, Israel (Worthy News) — Pastor Bradley Antolovich, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Jerusalem and father of five, watched helplessly as the horror at Beslan School #1 unfolded on television and various internet clips. The thought that these children could be his own welled up in him an unquenchable drive to reach out by going there. Simultaneously, two pastors in Moscow — Kostia Kretov and Kevin Macken — were also moved to go and comfort the survivors from the school and the minister to the families who lost loved ones in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russia.

Turkmenistan, an ex-Soviet republic with what human rights watchers call the “harshest state control” in the region has drafted new legislation that will make it difficult for churches to operate and to spread the Gospel, a news agency said Monday, Nov. 3

Total attendance at showings of the Jesus Film in St. Petersburg, Russia, amount to 150,000 people, according to a Russia interpreter who works with American missionaries in this city known as “The Venice of the North.”