A Baptist Pastor in Kazakhstan was preparing for a difficult period Sunday, June 11, after being fined more than three times the estimated average monthly salary for leading “registered religious activity,” Christian rights investigators said.
Evangelical Christians in the ex-Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were on edge Saturday, May 6, ahead of Sunday worship services as security forces in both countries reportedly raided church gatherings and threatened believers, including children, while confiscating Bibles.
Human rights officials in Europe and the United States expressed concern Wednesday, May 3, over the persecution of Christians in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, nearly a year after hundreds of people died when security forces opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators.
Police officers from Uzbekistan’s criminal investigation department burst into the home of a Protestant pastor in northwest Uzbekistan last week, disrupting 12 people as they were having lunch together. The pastor and another believer were charged with “breaking the laws on teaching religion.”
There was concern Saturday, April 8, over the future of Christian radio in Russia after the Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications refused to renew the radio license of a key evangelical radio station, an official said.
An influential evangelical mission group in the former Soviet Union expressed concern Wednesday, March 29, over a “crackdown” on Christian believers in Belarus following the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Sergey Shavtsov, a lawyer and prominent human rights activist, was arrested, tried and sentenced to 10 days imprisonment in Belarus for organizing an “illegal religious activity,” a UK-based religious rights group said Monday, March 27.
Belarus is ruled by Soviet-style totalitarian dictator, Aleksandr Lukashenko. Popularly elected in 1994, he has since then maintained his grip on power through propaganda, repression, fraud and violence. In late 2002 Belarus adopted the most repressive Religion Law in all Europe. Unregistered religious groups are illegal, and registration is severely restrictive.
The persecution of Protestants continues throughout Uzbekistan, says Igor Rotar writing for Forum 18 News Service (www.forum18.org).
Pastor Georgi Vyazovsky of Christ’s Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Belarus was freed from a Minsk prison for Administrative Violations Code offenders shortly after midday local time today (13 March) on completion of a ten-day sentence for conducting religious worship in his own home.
The Washington, DC-based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) www.persecution.org, has recently been informed that the government of Azerbaijan has destroyed an irreplaceable medieval Armenian Christian cemetery in the Djulfa region of Nakhichevan.
A so-called “documentary” televised regionally in Uzbekistan last summer has left entire communities convinced that a Protestant congregation is an “extremist” group worse than fundamentalist Islam.
Former Muslim residents in a remote village of the ex-Soviet union republic of Uzbekistan are being beaten, publicly humiliated and forced from their homes and jobs for converting to Christianity, a news agency investigation religious persecution said Friday, October 21.
Almost 600 Uzbek-language Christian leaflets for children distributed by Baptists have been destroyed in Uzbekistan after a court in Tashkent region ordered the destruction last month, BosNewsLife monitored Wednesday, September 7.
Baptists in Turkmenistan faced another difficult Sunday, July 31, after a private home where they gathered regularly was stormed by police who beat the handicapped host with her own Bible and threatened to hang her, human rights activists reported.
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.
Persecuted Evangelical Christians and missionary workers in Kyrgyzstan were awaiting a new dawn late Thursday, March 24, as lawmakers of this former Soviet republic appointed a new interim president, news reports suggested.