UZBEKISTAN -- Following a raid in late August in southern Uzbekistan, two visiting Baptists were heavily fined for taking part in unregistered religious worship. Four local church members were slapped with smaller fines.
Forum 18 News Service reported that it was told by sources the court also ordered Bibles and hymn books confiscated during the Aug. 27 raid in the town of Karshi to be burned, a regular practice with literature confiscated during raids – despite official denials.
The two visitors were fined 540,000 sums, or $438 U.S., a huge amount by local standards.
Uzbekistan is located in Central Asia, north of Afghanistan.
Forum 18 reported that Judge Alisher Jalilov of the town's criminal court fined the Baptists under Article 240 of Uzbekistan's Code of Administrative Offences, which punishes "breaking the law on religious organizations." Those fined are members of the Council of Churches Baptists, whose members reject registration in all the former Soviet republics where they operate, as they contend it leads to unwarranted state interference in their communities' internal religious life.
The top fines of 540,000 sums fines represent huge sums in Uzbekistan, where the minimum monthly wage is less than 12,000 sums, and the average monthly wage in Karshi is less than 60,000 sums. Usually, courts only rarely sentence believers to fines of more than 120,000 sums for operating without registration. However, Forum 18 reported that even two years ago believers in Karshi are on record as having been fined more than 240,000 sums.
On Nov. 17 Forum 18 reached Judge Jalilov in Karshi to find out why he had imposed such large penalties on religious believers exercising their constitutional rights. However, Forum 18 reported the judge refused to discuss the case with the news service by telephone.
No one from the government's Religious Affairs Committee would speak to Forum 18. Aziz Obidov, the former press officer for the committee, has now joined the Foreign Ministry and other officials at the committee refused to speak to Forum 18.
However, in earlier conversations with Forum 18, the news service reported Religious Affairs Committee officials stressed several times that the Bible is permissible literature in Uzbekistan and that no books may be burned under Uzbek law.
"The Bible is legally permitted literature and may be distributed freely throughout Uzbekistan," Begzot Kadyrov, senior specialist at the Committee, told Forum 18 a number of months ago. "As far as other imported literature is concerned, the relevant church must receive our committee's permission to import it. However, even unlawfully imported literature that arrives in Uzbekistan is not burned, but is sent back to the country from which it came."
But despite these claims, Forum 18 reported, it is common practice for the Uzbek authorities to burn literature, including Bibles, that has been confiscated from members of unregistered religious communities (see F18News).
This year government censorship of religious literature has been intensified (see F18News), while massively increased fines for unregistered religious activity were introduced at the end of 2005 (see F18News www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=720).
The prosecution of the six Baptists followed a raid on the church by local police on Sun. Aug. 27 while the congregation was hosting a visit by fellow-Baptists from Tashkent and Fergana, Baptist sources told Forum 18. The news service reported the six were taken to the police station to be interrogated. There they were pressured to apply for registration for the congregation (although two of the six were visitors, not congregation members) and pressured to write statements. All six refused to write statements for the police. The police filmed the interrogation against the wishes of the Baptists. The six were not freed until late in the evening.
Forum 18 reported the Baptists called for the revocation of the punishments against the six, as well as calling for Uzbekistan's strict religion law to be brought into line with the religious freedom guarantees in the country’s Constitution and international human rights standards.
The persecution of religious minorities also continues in other areas of Uzbekistan, Forum 18 reported. On Nov.18 the criminal court for Chilanzar district of the capital Tashkent found Pentecostal Christian Risto Dyachkov guilty under Article 240 of the Code of Administrative Offences. He was fined 60,000 sums.
The prosecution followed a Nov. 13 raid on his Pentecostal church by 30 local police officers, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Aleksandr Shishkov. One Protestant complained to Forum 18, the news service reported, that police "illegally" confiscated 133 videotapes, 379 audiotapes, a DVD and CD’s, as well as 30 Christian books, including copies of the Bible and New Testament. Several young people were forced "under threat of violence" to go to the police station to write statements.
The church's pastor, Serik Kadyrov, was also threatened with prosecution. When church members complained to Shishkov that he was smoking inside the church, Forum 18 reported he replied, "It may be a church to you, but to me it's nothing. I'll smoke where I like."
Meanwhile, Protestant sources have told Forum 18 that on Nov.3, the Justice Department for the Tashkent region issued an official warning to Full Gospel Church pastor Vyacheslav Bely, who leads a Full Gospel Pentecostal congregation in Yangiyul near Tashkent. Officials claim that the church needs to re-register its statute within a month, otherwise registration will be stripped from the congregation.
Sources told Forum 18 that such speedy re-registration is next to impossible, and termed the demand "illegal." Under Uzbekistan's religion law, if the congregation is stripped of registration, any activity it then carries out is illegal.
Despite these and other recent government attacks on religious communities - including Muslims, Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses and others - Forum 18 reported the Uzbek authorities have recently been trying to defend their record, claiming to uphold religious freedom.
For more background, see Forum 18's Uzbekistan religious freedom survey.
© 2006 ASSIST News Service, used with permission
