KYRGYZSTAN: State permission to exist still denied

Kyrgyzstan continues to deny all belief communities permission to exist without state control, Protestants stating they "live and exercise freedom of religion and belief with constant fear." Officials refuse to explain why officials' torture of Jehovah's Witnesses meeting for worship is not seriously investigated.

10 November 2016

KAZAKHSTAN: Muslim jailed and fined, books banned

Rustam Musayev was jailed for two years for talking about his Islamic faith to KNB secret police informers. "Expert analyses" claimed two books Musayev allegedly offered incited religious hatred. One of these books – with one not claimed to incite religious hatred - was banned.

21 October 2016

KAZAKHSTAN: Judges' religious freedom to be restricted?

The draft Code of Judges' Ethics – likely to be adopted at a 24 November congress - proposes wide-ranging bans on exercising freedom of religion outside the professional setting. Judges "shouldn't be very active in their religious conduct", says the Union of Judges secretary.

20 October 2016

KYRGYZSTAN: Mobs twice exhume body – with impunity?

Mobs in two villages dug up the body of deceased Protestant Kanygul Satybaldiyeva, insisting non-Muslims cannot be buried in village cemeteries. Police, secret police and officials observed the exhumations but did not stop them. Officials took Satybaldiyeva's body and claim to have buried it elsewhere.

17 October 2016

KAZAKHSTAN: Criminal case, fines, warnings, imprisonments for uncensored literature

Founder of Muslim WhatsApp group escapes criminal prosecution, but is fined for distributing uncensored religious literature. Baptists are fined for offering literature on the streets, while parents of one girl who did so are warned and father fined. The OSCE calls for end to religious censorship.

10 October 2016

KAZAKHSTAN: Ten more Sunni Muslims sentenced

Sunni Muslim Baurzhan Beisembai was sentenced in Oskemen to two and a half years' imprisonment for alleged membership of Tabligh Jamaat missionary movement. Six others were imprisoned and two given restricted freedom. A further imprisonment in Aktobe means 41 such convictions since December 2014.

4 October 2016

UZBEKISTAN: Contradictory "expert analyses", four people fined

Uzbekistan arrested four men, confiscating a book a government "expert analysis" stated was permitted. Adventist Pastor Andrei Ten was later shown a second "expert analysis" banning the book and fined 100 times the minimum monthly wage, the other three being each fined smaller amounts.

3 October 2016

TURKMENISTAN: Seven conscientious objectors sentenced in 2016

Courts sentenced four Jehovah's Witness conscientious objectors in 2016 to two-year suspended prison terms for refusing compulsory military service on grounds of conscience. A fifth received a two-year corrective labour sentence, a sixth an 18-month suspended sentence and a seventh a one-year corrective labour sentence. Turkmenistan ignored OSCE calls for the new Constitution to recognise conscientious objection.

29 September 2016

UZBEKISTAN: Punished for religious books at home

Stanislav Kim was given two years' corrective labour in Urgench for having religious books at home, something the authorities punish as "illegal". He must live at home under restrictions with a fifth of his wages seized by the state. Courts often order such religious literature destroyed.

26 September 2016

TURKMENISTAN: Imprisoned Muslim leader – alive or dead?

Bahram Saparov led a Hanafi Sunni Muslim community in Turkmenabad. He and about 20 members of his group were given long prison sentences in May 2013. He and at least two others were transferred to the top-security Ovadan-Depe prison, where torture is frequent and prisoners are held incommunicado.

21 September 2016

TURKMENISTAN: Search, arrest, torture, escape, arrest, prison

Police raided Jehovah's Witness Mansur Masharipov's home in Dashoguz in July 2014, seized religious literature (subsequently destroyed), severely beat him, injected him in a Drug Rehabilitation Centre (from which he escaped) with unknown drugs. He was jailed after June 2016 arrest for one year.

7 September 2016

KAZAKHSTAN: Mass trial of Muslims in Oskemen

In a secret police initiated case, nine Sunni Muslims are due on trial in Oskemen on 14 September accused of membership of the banned Tabligh Jamaat Muslim missionary movement. Arrested in early August, Baurzhan Beisembai faces up to six years' imprisonment if convicted.