The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one’s belief or religion
The right to join together and express one’s belief
26 March 2003
UZBEKISTAN: Baptist women are latest secret police victims
A group of police officers and officers of the secret police, the National Security Service, raided an apartment on 28 February in the town of Khojali. A Baptist who asked not to be named told Forum 18 News Service that ten Baptist women of the local ethnicities, Kazakh and Karakalpak, had gathered in the apartment for a Christian meeting. They were insulted and held for 27 hours, although a local police officer denied this to Forum 18. "Nobody insulted them and there were no violations of the law by the police," he declared. This is the latest in a series of raids on Protestant Christians in Uzbekistan's western autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan.
19 March 2003
UZBEKISTAN: Long sentences for five Tashkent Muslims
Five Muslim men in their twenties and thirties have been sentenced in Tashkent to long periods of imprisonment on charges relating to what the authorities allege was their membership of the banned Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which aims to establish an Islamic state in Central Asia. The men maintained they were simply ordinary Muslims seeking to study their faith. "The accused did indeed know members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, but they themselves were not engaged in political activity," Ismail Adylov of the Independent Human Rights Organisation of Uzbekistan told Forum 18 News Service. "They were simply trying to gain a more profound knowledge of Islam." Thousands of Muslims are serving sentences in Uzbekistan on charges of belonging to Hizb ut-Tahrir or distributing its leaflets.
17 March 2003
UZBEKISTAN: Muinak Pentecostals fear new charges
Pentecostals in Muinak in Uzbekistan's western region of Karakalpakstan fear that two church members, Kuralbai Asanbayev and Rashid Keulimjayev, may again face punishment under the administrative code for meeting together as Christians, less than three months after the two were beaten and imprisoned for five days. Local officials denied to Forum 18 News Service that the two were beaten in December. The leader of the local Pentecostal community, Salavat Serikbayev, has told Forum 18 that Protestants in the town have virtually no way of meeting together and live like the first catacomb Christians under the Roman Empire.
14 March 2003
UZBEKISTAN: Andijan Pentecostal pastor threatened
Bakhtier Tuichiev, pastor of the Full Gospel Pentecostal Church in the city of Andijan in the Uzbek part of the Fergana valley, was summoned to the regional internal affairs administration on 10 January and warned that if the church did not halt its activity in the absence of registration, then "serious trouble" was in store for him. On 11 January the deputy head of the city department of internal affairs, Major Sumanov, came to a church service and asked why the church was operating without registration. The church has been trying to register for more than a year – so far in vain. "Of course, I have submitted the registration documents, but I am sure we will be refused," Tuichiev told Forum 18 News Service back in January. As of mid-March, the church had not been registered. Tuichiev reports that he is under National Security Service surveillance.
13 March 2003
UZBEKISTAN: Baptist pastor narrowly escapes charges
Charges against a pastor of a registered Baptist church for holding a small-scale service last December in a private home owned by a church member have now been withdrawn, yet Dmitri Pitirimov, spokesman for the Uzbek Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists, said the church remains pessimistic. "Although the administrative charges against Pastor Nikolai Obyedkov have happily now been dropped," he told Forum 18 News Service on 9 March, "persecution of Baptists is continuing in a whole series of districts of Uzbekistan." Pitirimov pointed to several other raids on Baptist meetings in recent months, one in the run-up to Christmas which for the families present, he complained, "spoiled the occasion in advance".
12 March 2003
UZBEKISTAN: No hope of registration for minority faiths?
"We have now lost all hope of registering our church. The authorities deliberately keep coming up with new excuses to refuse us registration," Khym-Mun Kim – a leader of the Peace Presbyterian church in Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan in north west Uzbekistan - told Forum 18 News Service. "The authorities say we have no right to hold meetings without registration. And in fact the police could descend on any of our services." Kim believes that the Karakalpakstan authorities are deliberately creating "intolerable" conditions for religious minorities. Only one non-Muslim religious community has managed to gain registration in the autonomous republic.