Christians Say Persecution Increasing in Uzbekistan

The Uzbek authorities arrested numerous members of several different Christian communities during a series of police raids in August. It appears to make no difference whether a particular faith group has obtained official registration or not. 

A lawyer in Tashkent, who wished to remain anonymous, said cases of arrest and persecution had become widespread.

"Cases are now taking place in almost all provinces of Uzbekistan," he said.

Zuhra, a Protestant in Urgench in north-eastern Uzbekistan, described how police raided her apartment without showing her a search warrant.

"There was a knock on the door and I opened it. Our local policeman asked me for my passport, and I invited him in," she said. "Several people immediately rushed in behind him. One of them was a cameraman with a camcorder. The policeman said a officer from the counter-terrorism department was taking part in this passport check."

She continued, "I had a few religious leaflets and a Bible. They took everything away to check it."

Zuhra was subsequently charged with conducting missionary work and distributing religious literature, and fined the equivalent to over 470 US dollars.

Christians in Karakalpakstan, to the north of Urgench, have also reported new cases of persecution. Two members of the Full Gospel Pentecostal Church were held in custody for ten days and fined after a police search revealed religious literature and CDs.

One of the arrested, Rustam Kalabayev, was found guilty of the administrative offence of spreading religious belief, although he was not shown the charge sheet.

This church is among those that do have legal status, conferred by registration with Uzbekistan's justice ministry. The same applies to the Church of Jesus Christ, whose Tashkent premises were raided by police and secret service officers in May.

Eight church members were detained, three of them being held for 15 and the others fined sums of up to 2,000 dollars.

This followed incidents in which two Christians were held for two weeks after being accused of preaching the Gospel in the southern province of Surkhandarya; and participants of a Christian youth conference were arrested and fingerprinted. According to one of the latter group, "They treated us like sacrificial lambs, they didn't explain why we were being detained, but promised severe punishment."

The lawyer in Tashkent could not pinpoint a specific reason why the authorities were displaying more than their usual hostility to Christians. But he said he understood Uzbekistan's parliament was about to introduce even tougher rules to the current law on religious organisations.

There are reports that the authorities are planning to increase the minimum number of signatures a faith group needs just to apply for registration from 100 to 300.

Even as things stand, many groups with more than 100 members have found it impossible to get registration since the law came into force in 1998.

"Making the requirements tougher will make it impossible for religious communities to gain legal status," a Christian activist in Chirchik, a town about 25 kilometres from Tashkent, warned. "The punitive raids will of course continue."

The United States government's annual report on freedom of confession, covering 2009, say that 180 faith groups have registration in Uzbekistan, and notes that the state exerts tight control over religious activity.

This article was produced as part of IWPR's News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.