Sharofat Allamova, a Protestant from the Khorezm Region of Uzbekistan, has been sentenced to one and a half years of corrective labor for the “illegal production, storage, import or distribution of religious literature,” according to Forum 18 News Service.
An appeals court in Kazakhstan has overturned a previous ruling to destroy Bibles and other Christian literature seized from a street evangelist, according to Barnabas Aid.
In Kazakhstan, anyone who shares their faith could be jailed under proposed new laws that would increase the penalties for those practicing their religion.
A court in Kazakhstan has ordered the destruction of Christian literature, including Bibles, seized from a street evangelist.
Belarus continues to keep its religious communities confined within an invisible ghetto of regulations, according to Forum 18.
This month in Uzbekistan, a dozen Bostanlyk policemen raided a gathering of 80 Protestants on holiday together at the Phoenix resort near the capital.
Churches and mosques in Kazakhstan are being forced to close as that nation’s deadline for mandatory re-registration expires, but many religious communities have complained that the procedures for their closures were both arbitrary and flawed.
A Protestant pastor who faced deportation from Kazakhstan to his native Uzbekistan and up to 15 years imprisonment for leading an unregistered house church has been flown to safety, his supporters confirmed.
One of the largest evangelical congregations in Belarus confirmed that authorities at the last moment decided not to evict them from their building, following years of judicial wrangling.
An oppressive religious law adopted by Kazakhstan last year has reduced the number of officially recognized religions from 46 to 17, according to Eurasianet.
Some churches in Turkmenistan have literally come under fire after the Baptist House of Prayer in Turkmenbashi was recently razed, according to Slavic Gospel Association spokesman Joel Griffith.
Uzbekistan is seeking to extradite refugee Makset Djabbarbergenov from Kazakhstan on charges that carry a maximum 15-year jail term.
Authorities in three Central Asian nations have launched a crackdown on evangelical Protestant churches and several believers are reportedly mistreated, fined and detained.
In Uzbekistan, having more than one Bible can make you a missionary, and being a missionary in Uzbekistan can get you five years in jail.
A congregation of evangelical Christians in Russia’s capital Moscow were without a church building Tuesday, September 11, after workers with bulldozers and other equipment destroyed their Holy Trinity Pentecostal Church complex, protected by local police, witnesses said.
Kazakhstan’s Supreme Court has acquitted an evangelical pastor on charges of “severe damage to health due to negligence” after praying for an ill man, but devoted Christians in another former Soviet republic, Azerbaijan, were awaiting whether a high court would ban their church.
The Baptist Council of Churches refuses to register their churches with Uzbekistan; the Council views registration as a precondition for exercising freedom of religion to be against the binding international human rights agreements Uzbekistan formally promised to implement.
A court in Baku will decide next week whether Greater Grace Protestant Church – which has been registered with the state for 19 years – should be liquidated, according to Forum 18 News Service.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended that the Secretary of State name Pakistan as a Country of Particular Concern in its 2012 Annual Report.
Authorities in Azerbaijan continued preparations Tuesday, March 13, to close down an evangelical church in the first such reported incident since the former Soviet republic introduced harsh religious legislation in 2009, rights activists said.