Belarusian authorities may be preparing to reverse their position towards New Life Church in the capital Minsk, members of which have been on a hunger strike in order to resist efforts by the government to close them down.
Born on June 18 to a Christian family in northern Azerbaijan, three-month-old Ilya Eyvazov still has no official name.
A Christian soldier who was imprisoned in the troubled unrecognized republic of Nagorno-Karabakh for refusing to swear the military oath and carry weapons on Biblical grounds, has been released, after spending one year in jail, BosNewsLife learned Monday, September 25.
Six Christian men who were arrested in Uzbekistan amid a reported government-led crackdown on Christians and churches across the former Soviet republic have been released, their supporters told BosNewsLife Friday, September 8.
All but two of the nearly 100 outlets affiliated with New Life Radio (NLR), a Russian satellite network operated by Christian Radio for Russia with HCJB World Radio as the principal partner, have been forced to go off the air temporarily.
There was mounting concern Wednesday, July 26, over a new crackdown on Christians in Uzbekistan after authorities closed down US-based aid group Central Asia Free Exchange (CAFE) on charges of “illegal religious activities,” including preaching the Gospel.
A Baptist Pastor in Kazakhstan was preparing for a difficult period Sunday, June 11, after being fined more than three times the estimated average monthly salary for leading “registered religious activity,” Christian rights investigators said.
Evangelical Christians in the ex-Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were on edge Saturday, May 6, ahead of Sunday worship services as security forces in both countries reportedly raided church gatherings and threatened believers, including children, while confiscating Bibles.
Human rights officials in Europe and the United States expressed concern Wednesday, May 3, over the persecution of Christians in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, nearly a year after hundreds of people died when security forces opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators.
Police officers from Uzbekistan’s criminal investigation department burst into the home of a Protestant pastor in northwest Uzbekistan last week, disrupting 12 people as they were having lunch together. The pastor and another believer were charged with “breaking the laws on teaching religion.”
There was concern Saturday, April 8, over the future of Christian radio in Russia after the Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications refused to renew the radio license of a key evangelical radio station, an official said.
An influential evangelical mission group in the former Soviet Union expressed concern Wednesday, March 29, over a “crackdown” on Christian believers in Belarus following the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Sergey Shavtsov, a lawyer and prominent human rights activist, was arrested, tried and sentenced to 10 days imprisonment in Belarus for organizing an “illegal religious activity,” a UK-based religious rights group said Monday, March 27.
Belarus is ruled by Soviet-style totalitarian dictator, Aleksandr Lukashenko. Popularly elected in 1994, he has since then maintained his grip on power through propaganda, repression, fraud and violence. In late 2002 Belarus adopted the most repressive Religion Law in all Europe. Unregistered religious groups are illegal, and registration is severely restrictive.
The persecution of Protestants continues throughout Uzbekistan, says Igor Rotar writing for Forum 18 News Service (www.forum18.org).
Pastor Georgi Vyazovsky of Christ’s Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Belarus was freed from a Minsk prison for Administrative Violations Code offenders shortly after midday local time today (13 March) on completion of a ten-day sentence for conducting religious worship in his own home.
The Washington, DC-based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) www.persecution.org, has recently been informed that the government of Azerbaijan has destroyed an irreplaceable medieval Armenian Christian cemetery in the Djulfa region of Nakhichevan.
A so-called “documentary” televised regionally in Uzbekistan last summer has left entire communities convinced that a Protestant congregation is an “extremist” group worse than fundamentalist Islam.
Former Muslim residents in a remote village of the ex-Soviet union republic of Uzbekistan are being beaten, publicly humiliated and forced from their homes and jobs for converting to Christianity, a news agency investigation religious persecution said Friday, October 21.
Almost 600 Uzbek-language Christian leaflets for children distributed by Baptists have been destroyed in Uzbekistan after a court in Tashkent region ordered the destruction last month, BosNewsLife monitored Wednesday, September 7.