Prominent Protestant pastor Dmitry Shestakov was sentenced Friday, March 9, to four years’ exile within Uzbekistan for his evangelistic activities, Christian rights watchers observing the trial said.
Salavat Serikbayev, 32, and Makset Djabbarbergenov, 26, did not make their court date on Monday (February 26) in the regional capital of Nukus to face charges of leading an unregistered religious meeting. The pastors declined to make public the reason for their absence from court.
Uzbekista’s religious authorities admitted publicly for the first time this week that an Uzbek Christian pastor was arrested last month in the eastern city of Andijan and now faces criminal charges.
A major Christian rights group expressed concern Wednesday, February 7, about Uzbekistan’s “harshening crackdown on religious freedom.”
An evangelical pastor remained behind bars in Uzbekistan Monday, February 5, more than two weeks after he was detained by secret police on charges of “incitement to hatred on national, racial or religious grounds.”
Persecution of Christians in North Korea “is worse than ever”, amid fresh reports of torture and executions, Christian investigators said Friday, February 2.
Uzbek secret police arrested a Protestant pastor from his church in Andijan last weekend, seven months after a regional prosecutor had accused him of committing high treason.
Uzbekistan’s secret police detained Protestant Pastor Dmitry Shestakov at his church in the city of Andijan last weekend, after a regional prosecutor had accused him of “committing high treason,” a Christian news agency reported Thursday, January 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.
Fearing beatings, detentions and deportations “many” Uzbek Protestant church leaders and their families were in hiding Friday, September 1, as Uzbekistan celebrated its 15th anniversary of independence, Christians said.
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.
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.
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.
Perhaps because of international reporting on the case, a court in Nukus, the capital of the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan in western Uzbekistan, has handed down what many regard as a “lenient” sentence against the leader of a local Protestant church.
he authorities in Karakalpakstan, an autonomous republic in the north-west of Uzbekistan, are trying to halt the spread of Christianity among Karakalpakstan’s native peoples (Uzbeks, Kazakhs and Karakalpaks, who are historically Muslims),
WASHINGTON (BP)–The State Department’s second report on global religious liberty presents a challenge for the U.S. government to act against persecution, the chairman of a federal commission said.
ISTANBUL, April 5 (Compass) — An Uzbekistan government official publicly hailed the Bible as “a priceless source of knowledge” during a March ceremony marking the first local publication of an Uzbek edition of Proverbs.
ISTANBUL, March 6 (Compass) — A Christian Uzbek pastor jailed since February 1999 on contrived fraud charges is being subjected to physical beatings for witnessing to his cellmates, church sources in the Central Asian republic reported in early March.