pastor from meeting. This followed international protests stemming from news reports about persecuted Christians, which appeared in several media, including BosNewsLife.
"I constantly receive protest letters from Baptists from various parts of the world," Shurali Ashurov told the Forum 18 News Service (F18News). "I am fed up with reading them. A commission even came from Tashkent to verify the Baptists’ complaints," the news agency reported Thursday April 24.
Ashurov, the public prosecutor of the town of Mubarek in Uzbekistan’s Kashkadarya region, summoned Baptist pastor Vladimir Khanyukov three times in February and questioned him for three to five hours about the life of the church, F18News said.
The Mubarek Baptist congregation belongs to the International Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians/Baptists which rejects registration on principle in all post-Soviet republics where it operates. Its congregations faced particular pressure in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakstan.
SUNDAY SERVICE RAIDED
The Mubarek Baptists’ latest round of problems began in February, when Ashurov raided a Sunday service with his deputy and an inspector from the Criminal Investigation Department. They detained those at the church for five hours, took photographs and made threats as well as demanding statements from everyone present, the well informed F18News said.
On February 24 Pastor Khanyukov was again summoned to the procuracy where the prosecutor as well as officials from the department for interethnic affairs and the ministry of justice questioned the pastor for five hours and tried to prove the need to register his church.
Khanyukov, who refused to register and sign a statement, was also shown "a number of petitions from Baptist churches and demanded that they stop writing such petitions to him," F18News reported.
Although despite these petitions the Baptists were still experiencing pressure last month, Prosecutor Ashurov said he wanted to end the "nightmare of protest letters" and to explain to Baptists "that no-one in our town is persecuting their brothers."
MORAL BOOST
He promised not to intervene in their activities and stressed he wanted to "persuade" people "to stop writing complaints against us," after the Baptist pastor told him the appeals were not being sent at his instigation.
News about the apparent effect of world-wide protests were seen as a moral boost for active Christians in Uzbekistan who have often been forced to meet secretly as the authorities increased pressure on non Muslim groups.
Several Christian leaders have been imprisoned while raids against churches and home groups continue, BosNewsLife monitored. The situation is believed to remain difficult for many Christian groups in the former Soviet republic as Uzbekistan laws still forbid unregistered religious activities.
There are also attacks against Christians, church leaders and missionary workers in other states of the former Soviet Union, including Russia, amid concern among political and some religious leaders about non traditional groups and churches which mushroomed in the post-Communist era.
