hundreds of Russian Baptist magazines amid concern more Christian publications will be burned in the former Soviet republic, reports said Monday, June 9.
In an interview with the Forum 18 News Service (F18News), which monitors religious persecution, judge Marat Alimukhamedov defended his decision, saying the magazines had been brought "into Uzbekistan illegally," by a local Baptist.
"He was detained not on the border, but right on Uzbek territory," the judge was quoting as saying in the nation’s capital Tashkent.
211 copies Russian-language Baptist magazine Vestnik Istiny (Herald of Truth) were confiscated from Aleksei Yermolayev on April 2, and later burned by local authorities, F18News reported, citing Baptist sources.
CUSTOMS LAW
The Tashkent city court also found Yermolayev guilty of breaking a customs law, and fined him 23 dollars in local currency, five times the minimum monthly wage, Baptist officials said.
Bekzot Kadyrov, chief specialist at the government’s committee for religious affairs, defended the confiscation of the magazines but not their destruction.
"Vestnik Istiny is a magazine issued by the International Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians/Baptists," he told F18News. "That organization is not registered on our country and therefore may not distribute its literature in Uzbekistan," Kadyrov added.
BAPTISTS PROTEST
Local Baptists have protested against the court-ordered destruction of the magazine and the fine of 23 US dollars handed down, and said that Bermolayev "was not even informed that the hearing was taking place," F18News reported.
There has been growing pressure on churches and Christian groups to end their activities in the mainly Islamic nation of about 24 million people, human rights watchers say.
