it an "illegal religious meeting" and demanding the pastor promise to stop all the church’s activities, church sources said late Thursday, October 28.
120 members of the congregation of the Bethany Baptist Church in Tashkent’s Mirzo-Ulugbek district were midway through their Sunday morning service when security forces raided the church, said the Forum 18 News Service of the well informed human rights group Forum 18.
The incident happened when "a delegation from the official United States Commission for International Religious Freedom" visited Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic that has been criticized for its alleged harsh treatment of religious minorities.
Police officers reportedly asked if the church was given permission to congregate and if the church was registered.
After the church pastor replied that the church was not registered, the police demanded that the pastor list the names of everyone present, reported Compass Direct, a news agency with close ties to persecuted Christians.
POLICE SURPRISED
The pastor refused to meet those demands. “What’s going on here?” police officers allegedly said when Pastor Nikolai Shevchenko explained that he and his congregation were singing and worshipping.
Pastor Nikolai Shevchenko, was fined and warned that that, if he did not halt the activity of the church, "criminal charges would be brought against him", Forum 18 News Service said.
The church’s repeated attempts to gain state registration have been frustrated by the authorities, and Pastor Shevchenko suggested to Forum 18 that the raid "can scarcely be a coincidence. Tashkent is using this to try and demonstrate that it is not afraid of pressure from the international community and that it does not intend to observe international standards on the rights of believers."
PRESIDENT
In March 2001, the church sent a letter to President Islam Karimov, in an attempt to be heard. Although the pastor was reportedly told that Karimov’s cabinet had seen the letter and would “resolve” the case, there has been apparently no written response.
According to an International Religious Freedom Report, a number of minority religious groups, including congregations of a variety of Christian confessions, had difficulty satisfying the strict registration requirements set out by the law.
In addition, Protestant groups with ethnic Uzbek members are reportedly operating in a climate of harassment and fear, church sources and news reports said.
