(Forum 18) – On 8 September, the Emmanuel Full Gospel Church in Nukus – the last legal Protestant church in north-western Uzabekistan – failed to overturn the justice ministry’s ban on its activity, a church lawyer said. In early September a local TV station in nearby Khorezm region broadcast a programme “virtually depicting Protestants as criminals”, local Full Gospel pastor Ruzmet Voisov said. The following day unidentified women burst into his home and beat his wife, calling her a traitor to her faith. Uzbekistan bans all unregistered religious activity in defiance of its international human rights commitments.