ICC Note:

“Police who raided a Protestant family’s private home in Fergana assaulted the husband and confiscated religious literature,” Forum 18 News Service reports. Additionally, a court in Tashkent, the country’s capital, has handed down fines of up to one hundred times the minimum monthly wage to ten Protestants for participating in Christian activities without first registering with the government.

By Mushfig Bayram

8/26/2011 Uzbekistan (Forum 18 News Service) – Police who raided a Protestant family’s private home in Fergana assaulted the husband and confiscated religious literature, local Protestants told Forum 18 News Service. The religious books are being checked and officials are preparing an administrative case against the husband and wife and a family friend. Asked by Forum 18 what literature found in their home was banned, the Police Inspector who led the raid identified the Bible and the New Testament. Courts in the capital Tashkent and eastern Syrdarya Region have handed down fines of up to one hundred times the minimum monthly wage to ten Protestants to punish them for unregistered activity. In both cases the courts ordered that confiscated Christian literature – including Bibles and New Testaments – be destroyed. Officials of the state Religious Affairs Committee refused to explain why peaceful religious activity continues to be punished and why courts order the destruction of religious literature. “I am no expert in those matters, and you called the wrong department,” Zulhaydar Sultanov, Head of its International Relations Department, told Forum 18.

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