ICC Note:
Police raided and fined Baptists conducting worship in the central city of Samarkand, Forum 18 News Service reports. In separate incidents, “Baptists in Tashkent have been fined 50 times the monthly minimum salary for visiting a friend in hospital; the Baptists were also detained by police for more than 24 hours. Also a Protestant has been fined 50 times the minimum monthly salary for possessing four books and two DVDs.”
By Mushfig Bayram
10/5/2011 Uzbekistan (Forum 18 News Service) – Uzbekistan has been harassing people meeting peacefully for worship, ordinary police and the NSS secret police in the region around the capital Tashkent having stopped and questioned people attending mosques in the month of Ramadan. The authorities in the west of the country have prevented women and children from attending mosques, and in the central city of Samarkand police raided and fined Baptists conducting worship. Bahodyr Mamedkarimov, Legal Advisor to the Minister of the Interior, denied to Forum 18 News Service that mosques had been and were under surveillance. “It’s nonsense, we are a free country, and anyone can attend the mosque especially during the holy month of Ramadan,” he claimed. In separate incidents, Baptists in Tashkent have been fined 50 times the monthly minimum salary for visiting a friend in hospital; the Baptists were also detained by police for more than 24 hours. Also a Protestant has been fined 50 times the minimum monthly salary for possessing four books and two DVDs. He had earlier been fined 80 times the minimum monthly salary for possessing religious literature at home.
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