Officials who broke up the Sunday service of an unregistered
Protestant church in a village near the capital Tashkent have sealed the
building to prevent further services from taking place and have threatened church
members with fines for "illegal religious activity", Forum 18 News
Service has learnt. The Friendship Church in the village of Ahmad Yassavy on the outskirts of Tashkent was holding its
service on 7 September when a group of police officers and officials of the
district authorities burst in, a local Protestant who preferred not to be named
told Forum 18. The raid was led in person by the deputy head of the Upper Chirchik district administration, Shukhrat
Tursunbayev. The officials took down the names of all
those present at the church, sealed up the church and warned the believers that
they would soon be prosecuted under the Code of Administrative Offences.
Tursunbayev strongly defended his closure of the
church. "We were acting within the law," he told Forum 18 on 29
September. "According to the Uzbek law on religion the activity of an
unregistered religious community is forbidden." He said he had handed a
report of his investigation into the church's activity to the divisional police
officer and "the church leadership is going to be fined soon for operating
without registration".
Article 8 of Uzbekistan's law on religion bans the activity of any unregistered
religious organisation, in violation of the country's
international human rights commitments. Uzbekistan is a signatory to the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which includes a
commitment for religious believers to meet freely. Additionally, Article 2 of
Uzbekistan's religion law states that "if different rules are set out in an
international agreement signed by the Republic of Uzbekistan from those
contained in the Republic of Uzbekistan's legislation about freedom of
conscience and religious organisations, then the
rules of the international agreement will take precedence".