In apparent testimony to the power of international
protests, a public prosecutor who questioned a local Baptist pastor and
threatened his congregation earlier in the year for its refusal to register
with the authorities has called for an end to the flood of appeals that have
reached his office. "I constantly receive protest letters from Baptists
from various parts of the world," Shurali Ashurov told Forum 18 News
Service on 22 April. "I am fed up with reading them. A commission even
came from Tashkent to verify the Baptists' complaints."
Ashurov, the public prosecutor of the town of Mubarek in Kashkadarya region of
western Uzbekistan, summoned Baptist pastor Vladimir Khanyukov three times in
February and questioned him for three to five hours about the life of the
church. When the pastor was first summoned, Ashurov showed him a number of
petitions from Baptist churches and demanded that they stop writing such
petitions to him.
Despite these petitions, Baptists in Murabek were still experiencing pressure
because of their refusal to be registered, they told Forum 18 at the beginning
of March. The Mubarek congregation belongs to the International Council of
Churches of Evangelical Christians/Baptists, which rejects registration on
principle in all the post-Soviet republics where it operates. Its congregations
have faced particular pressure in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
The Mubarek congregation's latest round of problems began on 2 February, when
Ashurov raided a Sunday service with his deputy and an inspector from the
Criminal Investigation Department. They detained those at the church for five
hours, took photographs and made threats. They also demanded statements from
everyone present, but the Baptists refused.
On 24 February Khanyukov was again summoned to the procuracy. Representatives
from the regional procuracy, the department for interethnic affairs, the
ministry of justice and Ashurov himself questioned the pastor for five hours
about the internal workings of the church and tried to prove the need to
register the church. They gave him a statement to sign, but Khanyukov refused.
Ashurov told Forum 18 that the conflict with the Baptists began in early
February when police officers came to check up on the church and advised the
believers to register it, which they categorically refused to do because it was
against their religious convictions.
It was after this, Ashurov maintains, that this "nightmare of protest
letters" began. "I did indeed summon Khanyukov several times and ask
him to stop writing letters, because we are not disturbing believers or
preventing them from meeting, although we could do so under Uzbek law," he
declared. (Under Uzbekistan's law on religion, the activity of an unregistered
religious community is forbidden.) "Khanyukov responded that he had
written just once and that the later protest letters were not being sent at his
instigation."
Ashurov also asked Forum 18 for the telephone number and address of the
Baptists' central office. "I want to explain to them that no-one in our
town is persecuting their brothers and persuade them to stop writing complaints
against us." He said that so far he had only managed to telephone one
Baptist from the town of Naryan-Mar in Russia's northern Nenets Autonomous
Region. "He promised to help me."