FORUM 18 NEWS SERVICE, Oslo, Norway

The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one’s belief or religion
The right to join together and express one’s belief

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Friday 16 February 2007
UZBEKISTAN: HOW MANY FORCED CLOSURES OF RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES?

Uzbekistan tries hard to camouflage its religious freedom violations and
one way it does this is through statistics. Comparing February 2007 figures
from the state Religious Affairs Committee with October 2002 figures, Forum
18 News Service notes that a net total of six Christian churches are
indicated to have lost registration, along with one Jehovah’s Witness, one
Hare Krishna and one Baha’i community. The figures cannot be independently
verified and conceal denominational differences, with an increase in
Russian Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic communities disguising loss of
legal status of Protestant churches. Religious believers inside Uzbekistan
indicate that the reality may be much worse. Some Protestant churches have
recently calculated that 38 of their congregations were closed down by the
state between 2000 and 2006. Over 100 religious communities of various
faiths are thought to have tried unsuccessfully to gain registration. The
Religious Affairs Committee asserts that "there there are no restrictions
on or hindrances to registration." Without state registration, all
religious activity is illegal and religious believers are subjected to
harsh state action.

UZBEKISTAN: HOW MANY FORCED CLOSURES OF RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES?

By Igor Rotar, Forum 18 News Service <;

Uzbekistan devotes much effort to trying to camouflage its attacks on
religious freedom and one element in the camouflage is statistics. Forum 18
has tried unsuccessfully to get the state Religious Affairs Committee to
say how many religious organisations were closed down in 2006. Begzot
Kadyrov, chief specialist on non-Islamic faiths for the Committee, said
that it had no information on this. This is strange, as collecting
statistics on the number of religious organisations is one of the
Committee’s main tasks.

Attempts by Forum 18 to obtain figures of religious community closures
from the Justice Ministry were likewise unsuccessful. Between 6 and 13
February, Forum 18 made numerous attempts to talk to Jalalbek Abdusatarov,
head of the Religious Organisations Registration Department at the
Ministry. Each time, an employee who refused to give his name said that
Abdusatarov was not there and that nobody else was able to provide
information. Regional Justice departments have been similarly
uninformative. On 14 February, Bekmukhamad Latyrinov, head of the Religious
and Social Organisations Registration Section of the Samarkand [Samarqand]
Justice Department, refused to answer any questions from Forum 18 by
telephone.

But, according to statistics from the Religious Affairs Committee
published by the government-sponsored website press-uz.info on 15 February,
2,222 religious communities of 16 faiths currently have registration. A
total of 2,042 of these are Muslim, 164 are Christian of various
unspecified denominations, 8 are Jewish, 6 are Baha’i and one each are Hare
Krishna and Buddhist. It remains unclear why neither the Committee nor the
Justice Ministry was able to provide these figures to Forum 18 just a few
days earlier.

The statistics – which cannot be verified independently – compare with the
Committee’s figures of a total of 2,152 registered communities in October
2002. Of these, 1,965 were Muslim, 61 Korean Protestant churches, 36
Russian Orthodox, 23 Baptist, 22 Full Gospel, 11 Seventh-day Adventist, 7
Baha’i, 6 Jewish, 5 Catholic, 4 Lutheran, 4 New Apostolic, 2 Jehovah’s
Witness, 2 Hare Krishna, 1 Armenian Apostolic, 1 Voice of God Protestant
church, 1 Buddhist – as well as 1 Bible Society branch.

Comparing the figures, a net total of six Christian churches have lost
registration in four and a half years, as well as one Jehovah’s Witness,
one Hare Krishna and one Baha’i community. However, these figures conceal
denominational differences, with an increase in the number of Russian
Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic communities disguising the loss of legal
status for Protestant churches.

Official figures should be treated with caution. For example, in 2005 the
authorities falsely claimed to Forum 18 that a Catholic parish was
registered in Nukus, in north-west Uzbekistan (see F18News 2 June 2005
< e_id=575>)

Amongst the other statistical propaganda tools used to deny religious
freedom violations has been an opinion poll conducted by a government-run
"non governmental" organisation (see F18News (see F18News 19 December 2006
< e_id=891>). This camouflage
effort has run in tandem with an increase in the state-rum mass media’s
encouragement of intolerance against religious minorities (see F18News 19
December 2006 < 890>)

Some of the religious communities, known to Forum 18, which have been
closed by the authorities in the last 18 months are: the Jehovah’s Witness
congregation in Fergana [Farghona] (see F18News 15 February
< ticle_id`2>); the Seventh-day
Adventist church and a Korean Protestant church in Samarkand [Samarqand]
(see F18News 19 May 2006
< e_id=784>); as well as the Full
Gospel church in Nukus (see F18News 11 November 2005
< e_id=686>).

The Bethany Baptist church, in the Mirzo-Ulugbek district of Tashkent, has
long been denied official registration and therefore the right to function.
Two church members were deported in 2006 (see F18News 6 September 2006
< e_id=838>). The congregation
decided to hold a celebratory meal for church members at Easter 2006 in the
church building, the first time the congregation had used its church
building in two years. Congregation members prepared a traditional plov
rice meal and tea but, as Protestant sources told Forum 18, within ten
minutes of the event beginning the local police arrived and closed it down.
The congregation has not dared to use its church building since.

Escalating pressure on congregation members typically follows such
closures (see eg. F18News 26 January 2006
< e_id=719> and 5 May 2006
< e_id=774>).

Adventist sources in Uzbekistan told Forum 18 on 14 February their church
in Samarkand was closed by the authorities as "we had been meeting in a
building different from the address stated in our registration document. We
don’t intend to appeal against the decision." There are still four
registered Adventist churches in Tashkent and Tashkent region.

An Uzbek Protestant pastor, who preferred not to be named, told Forum 18
that a number of Protestant churches, of a cross-section of non-Korean
denominations, had calculated recently that between them, 38 of their
congregations had been closed down between 2000 and 2006 under varying
official pretexts. (Christian missionaries from Korea have been quite
active in Central Asia.)

Forum 18 estimates that over 100 religious communities have been trying
unsuccessfully for many years to obtain registration from the Justice
Ministry. But only one Christian church per year is being registered: one
Protestant church in 2005, another in 2006, and the Armenian Apostolic
Church in Tashkent in January 2007.

The Religious Affairs Committee continues to deny that any pressure is
being exerted against religious communities and brushes aside any
complaints of denial or removal of legal status from congregations. "The
Committee regards assertions that ‘the republican authorities have
increased pressure on Protestants over the last few months’ as groundless,"
it claimed in a 12 February statement posted by the press-uz.info agency.
"The number of religious organisations in our country is growing. This
shows that there are no restrictions on or hindrances to registration." On
14 February, Aziz Obidov, the Committee’s Press Secretary, refused to make
any further comment to Forum 18. "We have already communicated everything
we think necessary and we are not going to comment further." (END)

For a personal commentary by a Muslim scholar, advocating religious
freedom for all faiths as the best antidote to Islamic religious extremism
in Uzbekistan, see < 338>.

For more background, see Forum 18’s Uzbekistan religious freedom survey at
< id=777>.

A survey of the religious freedom decline in the eastern part of the
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) area is at
< id=806>, and of religious
intolerance in Central Asia is at
< id=815>.

A printer-friendly map of Uzbekistan is available at
< s/atlas/index.html?Parent=asia&Rootmap=uzbeki& gt;
(END)

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