UZBEKISTAN COURT ORDERS CHRISTIAN LITERATURE DESTROYED
By Joy Junction (09/06/05)
Nearly 600 Uzbek-language Christian pamphlets for children were ordered destroyed by a court in the country's Tashkent region, the third time Baptists have had confiscated literature destroyed by court order.
Other books, including New Testaments, seized from a group of Baptists in July
were ordered to be handed over to the government's Religious Affairs Committee.
This despite claims to Forum 18 News Service by senior religious affairs official Begzot Kadyrov that religious literature banned from distribution in Uzbekistan is not destroyed.
Uzbekistan is located in Central Asia, north of Afghanistan (www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/uz.html).
Forum 18 News Service reported that local Baptists fear the literature will be burnt.
The authorities routinely hunt down literature owned by members of non-approved faiths, Forum 18 reported, including independent Muslims, Hare Krishna devotees and Jehovah's Witnesses.
"As for all believers, so for us," Forum 18 reported members of Tashkent's Council of Churches Baptist congregation declared after the court hearing. "Christian literature is of huge spiritual value. But at the moment we are practically denied the right to receive and distribute Christian literature freely."
Because it is almost impossible for most religious communities to print literature within Uzbekistan because of the government's religious censorship, Forum 18 reported that many import such literature from neighboring states, including Kazakhstan.
Church members told Forum 18 that at a Aug. 12 hearing, Judge M. Alimuhamedov, at the urging of public prosecutor's assistant M. Adilov, found four church members guilty of importing religious literature into Uzbekistan illegally under Article 227 part 1 (breaking the customs law) of the Code of Administrative Offences.
Each defendant was fined 39,175 sums (221 Norwegian kroner, 28 Euros or 35 US dollars), Forum 18 reported. The court ruled that the literature - 33 copies of the New Testament, 160 copies of Mark's Gospel and 24 copies of "All children need to know this," should be handed to the Religious Affairs Committee, while 598 copies of Uzbek-language Christian leaflets for children are to be destroyed.
Forum 18 was told by the Baptists the materials were seized on July 20 in the town of Keles near Tashkent, close to the border with Kazakhstan.
The four church members, together with another Baptist, were interrogated for eight hours by officers of the country's National Security Service (NSS), secret police.
"During the interrogations, photographs were taken," Forum 18 reported the Tashkent church stated in July. "The NSS officers behaved very crudely: they used foul language, shouted, threw the Gospels onto the table disdainfully, which offended the feelings of the believers, and threatened to send the believers to prison for 10-15 days. And all this despite the fact that two of the believers were children."
Church members told Forum 18, "This is the fourth time that the authorities have confiscated our religious literature. On two occasions the confiscated literature has been burnt (we have the official documents about its destruction). It is very likely that on this occasion as well the literature will be destroyed by burning."
However, Kadyrov, a specialist on non-Islamic faiths at the religious affairs committee, told Forum 18 on Sept. 5 that the literature had not yet reached the committee. He stressed that the Bible and the New Testament are not banned in Uzbekistan and that therefore these are "very likely" to end up being returned to the Baptists.
"The main problem is that certain Baptists are trying to import religious literature by unlawful means," he told Forum 18. "According to Uzbek law, religious literature brought into the country has to undergo preliminary analysis at our committee. There is no problem with the Bible or New Testament. The Baptists should ask us 10 days before they intend to import the books, and we would no doubt give them permission to go ahead with the shipment. As far as the other religious literature goes, then we do need to check it. If we judge that it contains no call to inter-ethnic or inter-faith conflict or proselytizing ideas, then we will allow its import into the country."
Kadyrov also stressed that even literature banned from distribution in Uzbekistan is not destroyed, but is returned back to the country from which it was brought. "It's true that there have been a few cases where religious literature has been destroyed," he admitted. "These
were mistakes. We are categorically opposed to the destruction of any books."
Kadyrov also told Forum 18 that in March customs officials seized Baptist literature that the authorities claimed had been imported "illegally" (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=527), but the literature was subsequently returned to the Baptists due to the intervention of his committee. "On that occasion we met the Baptists halfway, even though they had broken the law," he told Forum 18. "But once again they are choosing to act illegally."
Members of other faiths frequently face literature seizures, Forum 18 reported. When on June 16, the prosecutor's office, the NSS secret police and the regular police searched an apartment belonging to a Hare Krishna devotee living in Bostan, a town on the outskirts of Nukus, 90 Hare Krishna books were confiscated (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=602).
Religious literature confiscated from the homes of Muslims, Protestant Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses has been destroyed under court orders in recent years (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=527).
For more background, see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=546.
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