October 4, 2007 Tashkent, Uzbekistan …. [ANN Staff]
Two Seventh-day Adventist pastors were sentenced September 27 by a court in Tashkent for “unduly organizing and holding worships,” Adventist Church officials in the region said.
The ministers, whose names were withheld, were each fined 80,000 soum, or about half a month's salary for a pastor, said Victor Vitko, Public Affairs and Religious Liberty director for the Adventist church's Euro-Asia region based in Moscow.
Two other church members will also have to pay a combined fine of 30,000 soum, Vitko said.
According to Vitko, two men in plain clothes originally came to the home meeting the pastors were conducting and identified themselves as from the Department of Antiterrorism. They also appeared in the court's first meeting on September 26, Vitko said.
Adventist world church officials have said the Uzbekistan government has enacted laws to thwart militant forms of Islam. Many jurisdictions only allow religious meetings in a recognized church registered with the government.
Registration laws have restricted the work of all religious bodies in the central Asian country north of Afghanistan, including the Islamic majority.
Last year the government reportedly closed down an Adventist church and another Protestant church in Samarqand for “illegally proselytizing” local residents. A similar home raid occurred in the city of Nukus near the Turkmenistan border in 2003.
In sharing the developments, Vitko asked for Adventists worldwide to remember the church's situation in Uzbekistan.
“Let's pray for our church and pastors there,” Vitko said. “Let's pray for religious freedom in region.”
About 1,300 Adventists worship in 19 churches in Uzbekistan.
