In Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent, Christians belonging to an unregistered church were arrested on September 25 and fined heavily, writes Forum 18, which the Danish European Mission is co-founder and involved in managing.
Two women from an unregistered church, Mariya Kim and Larissa Permyakova, were at the hospital in Mirabad district to visit a church member who was hospitalized there. While they were in the waiting room, a plainclothes man, apparently drunk, approached them and asked what they were carrying. One of them was holding a copy of the New Testament in Kazakh and she had some Christian pamphlets in her bag. Another man in civilian clothes appeared and the two, without identifying themselves, began asking the believers who they were and what they were doing in the hospital. The believers who recounted the incident thought the men must be from the secret police.
About an hour later, at 5pm, two other women from the same church, Lidia Guseva and Natalya Belan and her seven-year-old daughter, were arrested at the hospital while visiting their friend. They had found out that the first two women were in trouble and asked what the problem was, which led to the arrest. All five were taken to the Mirabad police station and held outside in the police station yard almost until midnight while it got cold. They were then taken inside and detained until 5pm the next day, September 26. The seven-year-old girl was released before the remaining four were taken inside, but even though it was the middle of the night, none of them were given so much as a mattress to sleep on, so they couldn't sleep at all.
At 17:00, police took the four to the district court where they were supposed to be tried, but as court officials could not say when the hearing would take place, they were released at 19:00.
While those arrested were still at the police station on September 25, some church members gathered in front of the police station and asked for their sisters in the Lord to be released. The police told them that they would be detained until the next day, after which they would be transferred to the court where their case would be decided.
The believers then began singing hymns, which led to the two officers on duty at the police station ordering them to stop. "One of the officers warned us that he was going to arrest us all. The other one started putting his finger on the trigger of his machine gun and said he was going to shoot us all down," they said.
On September 29, Permyakova, Guseva and Belan were each fined 50 times the minimum wage, equivalent to approximately 9,000 Danish kroner. The court claimed that they had violated Section 184 of the Administrative Code, which prohibits "illegal storage, production, import or distribution of religious materials," Section 240(2), "violation of the Religion Law," and Section 241, "violation of the Regulation on teaching religious beliefs." The Christians wished to remain anonymous when reporting the incident, fearing reprisals from the state.
