Uzbekistan
Prisoners
Rashid Turibayev RELEASED
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State Department 2002 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
March 31, 2003
Freedom of Religion
The Constitution provides for freedom of religion and for the principle of separation of church and state; however, in practice the Government restricted this right.
The Government viewed most Islamic activity outside the state-sponsored mosques with suspicion and often concluded that those engaging in such activity posed an extremist security threat. The primary target of the Government's suspicion was the banned extremist Islamic political party Hizb ut-Tahrir; most of those arrested were allegedly associated with this organization. The Government arrested as many 600 suspected members of Hizb ut-Tahrir or, in some cases, other groups. Those arrested were usually mistreated and were typically sentenced to between 7 and 12 years in jail. Many others suspected of association with extremism were detained for questioning. Christians who tried to convert Muslims or who had among their congregations members of traditionally Muslim ethnic groups often faced official harassment, legal action or, in a number of cases, mistreatment. Christians who avoided any association with proselytizing generally had no problems, and Jews generally were able to practice their religion. The religion law forbids proselytizing and severely restricts activities such as importing and disseminating religious literature.
The Government is secular, and there is no official state religion. Although the laws treat all religious confessions equally, the Government shows its support for the country's Muslim heritage by funding an Islamic university and subsidizing citizens' participation in the Hajj. The Government promotes a moderate version of Islam through the control and financing of the Spiritual Directorate for Muslims (the Muftiate), which in turn controls the Islamic hierarchy, the content of imams' sermons, and the volume and substance of published Islamic materials.
The Religion Law requires all religious groups and congregations to register and provides strict and burdensome criteria for their registration. Among its requirements, the law stipulates that each group must present a list of at least 100 Uzbek citizen members to the local branches of the Ministry of Justice. This provision enabled the Government to ban any group simply by finding technical grounds for denying its registration petition. Officials designed the law to target Muslims who worship outside the system of state-organized mosques. A special commission may grant exemptions to the Religion Law's strict requirements and register groups that have not been registered by local officials. The commission granted exemptions to 51 such groups, including congregations with fewer than 100 Uzbek citizen members.
As of May, the Government registered 2,047 religious congregations and organizations, 1,863 of which were Muslim. However, the Government's Committee on Religious Affairs (CRA) continued to deny the Greater Grace Christian Church of Samarkand permission to have a Finnish rather than Uzbek pastor. The church's application for registration remained blocked at year's end pending resolution of that issue. In Tashkent the Agape mission Church continued to face difficulty registering, despite the fact that it met all legal requirements for registration. Local authorities continued to block the registration of Baptist congregations in Gazalkent and Novy Zhizn. During 2001 the deputy mayor of Gazalkent allegedly told church leaders that their application might be approved if they removed from the church's membership list all names of ethnic-Uzbek origin.
Ethnic Uzbeks in Guliston established their own Protestant church, called the Good News Church. It was also denied registration, and on August 18 its pastor, his wife, and one member were fined. Members alleged that the head of the local office of the Ministry of Justice tore up their application in front of them. In the months following the August fines, members of the Good News Church reported receiving visits in their homes by local security officials, who discouraged them from participating in the church's activities.
Any religious service conducted by an unregistered religious organization is illegal. Police occasionally broke up meetings of unregistered groups. Members of such groups were fined during the year, and one was briefly jailed. Other prohibited activities for unregistered groups include: Organizing an illegal religious group, persuading others to join such a group, and drawing minors into a religious organization without the permission of their parents.
Religious groups are prohibited from forming political parties and social movements (see Section 2.b.).
The law prohibits proselytizing, which resulted in fines and the denial of registration to many Christian churches, and in some cases, beatings of many of their members. Authorities tolerated many Christian evangelical groups but often harassed those that tried to convert Muslims to Christianity.
The law forbids anyone except clerics from wearing religious clothing in public. Nevertheless, women were seen wearing the hijab and, less frequently, the veil on the street. Most young men did not wear beards, which the Government regarded as a potential indicator of extremism. Most female university students did not wear the hijab. There were no known expulsions of women wearing headscarves during the year. However, of the women expelled from state universities in 1997 and 1998 for wearing religious clothing, none who continued to do so were readmitted during the year (see Section 1.f.).
The Government bans the teaching of religious subjects in schools and also prohibits the private teaching of religious principles. In May 2001, the Ministry of Justice informed the Baptist Union in writing that the holding of Sunday school classes for the children of congregation members was a violation of the Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations. The letter threatened revocation of the Baptist Union's registration if it did not immediately cancel Sunday school. The legal problem was not resolved, but a series of communications between the Baptist Union and the Ministry resulted in what was at least a temporary, mutually acceptable compromise.
The Government requires that the religious censor approve all religious literature. The Committee on Religious Affairs, in accordance with the law, has given the right to publish, import, and distribute religious literature solely to registered central offices of religious organizations. Seven such offices were registered by year's end. However, the Government discouraged and occasionally even blocked registered central offices from producing or importing Christian literature in the Uzbek language, even though Bibles in many other languages were available in Tashkent bookstores.
The Muftiate sporadically issued an updated list of all officially sanctioned Islamic literature. Bookstores were not allowed to sell any Islamic literature not on the list. The list contained more than 200 titles; however, in practice Islamic bookstores in Tashkent sold a large number of titles not on the list, including those in the Arabic language. More controversial literature, when available, was not displayed on shelves. Possession of literature deemed extremist might lead to arrest and prosecution. Hizb ut-Tahrir leaflets, which were fundamentally political in nature, absolutely were prohibited.
The Government's most serious abuses of the right to religious freedom were committed against suspected Islamic extremists, but the effects had repercussions in the wider Muslim community. The Government's campaign against extremist Islamic groups, begun in the early 1990s, resulted in numerous serious abuses during the year. The campaign was directed at three types of Muslims: Alleged Wahhabists, including those educated at madrassas (religious schools) abroad and followers of missing Imams Nazarov of Tashkent and Mirzaev of Andijon; those suspected of being involved in the 1999 Tashkent bombings or of being involved with the IMU, whose roots are in Namangan; and suspected members of Hizb ut-Tahrir throughout the country. During the year, the campaign resulted in the arrests of some persons, primarily young men, who claimed that they were not extremists.
Both Wahhabism and the IMU stemmed from the growth of independent Islam that the Government has sought to suppress since the early 1990s. While the Government viewed members of the IMU as terrorists, it viewed members of Hizb ut-Tahir and Wahhabists as potential terrorists.
The Government did not consider repression of these groups to be a matter of religious freedom, but rather to be directed against those who wanted to foment armed resistance to the Government. However, authorities were highly suspicious of those who were more religiously observant than is the norm, including frequent mosque attendees, bearded men, and veiled women. In practice this approach resulted in abuses against observant Muslims for their religious beliefs. It also served to radicalize some young men and women who otherwise might practice their religion in a politically neutral manner.
Arbitrary arrest and detention of those the Government perceived as Islamic extremists were common (see Section 1.d.). Unlike in past years, there were no credible reports of security services arresting, detaining, or harassing Muslim leaders perceived to be extremists.
Prison authorities deprived many prisoners suspected of Islamic extremism of the right to practice their religion freely. Human rights monitors reported that individuals arrested for Islamic extremism were not allowed to read the Koran in most detention facilities.
The scarcity of independent media and the absence of a centrally located and readily accessible register of court cases made it difficult to determine how many persons were incarcerated for religious reasons. The Moscow-based human rights organization Memorial estimated that 1,400 persons were arrested on suspicion of Islamic extremism during the first 8 months of 2001, compared with 2,700 arrested in 2000, and 4,000 in 1999 (see Section 1.e.). Memorial has not published an updated list; however, other sources estimated that during the year approximately 600 persons were arrested.
Imam Abdulvakhid Yuldashev, a former pupil of Imam Nazarov, remained in jail. He was arrested in June 2000 and sentenced in April 2001. His lawyer continued to visit him throughout the year and reported that he continued to be tortured periodically (see section 1.c.).
Although the use of loudspeakers in issuing the call to prayer was discouraged beginning in 1998, their use became more common during the year.
Members of Jehovah's Witnesses claimed that they were subjected routinely to police questioning, search, and arbitrary fines. Police conducted several raids during the year against meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses. Since April 2001, there were reports that approximately 90 members of Jehovah's Witnesses were detained and administratively fined and that police confiscated some members' passports. On March 26, members of three congregations in Nukus were detained and reportedly beaten while celebrating a religious holiday. Throughout the year, authorities in Jizzakh intensified an education campaign aimed at discouraging youth from joining Jehovah's Witnesses. Representatives of Jehovah's Witnesses alleged that the Government regarded Jehovah's Witnesses as an extremist group and disapproved of the group's door-to-door evangelical style; government officials confirmed this. In July police arrested Marat Mudarisov, a member of Jehovah's Witnesses, for inciting religious hatred. On November 29, Mudarisov was convicted and given a 3-year suspended sentence.
Criminal charges filed in 2001 against Pastor Nikolai Shevchenko of Bethany (Baptist) Church in Tashkent and several of his parishioners were dropped; however, Pastor Shevchenko still faced the possibility of administrative fines for leading an unregistered congregation. In August in the provincial capital of Guliston, an evangelical church leader and two of his congregants were fined for leading an unregistered church. Harassment of churches in other cities, including Urgench and Gazalkent, continued.
For a more detailed discussion see the 2002 International Religious Freedom Report .
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