TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, October 27 (Compass) — Police in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent raided a Baptist church during Sunday worship on October 17, declaring the service an “illegal religious meeting” and demanding the pastor promise to stop all the church’s activities.
About 120 members of the congregation of the Bethany Baptist Church in Tashkent’s Mirzo-Ulugbek district were midway through their Sunday morning service when eight district police officials appeared at the door.

Ringing the bell, the officers demanded to speak with the church’s leader. Pastor Nikolai Shevchenko complied, leaving the platform at the front of the church to walk outside and speak with the officers.

According to Shevchenko, who spoke with Compass two days after the incident, the policemen demanded, “What’s going on here?” When he stated that he and his congregation were singing and worshipping, the officials asked, “Do you have permission to do this? Is your church registered?”

“I told them no, so they asked me, ‘Why not?’” Shevchenko said. “That is also my question,” he told them. “Why is our church not registered?”

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The isolated communist nation of North Korea remains atop the Open Doors “World Watch List” of countries where Christians are persecuted. The annual list ranks countries according to the intensity of persecution Christians face for actively pursuing their faith.

Saudi Arabia holds the second spot on the list followed by Vietnam.

North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam are noted as countries where “severe persecution” is taking place. Other countries listed in the WWL’s Top Ten include: Laos, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Bhutan, Maldives, Somalia, and Iran. China is listed 11th.

For years, very little information about the church emerged from Kim Il Sung’s harsh North Korea regime, which is now ruled by his son, Kim Jong Il. Some even wondered if the church had survived the decades of severe oppression. Recent years, however, have seen a relative “flood” of information coming from North Korean refugees fleeing to China to escape famine. They report that the church has not only survived, but even grown, perhaps to 400,000 Christians who worship in secret. But to visibly practice the Christian faith in North Korea today can still result in imprisonment and death.

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UNKNOWN PERSONS SET FIRE TO CHELIABINSK CHURCH
Press Release, Slavic Legal Center, 4 May 2005
Plenipotentiary for human rights is heading a campaign against religious minorities.

On the night of Saturday to Sunday of Easter (30 April-1 May 2005), at four o’clock in the morning unknown persons threw a bottle with flammable liquid through the door of the “Blagovestie” Evangelical Christian-Baptist church of Cheliabinsk. The brothers who were on custodial duty in the church did not immediately discover the fire. At first, smoke spread throughout the church and then the fire alarm system was activated. The flame was quickly put out by the efforts of the brothers using a fire extinguisher.

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by Stephen Adams

Sunday Adelaja, a Nigerian expatriate who pastors Kiev’s largest church—the 25,000-member Embassy of God—faced continual threats and intimidation from authorities because of his support for Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.

“It was horrible,” he said, being a Nigerian black man and heading such a highly visible ministry.

He was monitored and followed, he said, by government agents, threatened with deportation, had his passport seized, was ordered not to leave Kiev, was threatened by the attorney general and was sued 22 times. There was talk that Yushchenko’s opponent, Viktor Yanukovych, planned to eliminate the “cults”—that is, non-Orthodox churches.

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Portal-credo.ru, 15 April 2005

In the evening of 10 April, Rev. Siegfried Springer, 74, the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran church for the European part of Russia, was detained without explanation at border control at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. He was told that his visa had been cancelled; he was placed in a receiving area for deportees, and on the following day he was taken by plane back to Germany. This was reported by rights advocates of Krasnodar.

Siegfried Springer was born into a family of German colonists in Stavropol territory and left from Germany with his parents in 1943. He returned to USSR in 1957 for a festival of youth and students in Moscow. Since that time he worked on evangelistic projects in USSR and RF. From the beginning of the 1990s he lived in Moscow. (tr. by PDS, posted 18 May 2005)

NEW “EMMANUEL” CHURCH PROTEST AGAINST CITY HALL
Portal.credo-ru, 9 June 2005
At Moscow’s city hall on Tver Square a new action of protest has begun, which is being conducted by members of the “Emmanuel” central church of Christians of Evangelical Faith Pentecostals that unites more than 1,000 persons. The action is directed against the arbitrariness of city authorities in relations with the senior pastor, the press secretary of the “Emmanuel” church, Yury Popov, reports to Portal-credo.ru.

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EKATERINBURG DIOCESE ASKS PROSECUTOR TO RESCIND PROHIBITION ON ANTISECT DEMONSTRATION
Interfax, 16 June 2005
The missions department of the Ekaterinburg diocese sent to the prosecutor’s office of Sverdlovsk province a letter with a request to find illegal the prohibition of the administration of Ekaterinburg on conducting a picket against the activity of the “New Life” sect. As a representative of the missions department reported to the “Interfax-Urals” news agency, city authorities cited the fact that the “Energetik” house of culture where the sectarians conduct their meetings is a house of worship.

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MOSCOW DIVISION OF RODINA PARTY DEMONSTRATES AGAINST RUSSIAN AMERICAN CHRISTIAN INSTITUTE
Portal-credo.ru, 24 June 2005
A demonstration against the construction of the Russian-American Christian Institute (RAKhI) was conducted on 23 June 2005 by the regional division of the “Rodina” party in Moscow and deputies of the “Rodina” fraction in the Moscow city duma. The demonstration was held on a vacant lot near the Yauza, whose address is Menzhinsky street, No. 38.

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Hungarian Report from 1933

Following the Bolshevik “Revolution” of 1917, the Christian Church was severely persecuted in Russia. The following excerpt is just a small contribution to the information already available on this subject. This excerpt from an article entitled “Protestant World Report” written by Hungarian university professor Károly Karner, which appeared in the Hungarian Protestant Almanac of 1933, reports on the condition of the Protestant Church in Russia. Just a small part of the Russian Christians was Protestant, but we can infer from the information presented that the more extensive Orthodox Church suffered a much greater loss.
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Total Area: 17,075,200 sq. km
Population: 144,526,278 (est. July 2003)
Ethnicity: Russian 81.5%, Tatar 3.8%, Ukrainian 3%, Chuvash 1.2%, Bashkir 0.9%, Belarusian 0.8%, Moldavian 0.7%, other 8.1% (1989)
Language: Russian, Other
Religion: Russian Orthodox, Muslim, Other
Government Type: Federation
Capital: Moscow
Population Below Poverty Line: 25% (2002)

Religious freedom is a new concept in the largest country in the world, Russia. The country is primarily Russian Orthodox and was the center of Communist power for the world for more than a generation. With the crumbling of the USSR in 1991, Russia adopted a constitution officially allowing freedom of religion. However, that freedom is not consistently respected across the country.

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Emmanuel Pentecost Church Rally
Tverskaya Square, Moscow
Photos from Stetson University - Russian Religion News

Members of the 1000-member Emmanuel Pentecostal Church in Moscow were stunned when what they believed was a legally sanctioned protest was broken up on May 30 by Special Forces (OMON) officers. Three of the Christians were jailed and nine given fines for taking part in an illegal demonstration.

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PERSECUTION: Russia’s Orthodox Church spearheads a televised, nationwide smear campaign | by Greg Dabel

KRASNODAR, Russia — When graduate student Dima Belozyorov took a late-night study break from his Russian literature assignment and turned on the television in his Krasnodar apartment, he was aghast to see a documentary disparaging evangelicals. “The program reported the Adventist Church in Krasnodar was printing Satanic Bibles and using human blood for ink,” he told WORLD. “They also alleged that the church commits a dozen ritual murders each year.”

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