Kazakhstan 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kazakhstan Destroys Bibles, Uzbekistan Attacks Convert
By BosNewsLife News Center
21 March 2013

Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev takes autocratic approach to religion, activists and Christians say.

ASTANA/TASHKENT/BUDAPEST – A court in Kazakhstan has ordered the destruction of 121 pieces of Christian literature, including Bibles, while in neighboring Uzbekistan an elderly convert from Islam is in “great distress” after police raided his home, Christians said Thursday, March 21.

Vyacheslav Cherkasov, a street evangelist from the Kazakhstan’s city of Shchuchinsk, was reportedly detained by police on October 20 last year for offering Christian literature to passers-by in the street.

Officers confiscated his suitcase containing Bibles, children’s Bibles and other books and leaflets about the Christian faith, said Forum 18, an advocacy group investigating the case.

On March 5 the court said the confiscated material should be destroyed, in what is believed to be the first such ruling since Kazakhstan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. (read more)

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

For earlier articles, please see the “Archived Updates” section on Kazakhstan’s page.