This appears to be an attempt at legal strongarming, a la Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. But it is interesting to note that Christian missionary activity can get one arrested and fined in “secular” Uzbekistan. Islamic Tolerance Alert: “Christian family converted to Islam, beaten, tried in Tashkent,” from Uznews.net, August 12 (thanks to Filip):
Orthodox Christian Natalya Pleshakova who is disabled from childhood and her mother have been severely beaten up and tried in Tashkent.
Pleshakova, 26, a disabled from childhood, will forever remember her day on 6 August.
At about 4 o’clock in the morning the gate of their house on Ok Yul Street in Tashkent was broken and six strong men with sticks and clubs stormed into their yard.
Natalya who is on the crutches walked towards them hardly managing to cover herself. When she asked “Who are you?” she received a first blow and she was dragged to the kitchen.
What did police look for?
What did six huge men who turned the house upside down need? One of them looked for house documents while others collected icons, bibles, religious calendars and prayer books.
All this happened under the very eyes of a beat officer who filmed everything on his mobile phone, trying to catch Natalya or her mother Valentina Semenovna avoid hits or answer curses and insults.
Natalya, in handcuffs, manages to sneak into her room to make calls to police and an orthodox church. When they saw her do that they seized her phone and beat her up again.
All this had lasted for four hours when a Damas minibus arrived with several officers with assault rifles in camouflage uniforms and balaclavas. Their leader said he was “Aziz from police”. The women decided they were saved but not yet.
They were beaten up in front of neighbours who were called up as witnesses to represent a neighbourhood committee.
Charges of missionary activities
The events unfolded in office 303 at Tashkent’s Mirabad district police department where Natalya and her mother were taken.
There Natalya was offered to convert to Islam for its allegedly being better than Christianity, since it allows a man to have four wives. The young woman refused.
She then was threatened and beaten. Frightened and exhausted, Natalya was then forced to write a tender saying that she had stored 125 religious books and items, and “Aziz from police” dictated her titles which she heard for the first time.
“Aziz from police” said that there was nothing wrong in writing that it all belonged to a dead grandmother, and the knackered women were set free at about two in the morning.
Natalya called ambulance and was taken to hospital where her injuries were documented.
Trial
The following day the women went to the district prosecutor’s office which refused to accept their complaint. Soon afterwards “Aziz from police” and the beat officer drove them to a court trial and the women were handed over to two officers.
Judge B Ermatov spent only five minutes on “hearing the case”, the women said, and ordered them to go home without even reading out his ruling. Only a week later did they receive the ruling.
The judge decided that the women had resisted police and had stored the banned religious literature at home and conducted missionary activities. He fined them 20 minimum monthly wages each….
What is behind this horror?
The women said that someone wanted to appropriate a plot of land on which their house stands…..