Kazakhstan: Courts order the destruction of 196 Christian publications
Kazakhstan imposes tight restrictions on religious literature and other materials. Religious literature is subject to compulsory pre-publication censorship and – together with icons, pictures and jewellery that bears religious inscriptions - can only be distributed in state-approved venues. Sharing faith with others without state permission is also banned.
The regime also imposes tight restrictions on all meetings for worship. State permission is needed for a community to be allowed to meet and worship.
On the 29th of February, four Council of Churches Baptists travelled to the village of Akkuly in the north-eastern Pavlodar Region close to the border with Russia. There they offered Christian literature to villagers on the street.
Local Baptists told Forum 18 that police detained two of their members, Oleg Stepanenko and Nadezhda Smirnova, and took them to the police station. Officers demanded that the two write statements. Both said that they had been distributing Christian literature, citing their constitutional right to do so.
Officers confiscated their Christian literature, which was in Russian and Kazakh: 3 copies of “Jesus our Destiny”, 10 copies of “The Most Important Truths,” 15 copies of “All Children Need to Know This,” 98 copies of the newspaper “Do You Believe?” and 70 Christian leaflets.
Source: christianophobie.fr
