If you read this blog much, you know that I spent most of a year in Uzbekistan, and that the situation there is not a good one.

Islam Karimov is a murderous thug who rules through fear and intimidation, and millions of people suffer every day because of him.

Christians are routinely arrested and harassed, and prisoners are treated terribly.

This is an unexagerated reality for anyone who has spent any time there, yet the United States continues to maintain that they are our “partners in trade” and “partners in freedom”.

The recent wikileaks release of diplomatic cables shows that Karimov’s corruption is well-known among those who deal with him.

Check out this article where diplomats compare Karimov to a mafia thug.

Or this one, which includes a section from an actual cable:

Corruption is rampant in the GOU. Tenders and government positions can be fairly easily secured by paying the right amount of money to the appropriate individual, leading to a situation in which unqualified individuals have every incentive to engage in further corrupt activity to pay off the large debts they usually incur making down payments on the jobs.

Or this one, which begins:

The post-Soviet state of Uzbekistan is a nightmarish world of “rampant corruption”, organised crime, forced labour in the cotton fields, and torture, according to the leaked cables.

But the secret dispatches released by WikiLeaks reveal that the US tries to keep President Islam Karimov sweet because he allows a crucial US military supply line to run into Afghanistan, known as the northern distribution network (NDN).

Did you catch that? Basically, Uzbekistan is one step above North Korea, but our government says we need to be nice to them and ignore it all so that we can have a military supply line.

Sigh…

Please pray for this broken country, plagued by an evil ruler and hundreds of years of demonic oppression.

Pray for the thousands of believers who suffer daily for their courage to follow Christ.

Pray for 30,000,000 lost people with no good access to the Gospel of Christ’s saving work.

And pray for God to destroy the work of Karimov’s hands and open doors for a flood of missionaries and aid groups to come bring life to this dark place!

]]> http://www.therieslands.com/2010/12/13/wikileaks-reveals-uzbekistan-human-rights-abuse/feed/ 1 http://www.therieslands.com/2010/11/12/pray-for-persecuted-christians-in-uzbekistan/ http://www.therieslands.com/2010/11/12/pray-for-persecuted-christians-in-uzbekistan/#comments Fri, 12 Nov 2010 18:46:36 +0000 Zack http://www.therieslands.com/?p=5110

(Those reading from email or an rss feed will need to click through to see the 2-minute video above)

This is very personal to me.

There are somewhere around 30,000 believers in Uzbekistan, which is roughly 0.001% of the population.

I know a handful of them personally. They have been arrested, interrogated, spied on, sabotaged, and end up forced to live on the run, often to other countries.

This video is not an exaggeration or an isolated case.

Openly following Jesus in this context will cost you everything.

Please pray with me for our brothers and sisters in this part of the world.

Small children are forced to pick cotton instead of go to school for weeks at a time during the fall.

The cotton is grown in fields that the government essentially seizes, and then the cotton is sold for the government’s profit to other countries.

I was suprised this weekend to come across this article about how that may be coming to an end:

But, in what has been described as a major breakthrough, a decision by some of the world’s biggest clothing businesses has forced the Uzbeki government in recent weeks to sign International Labour Organisation conventions that commit the country to stop using child labour in its state-sponsored industry.

Retailers that have pulled out of the central Asian state include Tesco, Asda Wal-Mart, Marks & Spencer and Gap.

This would be a huge step forward if it works, which is still way up in the air:

Steve Trent, director of the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), said: “This is a major step forward. Virtually nothing persuaded the government to change course. But the actions of retailers and campaigners are definitely now having an impact. But the key question that remains is whether the Uzbeki government will implement the conventions. They need to allow independent monitoring and work with civil society, which are basic requirements of the conventions they have signed up to and ratified. They are not doing this so the jury is out.”

Nevertheless, I’m encouraged that someone is taking notice of the human rights abuse in Uzbekistan.

I applaud the retailers who are taking a financial hit to stand up for what is right.

Let’s keep praying!

Moves like this are common in Uzbekistan, as the government, composed of murderers and thieves moves closer and closer to the soviet dictatorship that supposedly fell apart after the Cold War.

Here’s the abstract:

In a move that appears designed to give the Uzbek government total control over the legal system, officials in Tashkent are requiring all defense lawyers in Uzbekistan to reapply for licenses to practice law.

Many defense lawyers believe that those who refuse to do the government’s bidding will end up having the license renewal applications rejected. Uzbek judges and prosecutors are already appointed by the executive branch.

Pray for Uzbekistan.

Pray for God to open the eyes of those who are lost.

Pray for God to tear down or reform the corrupt, broken leaderhship.

Pray for God to have mercy.

And thank Him that He allowed you to be born in a better place…

It makes me sad that the Obama administration will probably completely ignore this because they ‘need’ to build an air force base there.

Here’s how the article kicks off:

On its final working day in office, the Bush administration re-designated eight countries as severe violators of religious freedom but waived possible sanctions against Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, officials said Monday.

The moves were reported to key members of Congress in late January but were not made public until Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department informed the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom about them last week, State officials said.

On Jan. 16, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed documents labeling Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea and Sudan as “countries of particular concern” for abuses of religious worshippers. The Obama administration took office four days later.

Read the rest…

Here’s one: Seven Christians detained based on suspicion of being Christian…

Three Protestant Christians have each been sentenced to 15 days in prison in Andijan [Andijon] Region of eastern Uzbekistan after police raided a meal in a private home where the three were present, Protestants who preferred not to be identified for fear of state reprisals told Forum 18 News Service. A further three Protestants present were held in a centre for the homeless for between four and eleven days, for not having identity documents with them. In a separate case, a Baptist in the capital Tashkent was given a ten-day term in prison after some 20 officials from various state agencies – including the Presidential Administration – raided a prayer meeting in a registered church. Officials told church members that they need special permission for any services apart from those on Sundays, though Forum 18 can find no requirement for this in published laws or regulations.

Read the rest of the article here.

It’s easy to believe that we would die for our beliefs.

But what if someone subtly, persistently made your life miserable because of what you believe?

After years, it might begin to take a toll. You might lose heart.

You might throw in the towel.

Here’s a great example of how Christian persecution works in the real world.

In Uzbekistan, it’s not very likely that a squad of police are going to kick in the door to your house and arrest you until you recant your faith. Instead, Christians are targets of painful social, political, and economic isolation.

In this case, the Uzbek government is actively preventing a family from burrying their father, a cancer victim.

Why?

Because two of the children are followers of Jesus.

The government has made it clear that any graveyard that allows this family to bury the father, any imam who will perform the ceremony, and anyone attends any kind of ceremony will become a target of the secret police — a remnant of the KGB.

What do you do when your back yard starts wreaking of the foul smell of your dead father — and your non-christian family members are furious because it’s all your fault?

This is the type of persecution that Uzbek believers face on a regular basis.

Please keep them in your prayers!

There are about 29 million people in Uzbekistan, a country run by a KGB hitman thug. Karimov’s cruelty and lack of respect for his fellow man is mirrored down through the government at every level, and the most startling example is in Uzbek prisons.

I was very close to going to prison there and witnessing the conditions first-hand, and the prospect of that made our country director so nervous that at one point he was trying to get a US military helicopter to hover over our house and air lift us out of our situation.

It’s rumored among the people there that some people are even boiled alive in prison as a method to force prisoners to confess to whatever crime they are accused of.

I once had my passport stolen by a police officer, and he wouldn’t give it back until I wrote a confession stating that I had committed a crime. That was our deal on the surface. He was really trying to intimidate our team into giving him a large sum of money to leave us alone.

All that to say, here’s an article I came across that is worth the five minutes to read it.

Here’s how it starts:

The treatment of prisoners in Uzbek jails has never been good: it has always been bad, but it turns out that the situation is worsening further and there is no limit for this.

Almost legalised mistreatment, corruption and the embezzlement of funds allocated for prisons are complicated further by chaos, established in jails, and the grave general economic situation in the country.

As a result, the lives of about 60,000 inmates in Uzbekistan have changed from hard to unbearable. Inmates are beaten up, mistreated, underfed and forced to do hard jobs.

I just came across yet another article about child labor in Uzbekistan*.

Here’s how it starts:

Despite signing two international treaties and adopting domestic legislation prohibiting the use of child labor, Uzbekistan continued to rely on a “state-orchestrated mass mobilization of children to bring in the 2008 cotton harvest,” a new report has found.

By the end of September, with the pace of cotton collection lagging way behind harvest projections, officials in some areas ordered students as young as first graders into the fields…

I witnessed this first-hand a couple of years ago. The human rights situation in Uzbekistan is terrible.

Please take time to pray for the country. Pray for their wicked president. Pray against all the corruption. Pray for God to remove the strongholds that make that place so terrible for the nationals. Pray for the missionaries there. Pray for the believers there. Pray for God’s kingdom to come…

*I’ve written about this issue before here, here, and here.

Here’s an excerpt:

The case against Turgunov sends a chilling message to other activists that working for justice is a dangerous business in Uzbekistan. Despite the recent release of several other activists, new cases like this one show that any government critic will be dealt with harshly.

I posted another round of photos from my time in Uzbekistan (Read the original post here about where these are coming from). As I said before, I will gladly sell these to you in any format for any price, and all profits will go to supporting the Kingdom of Jesus in Central Asia.

See the rest of them on my flickr feed here.

Most of my friends know that I spent a year in Uzbekistan, and that I would give a lot to go back.

I posted a bazillion pics from my trip when I first came home, but the server I used for those has become bogged down with spam, and most of the folks who read this blog now didn’t way back when those photos were new to me.

So, I’m slowly porting some of them over to Flickr, complete with explanations and everything.

Not only that, but if you spot a photo you particularly like, I’d love to sell you the full-size version for any price, and I’ll give the proceeds to support many close friends who are working to spread the Kingdom of Jesus in Central Asia.

(For a point of reference, $20 is enough to support one full-time native believer within the country for one month)

Click here to view the photos, and check back for new picks throughout the next several weeks!

Me in the ruins of Alexander the Great's palace in Samarkand, Uzbekistan

I would give a lot to be waking up in Samarkand today. I would walk down the street to get break baked just a few minutes ago, and I would come home and eat it for breakfast with sweet milk and tea.

Or I would fast and walk around the city all day and pray against the demonic strongholds that make a miserable place to live.

Someday, Lord?

A Protestant from north-west Uzbekistan, Jandos Kuandikov, was arrested on 14 June and is still in detention before facing criminal trial on terrorism charges, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Uzbek police have also recently falsely accused a Protestant refugee in Kazakhstan of terrorism charges. Amongst other recent violations of freedom of thought, conscience and belief, four Baptists in Tashkent Region – Natalya Ogai, Filipp Kim, Dmitri Kim and Nurlan Tolebaev – have been fined and sentenced to ten days’ imprisonment, because of their peaceful religious activity. Fines continue to be imposed on other Protestants. However, in a highly unusual move, a court in the capital Tashkent found that charges against a Protestant had been fabricated and ordered police to be punished for this. But members of Tashkent’s Hare Krishna community have been banned from taking part in a music and environment festival.

Read the whole article here

Every time I come across something I want to draw your attention to via this blog, I leave it open in a tab, in hopes that some day I’ll have time to write what I really want to write about it.

…that hasn’t happened in a while though

And now my computer tells me that it must reboot to apply some security changes, so I’m going to throw a few links at you before I have to close my browser. I hope you’ll take time to look:

Uzbekistan TV Campaign Against Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses

This is something I experienced first-hand while I was overseas. People are literally brainwashed as their own fearless (revolting excuse for a man) leader comes on national television and tells them that Christians are only in their country to steal away their culture. And it’s effective. Here’s an excerpt (emphasis mine):

On Saturday 17 May state television broadcast in prime time a report describing such groups as a “global problem, along with religious dogmatism, fundamentalism, terrorism, and drug addiction,” actively involved in deceiving young people and minors.

The documentary featured Uzbek religious and political experts, state officials as well as representatives of the other religions, all of whom took a critical view of missionaries.

People are literally taught that the Gospel is as dangerous as terrorism or drug addiction.

I guess in a way it is…

Uzbekistan: Longest-Held Political Prisoner Free After Two Decades In Jail

The United Nations has decided that Uzbekistan has the 5th most corrupt government in the world.

And cotton is a big deal.

It’s a cash crop.

Farmers are literally forced to grow cotton and sell it to their government at substandard wages, while their families starve because of the essential foods that are not grown instead. University students are forced to take 4-8 weeks during the summer to pick cotton for the government, for free. And this guy was sent to jail for most of his life, why: because he made it work. That’s why there’s such a pervasive sense of hopeless in Central Asia. Because it seems like people are punished for doing anything but suffering…

Why do I share this? Because I want you to pray.

Adoniram Judson’s Advice to Missionaries

I found this on the Desiring God blog. If you don’t know who Adoniram Judson was, then you owe it to yourself to look him up. Desiring God has some great free resources, and I believe for a dollar or two you can buy a 1 1/2 hour talk by Piper about his life. The short version of the story is: The Gospel is alive in Burmha because of Judson’s amazing dedication and sacrifice. Here are a couple of his points to anyone who would be a missionary:

First, then, let it be a missionary life; that is, come out for life, and not for a limited term. Do not fancy that you have a true missionary spirit, while you are intending all along to leave the heathen soon after acquiring their language. Leave them! for what? To spend the rest of your days in enjoying the ease and plenty of your native land?

Fifthly. Beware of the reaction which will take place soon after reaching your field of labor. There you will perhaps find native Christians, of whose merits or demerits you can not judge correctly without some familiar acquaintance with their language. Some appearances will combine to disappoint and disgust you. You will meet with disappointments and discouragements, of which it is impossible to form a correct idea from written accounts, and which will lead you, at first, almost to regret that you have embarked in the cause. You will see men and women whom you have been accustomed to view through a telescope some thousands of miles long. Such an instrument is apt to magnify. Beware, therefore, of the reaction you will experience from a combination of all these causes, lest you become disheartened at commencing your work, or take up a prejudice against some persons and places, which will embitter all your future lives.

Eighthly. Never lay up money for yourselves or your families. Trust in God from day to day, and verily you shall be fed.

Seventhly. Beware of pride; not the pride of proud men, but the pride of humble men — that secret pride which is apt to grow out of the consciousness that we are esteemed by the great and good. This pride sometimes eats out the vitals of religion before its existence is suspected. In order to check its operations, it may be well to remember how we appear in the sight of God, and how we should appear in the sight of our fellow-men, if all were known. Endeavor to let all be known. Confess your faults freely, and as publicly as circumstances will require or admit. When you have done something of which you are ashamed, and by which, perhaps, some person has been injured (and what man is exempt?), be glad not only to make reparation, but improve the opportunity for subduing your pride.

(Read all 10 here.)

Silk Road to the Present

This is an article from the Moscow Times about the city where I spent a year. It’s funny to hear someone talk about the city from a tourist’s perspective, but it’s interesting none-the-less.

Uzbekistan: International Groups Blast Tashkent’s “Media Freedom Conference”

Excerpt:

The idea was that major international rights groups — including Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, the International Crisis Group, and the Open Society Institute — would attend and contribute to a frank exchange on a topic that generally makes the region’s leaders squeamish.

At the last minute, however, Uzbek officials scrapped the plans for an EU-Uzbek conference on civil society. Instead they staged an “Uzbek version” of the gathering that participants and would-be participants said fell far short of Brussels’ goals.

This is how they role in that good ol’ corrupt country.

Pray for Uzbekistan y’all.