A Tashkent judge fined the accountant of the Uzbek Bible Society 316,505 Soms ($189) for “violating procedures” during the import of two shipments of Bibles in 2008 and 2010, according to Forum 18 News. The judge also ordered the Bible Society to return the nearly 15,000 Bibles to the sender at its own expense. The shipments contained Bibles in Russian and Uzbek, along with children’s Bibles in Uzbek and Karakalpak, a language spoken in northwestern Uzbekistan. Authorities are especially opposed to the importation of Bibles that are in native languages instead of Russian.
Officials said they confiscated the Bibles because the Bible Society did not give shipment requests to the Religious Affairs Committee on time, and they also claimed there was no need to import Bibles into Uzbekistan because “there is an electronic version available on the Internet.”
The importation and production of religious literature in Uzbekistan is tightly controlled by the state and is censored by the Religious Affairs Committee. Only registered churches may request permission to print or import material. Religious literature is often confiscated by police during raids and later destroyed.
The first shipment of 12,000 Bibles and children’s Bibles for the Bible Society arrived at Tashkent City Customs on May 18, 2008, and was confiscated. The shipment included about 7,000 children’s Bibles in the Uzbek and Karakalpak languages. On January 15, 2010, a second shipment of Bibles from the Russian Bible Society arrived for the Uzbek Bible Society, consisting of Bibles in Russian. That shipment of 2,990 books was also confiscated. A Bible Society member told Forum 18 that the second shipment was ordered a year and half after the first shipment was confiscated because “there are thousands of Christians in Uzbekistan, and the churches need Bibles.”
Three weeks after the first shipment of Bibles arrived, the Religious Affairs Committee published an article on its website titled “Plots Failed.” It read, “With concerted efforts of the Religious Affairs Committee and Customs and Justice authorities, the attempt of the Bible Society of Uzbekistan to transport into Uzbekistan illegal religious literature was prevented. ... Thus the plot to flood Uzbekistan with illegal literature in the languages of native peoples with the purpose to conduct large-scale missionary activity especially among children and youth failed.”
