Christianity is the second-largest religion in Kazakhstan, with 26% of the population practicing the faith. But many Christians, especially in the smaller denominations, have experienced persecution.
Minsk City Administration and local police have warned New Life Pentecostal Church that meetings for worship in the church car park are illegal and threatened to liquidate the Church in court. Liquidation would make any exercise of freedom of religion or belief illegal and punishable with up to a two-year jail term. The Church meets each Sunday in the car park after officials evicted it in February 2021 from the church building it bought in 2002. Officials refuse to explain why the Church cannot use its building.
Protestants say secret police encouraged a former church member to lodge a suit against New Life Church – now in court in Pavlodar - claiming back pay and compensation for moral damages for volunteer work in a rehabilitation centre. "This is not a state campaign against the Church," a local religious affairs official claimed, though the individual met officials and a state-backed anti-"sect" centre. Jehovah s Witnesses are appealing a decision awarding large "compensation" to two former members. An assessment of their literature, claiming it caused psychiatric harm, listed a work by Andrei Snezhnevsky, leader of Soviet-era psychiatric abuse.
List of: 9 individuals (all Sunni Muslim men) jailed for exercising freedom of religion or belief; 4 freed early from prison and serving the rest of their terms at home under restrictions; 8 former prisoners of conscience under years-long, often vague post-prison bans on specific activity; 31 individuals who have completed their jail terms have access to bank accounts blocked for up to a further 8 years. This account blocking can also block individuals from finding work or driving.
Five of the nine known prisoners of conscience jailed for exercising freedom of religion or belief were punished for participating in an online Islamic discussion group. The other four are also Sunni Muslims. Dadash Mazhenov and Abdukhalil Abduzhabbarov are facing torture by being held in prolonged solitary confinement. Mazhenov has been physically tortured, most recently in a January 2022 beating with truncheons which broke his jaw. Abduzhabbarov was not allowed to attend his father s funeral, while Galymzhan Abilkairov was not allowed to attend his wife s funeral.