KYRGYZSTAN: Reform Adventist pastor’s three-year jail term + deportation
by Felix Corley and Mushfig Bayram
Forum18 (14.07.2025) – In November 2024 the NSC secret police arrested and tortured True and Free Reform Adventist Pastor Pavel Shreider, placing him in pre-trial detention. In March 2025 a court banned his Church as “extremist”. On 10 July a Bishkek court jailed the 65-year-old for 3 years on charges of “incitement of racial, ethnic, national, religious, or regional enmity” when “committed by a group of individuals”, charges he denied. Judge Ubaydulla Satimkulov ordered his post-prison deportation. Officials brought Pastor Shreider to court in handcuffs.
On 10 July, nearly three months after the criminal trial began, Birinchi May (Pervomaisky) District Court in the capital Bishkek convicted True and Free Reform Seventh-day Adventist Church Pastor Pavel Shreider on charges of “incitement of racial, ethnic, national, religious, or regional enmity” when “committed by a group of individuals”. Judge Ubaydulla Satimkulov jailed the 65-year-old Pastor for three years. The Judge ordered his deportation at the end of the prison term.
The prosecution was led in court by Daniyar Madaliyev of Birinchi May District Prosecutor’s Office. He demanded the maximum 7-year jail term but not deportation. The deportation order appears to have been the initiative of the Judge. Pastor Shreider was born in Talas district of Kyrgyzstan in the Soviet period and lives with his family in Bishkek. But he holds a Russian passport (see below).
Pastor Shreider was brought in in handcuffs and was held in the defendant’s cage in the court room during each hearing. “We were not allowed to approach him in the cage to talk to him,” one of those present at the trial complained. They said people are used to seeing defendants in criminal cases being held in a cage in the court room.
Pastor Shreider rejected all the charges and is preparing to appeal, his lawyer told Forum 18 after the hearing.
“No evidence was provided [of incitement to enmity] and was not proven at the trial,” one of those present told Forum 18. “One single disc, as the judge read out when passing the sentence, formed evidence of guilt for the crime, but during viewing in the courtroom it was empty. The judge did not cite anything else that proved any guilt. Yet the sentence was handed down”.
Forum 18 was unable to reach Judge Satimkulov on 14 July.
The Deputy Director of the National Agency for Religious Affairs and Interethnic Relations, Kanatbek Midin uuly, defended the right of any country to enforce its own laws in the area of religion. “When these laws are violated, punishment is envisaged,” he told Forum 18.
Pastor Shreider’s lawyer Akmat Alagushev earlier rejected the accusations. “There is not a single reference in the indictment to the persons in collusion with whom Shreider allegedly committed the mentioned crimes, and no references to any specific names,” he told Forum 18 in May. “Also there is no concrete evidence of illegal actions Shreider allegedly committed in the media, on the internet or publicly or otherwise.”
Officials from the Office of the regime-appointed Human Rights Ombudsperson Jamilya Jamanbayeva have visited Pastor Shreider in prison and listened to relatives’ concerns, but have concluded that no violations have taken place and they need only to monitor the case. The Ombudsperson’s Office has not responded to Forum 18’s question as to what further action it is intending.
The National Security Committee (NSC) secret police arrested Pastor Shreider in Bishkek in November 2024. Officers searched his home and those of about 10 other church members. They seized thousands of books, including Bibles, as well as cash and mobile phones.
The NSC secret police have now returned most of the 2,196 books they confiscated during the November 2024 raids. “About 20 per cent are still with the NSC and have not been returned,” one individual told Forum 18.
NSC secret police officers tortured Pastor Shreider and another detained church member Igor Tsoy during interrogations. “I was given blows on my head, chest and given kicks in my spine from behind by five officers,” Pastor Shreider wrote in a November 2024 complaint to the National Centre for the Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in Bishkek. Officers “hit me with an iron pipe to force me to confess that I committed crimes”.
NSC secret police officers used a stun gun to try to coerce Tsoy to write a statement against Pastor Shreider, causing multiple injuries. However, Tsoy refused to do so.
The National Centre for the Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment claimed that the torture cannot be corroborated. Officials who participated in the arrest and investigation of Pastor Shreider deny that officers tortured Pastor Shreider and church member Tsoy.
On 19 March, in a civil case opened by the NSC secret police and brought to court by Chuy Regional Prosecutor’s Office, Alamudun District Court declared the True and Free Seventh-day Adventist Church an “extremist” religious organisation and banned its activity throughout the country. The community has appealed against the ban to the Supreme Court, but no date has yet been set for the hearing.
Indira Aslanova, Senior Expert of the Centre for Religious Studies, an independent organisation in Bishkek, had earlier described accusing the True and Free Adventists of “extremism” as “absurd”. “I sincerely hope that this time the judge will demonstrate greater objectivity, review the case fairly, and take into account the alternative expert assessment,” she told Forum 18.
Aslanova noted Pastor Shreider’s criminal conviction. “I’m not a lawyer but I believe the problem won’t be resolved until the organisation is removed from the list of banned extremist organisations,” Aslanova added. “As long as it remains on that list, the relevant articles of the Criminal Code will automatically apply to its members”.
The regime has jailed others for exercising freedom of religion or belief. The 36-year-old Muslim prisoner of conscience Asadullo Madraimov has been jailed since October 2023 for criticising the authorities for closing Kara-Suu District’s Al-Sarakhsi Mosque. Another member of the community, Mamirzhan Tashmatov, was freed from prison in May 2024. In July 2023, a court jailed Protestant Aytbek Tynaliyev for 6 months for allegedly “inciting religious enmity” for social media posts sharing his faith.
Photo Credit : HRWF (2018)
