On 1 April, the Supreme Court rejected Catholic priest Henryk Okolotovich's appeal against his 11-year jail term on treason charges. Both his trial and appeal were closed. In a message from prison, he denied "espionage for Poland and the Vatican". He rejected pressure to implicate the country's Catholic bishops. "Priests are being persecuted to shut our mouths, so that the Catholic Church does ...

15 April 2025 OCCUPIED UKRAINE: Russian FSB raids, court cases, fines, deportation threats On 2 March, officers of the Russian FSB security service and Luhansk Regional Police's Anti-Extremism Centre raided the Sunday worship meeting of a Baptist congregation in Stakhanov in Russian-occupied Luhansk Region. On 10 April, a court acquitted the church's pastor. This was the latest raid on ...

In early 2024, Russian occupation forces arrested a Protestant in her fifties for participating in a July 2023 prayer meeting in the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol. Prosecutors handed her criminal case to Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Regional Court. In the same court is the criminal case against Ukrainian Orthodox Church priest Kostiantyn Maksimov for alleged "espionage". On 27 April ...

At a closed hearing at the Russian-controlled Crimean Supreme Court in Simferopol on 2 August, Zaporizhzhia Regional Court jailed 41-year-old Ukrainian Orthodox priest Fr Kostiantyn Maksimov in a strict regime labour camp for 14 years on "espionage" charges. "I'm in such shock," his mother Svetlana Maksimova told Forum 18. He is likely to be illegally transferred to Russia after any appeal. On ...

On 22 September, a Goranboy court jailed 22-year-old Jehovah's Witness Seymur Mammadov for nine months for refusing compulsory military service on conscientious grounds. On 25 July – two days after his 18th birthday – officers seized conscientious objector Royal Karimov and forcibly took him to a military unit in Ganca, where he is still held. Baku's Sabail District Court extended to March ...

At the instigation of the General Prosecutor, a secret Supreme Court hearing in Dushanbe on 29 March 2021 banned Jehovah's Witnesses for a second time, nearly 14 years after they were first banned in Tajikistan. No one informed the Jehovah's Witness community either before the 2021 hearing or afterwards. They found out about the hearing and renewed ban only when the regime replied to the ...

8 June 2026 RUSSIA: January 2025 to April 2026 prosecutions for not showing official full name: list Forum 18 found 52 Administrative Code Article 5.26, Part 3 prosecutions in 2025 and the first four months of 2026 for not showing registered religious organisations' official full names on literature, online, and on buildings. Of these, 34 ended with fines, 6 ended with warnings, 4 ended with ...

A Moscow court fined an Anglican Christian three weeks' average wage under Russia's "gay propaganda" law for social media posts citing a Vatican declaration condemning "unjust discrimination" on the basis of sexual orientation and a Scottish Episcopal Church essay on equal marriage. This is the first known time a court imposed such a fine for sharing church documents. Amid ever-tightening laws ...

18 June 2026 KYRGYZSTAN: Five Reform Adventists in 2-month pre-trial detention Late on 17 June, a Bishkek court ordered five members of the now-banned True and Free Reform Seventh-day Adventist Church held in pre-trial detention for two months. The three men and two women face criminal charges of "Production and distribution of extremist materials". If convicted, each faces 5 to 7 years ...

Uzbekistan's new Religion Law [signed by the President 5 July, came into force 6 July] maintains almost all the restrictions on freedom of religion and belief in the current Religion Law. It continues to ban: all exercise of freedom of religion and belief without state permission; teaching about religion without state permission; sharing beliefs; and publishing, distributing or importing ...