A court in South Kazakhstan has declared that a Christian woman who showed another person how to download the Bible on a smartphone is “not guilty” of illegal missionary activity.
The South Kazakhstan Regional Court in the city of Shymkent acquitted Dilobarkhon Sultanova of the charge this week, according to Radio Free Europe.
Sultanova was accused of illegally propagating Christianity after she told a woman she met at the New Life church in December how to download the Bible on her mobilephone. She was charged in January, as the woman filed a police complaint, alleging she was being encouraged to convert.
International Christian Concern’s Central Asia Correspondent Amy Penn says the complainant is suspected of being a police plant “because she begged for help downloading a Bible” and later reported the woman who helped her.
Kazakhstan is the world’s largest landlocked country and requires all religious groups to register with the government, claiming that such measures are needed to deal with the threat of terrorism. Local authorities have been given the power to penalize activities of unregistered organizations with fines or detention.
The country’s Law on Extremism empowers the government to designate a group as an extremist organization, ban its activities as well as penalize its members.
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Source: Christian Post
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