Source: World Watch Monitor, December 18, 2019<\/p>\n
A Protestant pastor sentenced to three years in prison for \u201csinging extremist songs in church and so inciting religious hatred\u201d has been freed three months early.<\/p>\n
Kholmatov, who with wife Gulya has three children, was arrested on unspecified charges during an April 2017 raid on his church. Affiliated churches in the Sogd region were also raided and closed down earlier that year.<\/p>\n
Kholmatov said, \u201cI\u2019d like to express my huge gratitude to all the people who supported and prayed for me, my family, and my church. All these three years I felt your prayers. They helped me to stand, they helped my precious wife and children, they helped the members of my church who were left without a pastor then [kicked out of] our building. Your prayers helped us to stand strong through all these difficulties, to grow spiritually, and to transform into the nature of our Heavenly Lord! Thank you from all my heart! Glory to God!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00bb Read full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00bb See also: Tajik Authorities Detain 27 Suspected Members Of Banned Muslim Brotherhood<\/a> along with an analysis piece, Four Issues Central Asia Faced in 2019 (and They\u2019re Not Going Away)<\/a> (RFE\/RL).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: World Watch Monitor, December 18, 2019 A Protestant pastor sentenced to three years in prison for \u201csinging extremist songs in church and so inciting religious hatred\u201d has been freed three months early. Kholmatov, who with wife Gulya has three children, was arrested on unspecified charges during an April 2017 raid on his church. Affiliated … Continue reading TAJIKISTAN: Pastor Freed after Three Years in Prison for Singing Extremist Songs in Church<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9020,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9019\/revisions\/9020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}