A church pastor in Kyrgyzstan facing possible conviction on Thursday (May 29) of ‘inciting enmity’ was struck with an iron pipe, kicked and received blows to his head and chest after his arrest in November, according to rights group Forum 18.
The torture failed in the attempt to draw a false confession from the Rev. Pavel Shreider, 65-year-old pastor of True and Free Reform Seventh-day Adventist Church, who remains jailed in pre-trial detention at an Interior Ministry Investigation Prison in the capital city of Bishkek, Forum 18 reported.
He has been there since National Security Service (NSC) police handcuffed him when he stepped out of his home near Bishkek at 8 a.m. on Nov. 13. The secret police took him to the NSC building in the city and tortured him, the watchdog group reported.
“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 – which dismissed the complaint. The officers “hit me with an iron pipe to force me to confess that I committed crimes.”
Secret police subsequently forced medics to give an assessment, making them “sign a paper that I had made no complaints to them,” Pastor Schreider reportedly stated.
Secret police also used a stun gun trying to get a church member to falsely implicate the pastor the next day, Nov. 14. Igor Tsoy refused to do so, despite suffering “multiple injuries,” and he was released later that day, reported Forum 18.
The pastor faces a prison term of six to seven years if a court in Bishkek convicts him at a hearing scheduled for Thursday (May 29) of “incitement of racial, ethnic, national, religious, or regional enmity” when “committed by a group of individuals.” He denies the charges. The trial began on April 17.
“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,” the pastor’s lawyer, Akmat Alagushev, told Forum 18. “Also, there is no concrete evidence of illegal actions Shreider allegedly committed in the media, on the internet or publicly or otherwise.”
Vera Shreider, daughter of the pastor, visited him in prison on Tuesday (May 20) and said he is “doing well physically” and that the family was allowed to bring him food and medicines.
“He was examined medically by various doctors recently after our multiple calls to various authorities,” she said. “The food in the prison is normal. He can read his Bible, which he keeps in his cell, and is allowed to pray.”
Forum 18 discovered nine officers involved in the arrest of Pastor Shreider at his home. The rights group identified some of them as Siymik Bolotov, NSC secret police investigator; Azim Kurmanbekov, Interior Ministry senior operative; as well as two officers of the Special Police Detachment, who were both masked and armed with automatic rifles.
They “rang the bell of our door, and when we opened they entered with my father handcuffed,” Vera Shreider said, adding that police searched the family home. “They pushed my father’s head down as though he [was] some dangerous criminal. They did not allow my father to talk to us. ‘It is a secret case,’ they told us and prevented us [from] calling our lawyer by immediately taking away all our phones. They also did not allow us to examine their identification documents.”
Pastor Shreider was escorted in handcuffs to a building used by the church for worship in the village of Lenin in Alamudun District of Chuy Region, just north of Bishkek. They searched the home, which is owned by a relative of the pastor, Pavel Yantsen.
Authorities searched the homes of nine other church members on the same day. They confiscated more than 2,000 books, including nearly 200 by Ellen White, a founder of the Adventist faith, and at least 50 Bibles. Computers and other technical equipment, cash, mobile phones and ownership documents for five homes and two cars were also seized.
They later returned the items to the owners, except a mobile phone that secret police claimed had been lost and books kept for evidence in the case against the pastor.
The True and Free Reform Seventh-day Adventist Church in Kyrgyzstan is part of a reform movement within Adventism that emerged during the Soviet period, according to Forum 18. A former leader of the church, prisoner of conscience Vladimir Shelkov, died in a Soviet labor camp in 1980.
The reform movement church is differentiated from the Seventh-day Adventist Church based in the United States.
The True and Free Reform church has not registered with Kyrgyzstan authorities, making it illegal in the country.
An unnamed church member told Forum 18 that authorities “since 2022 were looking into closing our church and seeking any excuses.” Church members would not disclose their names out of fear of state reprisals.
The church member referred to a “fabricated” case against Pastor Shreider. A case had been brought in 2021 against two church members claiming that, “allegedly under instructions of Pastor Shreider, they manipulated an old woman, another member of the church, into selling them a house she owned.”
Church members said authorities were adding these false witness statements as a type of evidence alongside the books confiscated from the pastor. They say the authorities are trying to link the criminal case against Pastor Shreider with the 2021 case, reported Forum 18.
The watchdog contacted several authorities about the arrest and torture, but they all declined to answer questions.
Kyrgyzstan is a signatory to the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
