KAZAKHSTAN (ANS) -- Shortly before the Oct. 25 re-registration deadline for all of Kazakhstan's religious communities, officials pressured nearly a quarter of the signatories on the re-registration application of Grace Protestant Church in Karaturyk to remove their names.

Kazakhstan is a country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

In a story for Forum 18 News Service by Mushfig Bayram, Church Pastor Zhursyn Koshkinov said, “It seems the authorities especially chose to target those founders who are of Kazakh and Uygur ethnicity.”

One of the officials told Forum 18, “We only did what we were asked by the District Internal Policy Department.”

That department in turn told Forum 18 the instruction came from the government's Agency of Religious Affairs. ARA official Zhumagali Alimbekov refused to tell Forum 18 how the authorities can demand that the Grace Church signatories reveal whether or not they are active in the Church, or write statements to reveal their beliefs, when this is not required by the Religion Law.

Forum 18 said Jehovah's Witness communities have also been raided to ensure they are registered, while a Protestant church's worship was interrupted by the head of a state-backed “anti-sect” center.

Jeremy Reynalds is Senior Correspondent for the ASSIST News Service, a freelance writer and also the founder and CEO of Joy Junction, New Mexico's largest emergency homeless shelter, http://www.joyjunction.org He has a master's degree in communication from the University of New Mexico, and a Ph.D. in intercultural education from Biola University in Los Angeles. His newest book is "Homeless in the City." Additional details on "Homeless in the City" are available at http://www.homelessinthecity.com. Reynalds lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For more information contact: Jeremy Reynalds at jeremyreynalds@comcast.net.