The Human Rights Association (HRA) calleded on the Government of Kyrgyzstan to release immediately and unconditionally Pastor Pavel Shreider. Shreider is a 65-year-old Seventh-day Adventist pastor currently imprisoned on charges of inciting religious enmity.
Pastor Pavel Shreider, 65, is a pastor of the True and Free Reform Seventh-day Adventist Church in Kyrgyzstan. In November 2024, he was arrested by officers of the National Security Committee and charged with incitement of racial, ethnic, national, religious, or regional enmity under Kyrgyz law. The charge arose directly from his religious activities as a pastor of an unregistered Adventist church. The True and Free Seventh-day Adventist Church declines on principled grounds to submit to Kyrgyzstan’s mandatory state registration requirements.
Under Kyrgyz law, membership of an unregistered religious community is a criminal offence. Pastor Shreider’s arrest and imprisonment are the direct and sole consequence of his exercise of the right to practice and lead a religious community that has not submitted to state registration. He is currently serving a three-year custodial sentence.
The HRA’s review of documented accounts confirms that Shreider was subjected to torture during his interrogation by National Security Committee officers. In a formal complaint submitted in November 2024, Shreider stated: five officers struck him on the head and chest, kicked him in the spine from behind, and struck him with an iron pipe to force him to confess to criminal conduct.
He sustained a traumatic brain injury as a direct result of that treatment. The existence and severity of that injury is not disputed: a written communication from the prison chief, Major Azat Kudaybergenov, confirmed that doctors had diagnosed traumatic brain injury resulting in cognitive impairment. Pastor Shreider’s brain injury is permanent. It was inflicted by state security officers in a state detention facility. The Kyrgyz government has not publicly acknowledged responsibility for it.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief have raised Reverend Shreider’s case directly with the Government of Kyrgyzstan. Their concerns include both the torture he suffered and the underlying legal basis for his imprisonment.
The mandatory registration requirement that forms the basis of the charges against him has no foundation in international human rights law. Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Kyrgyzstan is a state party, guarantees the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, and protects the right to manifest religion or belief in community with others. The criminalisation of membership of an unregistered religious community is incompatible with that guarantee without qualification.
The HRA notes that Kyrgyzstan has, in other contexts, demonstrated a capacity to engage constructively with international human rights mechanisms. That capacity must be applied here. A 65-year-old pastor who has been tortured in state custody and sustained a permanent brain injury is not a criminal—he is a victim. He is imprisoned not because he incited enmity but because he led a congregation that chose not to register with the state. Kyrgyzstan is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The obligation to protect freedom of religion and belief and to prohibit torture is not aspirational. It is binding. The HRA calls on Kyrgyzstan to meet those obligations without further delay.
The HRA calls specifically on the Government of Kyrgyzstan to release Pastor Pavel Shreider immediately and unconditionally; to initiate a full, independent, and transparent investigation into the torture he suffered during interrogation by National Security Committee officers, with findings published in full and all officers found responsible prosecuted in accordance with Kyrgyz law and international standards; to ensure that Reverend Shreider receives immediate and appropriate medical care for the permanent brain injury sustained in custody; to repeal or substantially reform the legal provisions that criminalise membership of and participation in unregistered religious communities, in full compliance with Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and to respond formally and in full to the concerns raised by the Special Rapporteurs on Torture and on Freedom of Religion or Belief regarding Shreider’s case.
The Human Rights Association is an initiative of the WeCare Foundation, Cape Town, an international human rights organisation working to protect the rights of individuals facing unjust detention, denial of medical care, and due process violations, and engaging directly with geopolitical instutions to advocate on their behalf.
This is sad story, and certainly one worthy of our prayers. We don’t know if the GC PARL has intervened on this man’s behalf. Likely not.
The True and Free group officially separated after WWI because they believed mainstream (registered) church leadership had compromised its faith by making concessions to worldly governments. Today, the "True and Free" faction remains an independent, unregistered movement.
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“But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues” (Matthew 10:17).