E/CN.4/2005/61/Add.1 Page 83 Arutyunyants, had reportedly appealed to have priests sent to them but have had no replies. In addition, authorities had also allegedly prevented death row prisoners from having religious literature of their choice. 328. On 18 September 2003, a secret police raid on a Jehovah’s Witness meeting in the town of Chirchik allegedly took place on the grounds that the house where they were meeting was not registered as a church building. Yet, according to information received, the building was in fact registered to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. 329. It was further reported that on 20 December 2003 two Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gulya Boikova and Parakhat Narmanova, were arrested, insulted and threatened with rape by the police in the town of Karsh. On 22 January 2004, a court case against the women was reportedly adjourned. 330. An official in the town administration of Muinak in the autonomous Karakalpakstan Republic has allegedly helped to have a Protestant teacher fired from a local school on 22 July 2003 after he refused to renounce his faith. The official, Jalgas Saidmuratov, was reported to have said that a Protestant may not work as a school teacher in Uzbekistan, as the State was “moving towards Islam”. Yet, allegedly, the sacking of Lepesbai Omarov violated Uzbekistan’s Constitution and religion law, which proclaim Uzbekistan a secular State and outlaw discrimination on religious grounds. 331. It was reported that an unregistered Protestant church in the village of Ahmad Yassavy had been closed down on the orders of the deputy head of the Upper Chirchik district administration, Shukhrat Tursunbayev. Police officers and local officials allegedly burst into the Sunday service of the Friendship Church on 7 September 2003, took down the names of all those present, sealed the church and warned the congregation that they would be prosecuted. 332. It was also reported that for the fourth time since the Peace Protestant Church in Nukus, Karakalpakstan, was stripped of its registration in August 2000, the Church was raided by the police during worship on 24 August 2003. Two of its leaders, Khym-Mun Kim and Konstantin Kmit, were allegedly fined five times the minimum monthly wage. The Church leaders have reportedly tried to reregister the Church but to no avail. 333. Local authorities were reportedly preventing a local Baptist congregation from meeting for worship in the village of Khalkabad in the Pap district of Namangan region. In another incident involving Baptists, pastor Oleg Bader was allegedly forced to change and reregister the statute of his Church. On 27 November 2003, at a hearing of the administrative commission for Khorezm region, Pastor Bader was reportedly fined 22,000 Uzbek sums. 334. On 29 March 2004, the Special Rapporteur transmitted a communication to the Government in relation to information received according to which, in the first such case since 2002, a Jehovah's Witness from Samarkand, Vladimir Kushchevoy, had been sentenced under the criminal law for "failing to observe the prescribed manner of communicating religious doctrine" to three years’ "corrective labour" and 20 per cent of his wages were to be confiscated by the State. His Bible and other religious