Anonymous
Editor’s note: The editor conducted the following interview with a former missionary to Uzbekistan in October 2014
Editor: What was the focus of your ministry in Uzbekistan?
CAM): I was involved in discipling new believers and pastoral training.
Editor: When were you and other missionaries expelled from Uzbekistan?
CAM: Between 2005 and 2007.
Editor: How many missionaries were expelled from Uzbekistan in those years?
CAM: At least 50 single and married missionary couples and their families.
Editor: How did Uzbek authorities identify missionaries?
CAM: The Uzbek secret police learned that expatriates who had obtained visas through the NGO, Central Asian Free Exchange, were missionaries, and that led to deportations.
Editor: What were the circumstances surrounding the first expulsion?
CAM: In August 2005, a missionary who had left Uzbekistan and who was returning on a valid visa was detained at the Tashkent Airport. Guards took him to a transit lounge where he was held for a day and a half. Soldiers then took him directly from the transit lounge out onto the airfield tarmac and put him on an international flight out of Uzbekistan.
Editor: How much notice did other missionaries have before being forced to leave?
CAM: The length of time varied from a few days to a week to a month.
Editor: What do you believe triggered the expulsions?
CAM: The first missionary expulsion in 2005 occurred on May 16, three days after a massacre of civilians in Andijan in the heavily populated Fergana Valley. People were not receiving their wages, and many were starving. Protesters gathered in the streets, swelling to about 10,000. A false rumor spread that Uzbek President Islam Karimov was coming to address the crowd. Instead, Uzbek security forces fired on the demonstrators at ground level and from a helicopter. As people fled the square troops continued to fire on them. People in white coats pretending to be doctors walked among the fallen protesters asking who was wounded. Those who spoke up were shot to death on the spot.
Editor’s note: It is estimated that up to 500 unarmed civilians were killed in the Andijan Massacre (“How the Andijan Killings Unfolded,” BBC News, 17 May 2005, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4550845.stm). The missionary expulsions occurred in a period when President Karimov was imposing an increasingly restrictive authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan. It also was a period of worsening relations between Uzbekistan and Western governments.
Editor: What was the fate of the missionaries deported from Uzbekistan?
CAM: Sadly, most did not continue in missionary service.
Editor: What were the consequences of the missionary expulsions for the church in Uzbekistan?
CAM: It was positive, and it helped the church. In 2002-03 many missionaries began giving greater emphasis in their discipleship training to teaching disciples to themselves become disciplers. So when the expulsions came, many Uzbek believers were prepared to carry on without missionaries. Also, following the expulsions, money from the West for churches in Uzbekistan dried up, and that was a good thing. Missionaries had been giving money liberally to individual believers as well as to churches, and this giving was not always done wisely. This led to unhealthy dependency.
Editor: As a missionary continuing to serve in Central Asia, what overall lesson do you believe can be drawn from the missionary expulsions from Uzbekistan?
CAM: Missionaries too often are the cause of Central Asian believers and churches becoming dependent upon Western money and expecting it as a matter of course. When missionaries had no choice but to leave Uzbekistan, believers and churches there became more self-reliant. All over Central Asia today old gatekeeper missionaries advise new missionaries to follow their example, which too often means unhealthy expectations of ongoing Western financial support. Also, longtime missionaries in Central Asia convince too many new missionaries that to get anything done they have to accept widespread bribery and other forms of official corruption as a fact of life. The best thing that could happen would be for all missionaries serving in Central Asia to leave and for new missionaries to come in who would not foster dependency and would not compromise in the face of corruption.