Kazakh police raid Easter service, fine participants

ZHASKENT, Kazakhstan — Within 48 hours of a claim by Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev that “religious freedom is fully secured,” seven members of a small Pentecostal Church — four of them in their 60s — were given heavy fines for meeting for Easter worship. The leader, Aleksandr Balaev, said he was fined the equivalent of six months of his pension.…