The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one’s belief or religion
The right to join together and express one’s belief
20 December 2006
BELARUS: Mixed state response to Catholic and Protestant protests
Catholics in Belarus have halted a hunger-strike, after receiving endorsement for church construction from the Grodno city administration, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Parish priest Fr Aleksandr Shemet stressed to Forum 18 that the Church has not received permission to build, but permission to "gather documents" and "ask for final permission from the President." Parishioners are praying for all Belarusian churches without a building – including Minsk's New Life charismatic Church - and for the 12 Polish Catholic priests and nuns refused permission to work in Belarus after 31 December 2006. "We want not only the Catholic Church, but all Christians to be able to practise their religion freely," Fr Shemet remarks. "So we will pray that believers are not afraid to demand their rights." The 12 priests and nuns have been denied permission to continue working in Belarus, despite appeals from 12,000 people including Catholic bishops. New Life Church is supporting the Catholics of Grodno and praying for a forthcoming court session, on whether moves to terminate New Life's land rights and force the sale of its building are lawful.
14 December 2006
BELARUS: Religious freedom survey, December 2006
"Killing a frog by warming up the water very gradually" is how one Protestant describes Belarus' religious policy in Forum 18 News Service's survey analysis of religious freedom. President Aleksandr Lukashenko has brought religious believers back to the late Soviet period, legally unable to practise religion in community without explicit state permission. State registration does not guarantee religious freedom, as has become increasingly clear in the spheres of youth activity and building and hiring places of worship. The state's tendency to harass religious communities for alleged "irregularities" means that some communities are voluntarily restricting or even stopping religious activity. A major reason for the state's eagerness to control religious communities is its preservation of an extensive Soviet-era secret police, religious affairs and ideology bureaucracy. Recently, the state has started focussing upon Protestant evangelicals as a political threat, one of whom notes that "it is not Jesus' example to sit down and accept what happens in your community." As state pressure steadily mounts, Forum 18 observes that religious believers are increasingly putting aside confessional differences in organised resistance.
29 November 2006
BELARUS: Faith-based political opposition emerges
When Catholic parishioners in Grodno announced a hunger strike to begin on 1 December if officials fail to overturn their decade-long refusal to allow them to build a new church, they took their inspiration from protests by New Life Church. This Minsk-based charismatic congregation held a high-profile hunger strike in October to try to prevent the authorities seizing their church. "We are grateful to the Protestants for giving us courage," Fr Aleksandr Shemet declared. Forum 18 News Service notes that - after exhausting other methods of negotiation with the state authorities – some religious believers are adopting tactics more usually associated with secular political activism in their pursuit of religious freedom in the country that has the tightest controls on religious activity anywhere in Europe. Forum 18 also notes that mainstream opposition activists are in turn drawing on religious ideas.
3 November 2006
BELARUS: Court to review charismatic church's case
Belarusian authorities are giving contradictory signals about their attitude towards the embattled New Life Church in the capital Minsk, Forum 18 News Service has found. In an indication that the authorities may be about to reverse their position, Higher Economic Court chairman Viktor Kamenkov has cancelled an earlier Minsk City Economic Court decision against New Life and called for the case to be heard again. A new hearing has been set for tomorrow (Saturday 4 November) at the Higher Economic Court. Kamenkov's latest actions follow a high profile campaign by New Life - including a hunger strike and international protests - and a senior state official urging New Life's Pastor, Vyacheslav Goncharenko, to appeal again to the Higher Economic Court. But in a contradictory signal, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence has published a prominent attack on New Life, claiming – amongst other highly contestable statements - that "neo-Protestant sects" are a threat to national security. Two nights after the Defence Ministry made its attack, graffiti reading "No to totalitarian sects!" was daubed on the wall of New Life's building.
31 October 2006
BELARUS: Lutheran communities, real and imagined
Developments within Belarus' complex and fragmented Lutheran community are hampered by the country's Religion Law, Forum 18 News Service has found. The Law's strict registration requirements – coupled with officials' arbitrary application of them - artificially preserve organisational arrangements that no longer exist. The two Lutheran associations with state registration appear to be defunct, but they are supposed to account for almost all the country's 26 parishes, so officials are reluctant to register any new groupings. Association status is not just an optional extra, but needed to found missions and seminaries. Shown that the state authorities allow some Lutheran associations to breach legal requirements strictly applied to others, one religious affairs official asked Forum 18 for suggestions as to what should be done about it. A pastor in one unregistered Lutheran association commented to Forum 18: "Officials need to understand that the Church lives not according to their decisions, likes and dislikes, but God's will."
26 October 2006
BELARUS: Non-Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox pressured to withdraw registration signatures
Belarusian state officials, with local Moscow Patriarchate priests, are pressuring parishoners of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR - which is not part of the Moscow Patriarchate) to withdraw their signatures from state registration applications, Forum 18 News Service has been told. Unregistered religious activity is illegal. Part of the registration procedure is that at least 20 Belarusian citizens must sign applications and give personal data. If even one signature is withdrawn, the application process has to start again. Officials have apparently given Moscow Patriarchate priests and parishioners, in the city of Brest, details of the signatories on ROCOR parish registration applications. "Very great pressure is put on them," ROCOR Bishop Agafangel (Pashkovsky) of Odessa and Tavriya told Forum 18. Baptists and Pentecostals have described to Forum 18 similar pressures on their new communities. One Baptist described how local state officials typically threaten all 20 names on the list of founding members of a new church. "In rural places people need something from them – wood, peat or a horse for ploughing - they are afraid to lose this, so they withdraw their names."
20 October 2006
BELARUS: Government to make U-turn on charismatic church?
Belarusian authorities may be preparing to reverse their position towards New Life Church in the capital Minsk, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. A senior state official has stated that President Aleksandr Lukashenko was aware of New Life's situation, regarding them as "a normal church in need of assistance." The official then made a "strong recommendation" to New Life's Pastor, Vyacheslav Goncharenko, that the church try another appeal to the Higher Economic Court. New Life has now done this, but the church's lawyer, Sergei Lukanin, stressed to Forum 18 that the congregation will continue public protests until it has the legal return of its land and building and the right to worship there. Previous state promises to resolve the situation have been broken. New Life's high-profile public protests over the past two weeks – including hunger strikes throughout Belarus, daily services, and international support - appear to be responsible for the president's sudden attention. New Life has been fined for meeting, as have other churches in Belarus - such as a Baptist church in Minsk, which was fined this month.
18 October 2006
BELARUS: Foreign religious workers out?
While tight restrictions on the religious freedom of foreigners who live in Belarus were enshrined in the restrictive 2002 Religion Law, foreign religious workers invited by local religious communities are increasingly being barred from the country, Forum 18 News Service has learned. The State Committee for Religious Affairs – which has to approve all such invitations and agree that such visits are "necessary" - denied the charismatic Full Gospel Union permission to invite Nigerian pastor Anselm Madubuko to preach in three of its churches in August. One church had "no basis" for inviting him as it was not registered, while the visit to another was "inexpedient", officials declared. A foreign citizen pastoring a congregation founded a decade ago did not have his annual religious work permit renewed in early 2006, while twelve Polish Catholic priests and nuns have been told their visas will not be renewed at the end of this year. The Hare Krishna community is among those unable to invite foreign citizens as they do not have the required ten registered religious communities.
6 October 2006
BELARUS: Charismatic church's "time has run out," official claims
The authorities in Belarus' capital Minsk think they are already legally entitled to take the building used for worship by New Life Church, Forum 18 News Service has discovered. Officials have confirmed to Forum 18 that Minsk city has transferred money for New Life's building into the church's bank account, despite New Life's strong opposition. The church continues to oppose state attempts to take its building, and insists that the price offered is 35 times lower than the building's true value. Aleksandr Kazyatnikov of Minsk Territorial State Property Fund thinks that New Life had until Thursday 5 October to get out of their building. "Their time has run out," he told Forum 18. Church lawyer Sergei Lukanin thinks that Monday 9 October is when the authorities could begin to try to take the building. However, Nina Gordeyuk of Minsk city's Moscow District Administration thinks that the payment process is not complete. Once complete, she said, officials will meet with New Life's Pastor and the head of the state concern due to receive the building "to discuss the matter further." She was unable to say when this will be.
3 October 2006
BELARUS: 12 Catholic priests and nuns face expulsion
"No reasons whatsoever" have been given for Belarus' decision to refuse annual visa renewal for 12 Polish Catholic priests and nuns, the Dean of Grodno's Catholic Cathedral has told Forum 18 News Service. The 7 priests and 5 nuns have been working in different parishes of Grodno Diocese for about ten years, but have been ordered to leave Belarus by 2007. "This is the first time so many have been refused permission to renew their visas," he told Forum 18, adding that nothing of the kind has happened in the other three Catholic dioceses in Belarus. Grodno region's main religious affairs official did not answer Forum 18's questions. But Aleksandr Kalinov of the State Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs in Minsk maintained that "sufficient argumentation, foundation" is necessary in order for a foreign priest to come to Belarus. Of the 350 or so Catholic priests in Belarus, more than half are foreign citizens. Two did not have their annual visas renewed at the end of 2005, and were thus forced to return to their native Poland.
3 October 2006
BELARUS: Reprieve for Catholic priest who celebrated unauthorised Mass
Catholic priest Fr Antoni Koczko has not been charged for serving Mass without state permission in the Belarusian capital Minsk, despite a court appearance, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Fr Antoni could have faced deportation - the punishment for repeat violations or one "crude violation" of a state decree on the activity of foreign religious workers. Fr Antoni was, after saying Mass in a Minsk parish where he does not normally work, approached by a man and woman in plain clothes. They accused him of breaking the law and escorted him to a court. One Belarusian Catholic commented that the pair "are always sitting in our church. You can't fail to spot them." Another priest told Forum 18 that the authorities did check whether priests were serving only at state-approved locations. After just such a check-up, he himself had been recently fined, but he pointed out to Forum 18 that this could be regarded as support – "we know from the Bible that if this is happening you're doing the right thing" – and as a source of income for the law enforcement agencies, "they have to get it from somewhere."
28 September 2006
BELARUS: Massive fine for "illegal" Baptisms
Baptising 70 people in a lake has led to the pastor of one of Belarus' largest Pentecostal churches being fined over 150 times the minimum wage, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. This is, to Forum 18's knowledge, the first time that a congregation of a mainstream Protestant Union has had such a huge fine imposed for religious activity without state permission. Judge Oksana Kusheva of Baranovichi Municipal Court imposed the fine on Pastor Sergei Poznyakovich and fined the Pentecostal Union's bishop for Brest region, Nikolai Kurkayev, a significantly smaller amount. Baranovichi's state official dealing with religious affairs, Ruslan Krutko, told Forum 18 that Pastor Poznyakovich's fine was so large because the church performed similarly unsanctioned baptisms in the same lake in 2005. Confirming that the authorities had not responded formally to a request to be allowed to perform the baptisms, Krutko nonetheless insisted that official permission must be obtained in advance. A church member commented to Forum 18 that "if we are fined again within a year, the authorities will have grounds to close the church down."