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
15 June 2023
BELARUS: Draft Religion Law "playing on formal appearance of legality"
The regime has published the text of a restrictive draft new Religion Law, due to be discussed by the non-freely elected Parliament in September, which it falsely claims "does not affect" international human rights obligations. Exiled human rights defender and Orthodox priest Fr Aleksandr Shramko described the aim as "to somehow extinguish any pockets of not only possible resistance, but also any uncontrolled life", saying the draft law is "playing on the formal appearance of legality".
12 June 2023
BELARUS: Detained, fined for sharing faith on streets
On 2 June, a judge fined Vladimir Burshtyn – who is in his 70s – over a month's average pension for an outdoor meeting in Drogichin with fellow Baptists to share their faith. He intends to appeal against the fine, imposed in a court hearing fellow-Baptists were denied access to. Police held him overnight before the hearing, and Head of the local Ideology Department Svetlana Shchur insisted to Forum 18 that any event must have state permission. Elsewhere, for the first time since 1990 a Catholic Corpus Christi procession did not stop at Minsk's Red Church, which the regime closed in September 2022.
11 May 2023
BELARUS: Seven fined for talking about Easter in street
Seven Protestants were fined about 2 months' average wages each for talking to others on a Minsk street about Easter. Police arrested and handcuffed the seven, took them to a police station, and held them for about eight hours. No official would explain why they did this. Similarly, regime officials refuse to explain why they denied the Catholic Red Church parish – forcibly closed by the regime in 2022 – permission to hold Easter mass in the church grounds. The regime also refuses to publish planned 2023 Religion Law changes.
8 March 2023
BELARUS: Rent hikes, suspicious fire, enforced church closure, expulsion anniversary
The regime terminated unlimited, free of charge rental agreements with at least four Catholic churches still in state hands. It claimed that, in exchange for signing a new agreement to pay rent, the churches will eventually be allowed to resume using their historical buildings rent-free. "We were told that if we don't sign the new agreement, the church will be given to the museum .. while we'll be allowed to worship there only once a week," said a Catholic close to Corpus Christi Church in Nesvizh.
26 January 2023
BELARUS: Religious freedom survey, January 2023
Forum 18's freedom of religion and belief survey analysis of Belarus notes continuing violations of this freedom and of interlinked freedoms. These include a web of "legal" restrictions on which communities can meet, where, who they are led by, and what literature they may use. These restrictions make the exercise of freedom of religion and belief dependent on state permission. Violations have worsened since fraudulent presidential elections in August 2020, and the regime's support for Russia's renewed invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
6 January 2023
BELARUS: Greek Catholic website among religious works banned as "extremist"
A Greek Catholic website and a YouTube interview with a Catholic priest are the latest religious items banned by courts as "extremist" and added to the Information Ministry's "Republican List of Extremist Materials". Deputy Information Minister Igor Buzovsky, who is also Deputy Chair of the "Republican Expert Commission for the Evaluation of Symbols, Attributes, and Information Products for the presence (or absence) in them of signs of Extremism", defended such bans. "This is done exclusively on the basis of the law," he insisted.
5 January 2023
BELARUS: Polish priest forced to leave after 25 years
After his last Mass in Grodno's Holy Redeemer Church on 27 December, Polish citizen Fr Jozef Geza left Belarus after 25 years' service. Religious affairs official Aleksandr Rumak rejected his bishop’s request to extend the permission which foreign citizens need to conduct religious work. Rumak "won't comment" on his decision, his colleague Andrei Aryayev said. Last July, Rumak refused the latest request for permission for Fr Klemens Werth. A Russian citizen, he can therefore serve only in an administrative role in Vitebsk diocese.
13 October 2022
BELARUS: Mass banned at Minsk's iconic Red Church
Visiting the closed Catholic Church of Saints Simon and Helena (Red Church) in central Minsk on 12 October, the day the parish was ordered to remove its property, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, retired Archbishop of Minsk-Mogilev, "was crying from the hopelessness of the situation". The worship ban and enforced closure followed a "strange and ambiguous" early-morning fire on 26 September in a small annexe. "Despite the small area of damage, the entire church is sealed and not accessible to the public for holding services," parishioners complained.
3 October 2022
BELARUS: Fines, car park worship ban for New Life Church
On 25 September, police banned Minsk's New Life Church from meeting for Sunday worship in the car park of the building from which officials forcibly evicted it in February 2021. Police detained the Church's pastor Vyacheslav Goncharenko and another pastor Antoni Bokun. A judge fined each two months' average wage for leading the 18 September service which police had observed. Minsk City Executive Committee refuses to return the seized church building or allow the Church to meet for worship in the car park.
7 September 2022
BELARUS: Officials threaten to liquidate Minsk's New Life Church
Minsk City Administration and local police have warned New Life Pentecostal Church that meetings for worship in the church car park are illegal and threatened to liquidate the Church in court. Liquidation would make any exercise of freedom of religion or belief illegal and punishable with up to a two-year jail term. The Church meets each Sunday in the car park after officials evicted it in February 2021 from the church building it bought in 2002. Officials refuse to explain why the Church cannot use its building.
2 September 2022
BELARUS: Closing "one of the last remaining opportunities to seek justice"
If Parliament approves a draft Law, individuals will be stripped of the possibility to complain to the UN Human Rights Committee about violations of their rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Nazaruk alleged "arbitrary expansion" of the Committee's powers. Human rights groups warn this "will close one of the last remaining opportunities to seek justice for human rights violations". In 2021, the Committee found the regime violated Valentin Borovik's rights when it fined him for leading an unregistered Pentecostal community.
5 August 2022
BELARUS: Fined for river baptisms, fined for private garden baptisms
Without facilities at Gomel's Living Faith Church, Pastor Dmitry Podlobko held river baptisms in late 2021 without state permission. He was fined two days' average wage and his Church was warned. So he held baptisms in July 2022 in his garden. Police summoned him and a court fined him two weeks' average wage. Asked whether Podlobko would have been punished had he and his friends been swimming, Police Chief Vasili Kravtsov responded: "They weren't swimming in the pool. This was a religious ritual. They are completely different."