BELARUS: "I don't write the laws, I just implement them"

A regional religious affairs official in Belarus has defended the legality of a fine, imposed on Baptist pastor Yuri Kravchuk in mid-December for unregistered religious activity. "Just like in any other country," the official in the western city of Grodno, who declined to be named, insisted to Forum 18 News Service, "all religious organisations must be registered in order to have the right to function." In defiance of international human rights standards, Belarus is the only country in Europe making state registration compulsory before religious activity can take place. Asked why registration was needed, the official remarked that this was not a question for him. "I don't write the laws, I just implement them," he explained to Forum 18. "Here in the Republic of Belarus we have our own laws, whether good or bad. We think they're good, other people might think they're bad." Meanwhile, on 10 January the charismatic New Generation Church in Baranovichi won in court as officials tried yet again to seize their church building from them.

4 January 2008

MOLDOVA: Christmas expulsions of four Romanian Orthodox priests

Four Romanian Orthodox Church priests are being expelled from Moldova as their Bessarabian Orthodox Metropolitanate prepares to celebrate Christmas on 7 January, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Two parishes have been deprived of priests as Fr Ion Bigea and Fr Constantin Dumitrascu were denied entry to Moldova when they tried to return to their parishes, in Fr Bigea's case after earlier being fined. Two more priests, Fr Iulian Budescu and Fr Ion Tivlea, also face expulsion. Fr Budescu has been told by the authorities that he must leave by 6 January. Fr Tivlea has been told that he must leave after a trial for administrative offences on 9 January. Human rights activist Ion Manole, of Promo-Lex, told Forum 18 that "this was specially done close to the Christmas holiday when non-governmental organisations and the media are not working. They [Moldovan authorities] chose this period deliberately."

20 December 2007

TRANSDNIESTER: President initiates order to halt Pentecostal church's public worship

The authorities in the breakaway unrecognised entity of Transdniester have ordered a Pentecostal church to stop meeting for public worship, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Pastor Yuri Semenyuk halted his Pentecostal church's public worship after a warning from Transdniester's senior Prosecutor, which was initiated by the entity's President, Igor Smirnov. "We're trying to abide by the law," Pastor Semenyuk told Forum 18. "Our church meets in a building designated as a private home, and the Prosecutor said this was not allowed." He said the 300-strong congregation has now been forced to meet in small home groups. If the church were to defy the ban and continue to meet as one congregation, Pastor Semenyuk suspects that the authorities would strip the congregation of its legal status. The Deputy Prosecutor insisted to Forum 18 that "in no way is this persecution." Transdniester routinely makes religious activity outside state-approved places of worship difficult.

19 December 2007

UZBEKISTAN: Haj pilgrims still strictly controlled and restricted

5,000 people from Uzbekistan have travelled to Mecca for this year's haj pilgrimage, but Forum 18 News Service notes that the number of pilgrims allowed to travel from Uzbekistan is significantly less than from other countries with a similar Muslim population. Uzbekistan has a record of restricting the numbers of pilgrims and strictly controlling their selection. All pilgrims need approval from local authorities, the NSS secret police and the Haj Commission, which is controlled by the state Religious Affairs Committee and state-controlled Spiritual Administration of Muslims (the Muftiate). Also, all pilgrimages can only be made using the state-run airline, Uzbekistan Airways. The amount demanded by the state for the pilgrimage is about 200 times the minimum monthly wage. "Not everyone can go. The list of those banned from going includes everyone the government regards as suspicious," opposition activist Vasila Inoyatova told Forum 18.

17 December 2007

BELARUS: "To pray to God they must have a registered place of worship"

Pastor Dmitry Osyko was fined about two weeks' average wages on 14 December for leading a worship service in November in a private home in the western town of Baranovichi, a court official told Forum 18 News Service. The two homeowners, Stepan Paripa and Nikolai Pestak, were each fined more than one month's average wages. Their Baptist congregation refuses to seek state registration and officials arrived at the service to declare it illegal. "They can't use a private home as a place of worship," local ideology official Ruslan Krutko, who interrupted the service, explained to Forum 18. "You couldn't use a private home as a public toilet, could you?" He said the church members need a registered place of worship to be able to "pray to God". Church members insist that Belarus' Constitution and Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantee their right to meet for worship freely with others. Pastor Osyko is the latest of many religious leaders to have been fined for leading unregistered worship.

13 December 2007

RUSSIA: Fresh raids on moderate Turkish Muslim theologian readers

Officials from regional public prosecutors' offices and the FSB security service searched homes of Said Nursi readers across Russia over the weekend of 8-9 December, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. The raids follow a ban on some works by the moderate Turkish Muslim theologian. The flat of Marat Tamimdarov, Russian translator of a number of Nursi's works, was one place searched. The search warrant claimed that Nurdzhular (a russification of the Turkish for "Nursi followers") is an organisation banned in Turkey and not registered in Russia. Tamimdarov denied this, insisting to Forum 18 that there is no such organisation and that "it isn't true that there's a ban in Turkey – there was even a symposium on Nursi there recently, attended by international scholars. There isn't a drop of extremism in his works." Akhmed Makhmedov of the Volga Spiritual Directorate of Muslims told Forum 18 that "we don't approve of the practice of having secular academics label theological works extremist – that can be done with any holy book." As a "bad precedent" he singled out a petition calling for a ban on all Jewish religious and national organisations in Russia, on the basis of allegedly extremist sentiments in a sixteenth-century Jewish law code. Makhmedov also criticised the ban on Said Nursi's works as "against common sense".

7 December 2007

BELARUS: Parish to "lose nothing" when veteran priest expelled?

A religious affairs official in the south-eastern region of Gomel is dismissive of the rights of the parishioners of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in the town of Rechytsa. He claimed to Forum 18 News Service that they will "lose nothing" when their veteran parish priest, Polish citizen Fr Grzegorz Chudek, is forced to leave Belarus. The priest was ordered to leave by 1 December, but his visa has now been extended by two months. During this period he is "of course" not permitted to work in his parish, the official said. He repeatedly refused to tell Forum 18 how Fr Chudek had broken the law. "No one has told me if or when he might have to leave, let alone why," Cardinal Kazimierz Swiatek told Forum 18. But Fr Chudek appears not to have had his annual visa renewed due to his description of social malaise in Belarus given to a Polish newspaper earlier in 2007. More than 700 local Catholics have appealed to President Aleksandr Lukashenko for the decision to be withdrawn. Foreign religious workers invited by local religious communities are under tight state control and need permission specifying where they will work. An increasing number of Catholic and Protestant religious workers have been barred from Belarus.

3 December 2007

RUSSIA: Building places of worship in Moscow still a struggle

Moscow's Emmanuel Pentecostal Church had its building plans rejected in 2000 as officials cited popular opposition. In June 2005 a city construction official ordered a swift resolution to their building problems. Yet, as church administrator Bakur Azaryan told Forum 18 News Service, within a week of their acceptance of a new building plot this summer, the plot was hastily withdrawn: "they said it had already been sold, so we understood that they either don't want to solve the issue or are dragging out time." Muslims have complained of eleven cases of building obstruction in Moscow Region. However, the Russian-American Christian University has told Forum 18 of progress on its building after earlier opposition, while the city's Hare Krishna community appears finally to have a plot for a new temple. City officials often cite alleged opposition by local residents to obstruct non-Orthodox communities from building places of worship. Back in 2000, Moscow's then chief architect wrote: "Going by experience, the staunch objection of residents, the location of prayer houses of other confessions (..) in the vicinity of Orthodox Churches is impossible."

29 November 2007

RUSSIA: Will Moscow mayor help Molokans?

In what Russia's Ombudsman for Human Rights has called "a scandalous case," plans by Moscow's Molokan community to build a prayer house have met persistent obstruction. "There was no constitution or religion law back in 1805, but then it took the tsar just ten days to sort out our problem. Now we have all that, but we're nowhere after ten years!" Yakov Yevdokimov, of Moscow's Molokan community, remarked to Forum 18 News Service. The Molokans are an indigenous Russian Christian confession closely resembling Protestants. Moscow's Molokans first requested land in December 1996. The first active – and initially positive - response by the city authorities came in November 2000, but since then some city officials have blocked plans, citing various reasons. One reason cited has been a survey of 1,142 out of 1,829 local residents that found public opinion to be opposed to the prayer house. Russia's Ombudsman for Human Rights found that only 297 people took part in the survey, and that some of those recorded as opposed did not participate at all. The Ombudsman suggests that the poll - "in any case only recommendatory" - was "probably crudely falsified."

22 November 2007

BELARUS: Fined for harvest festival service in private yard

Gennadi Ryzhkov, pastor of a Council of Churches Baptist congregation in Osipovichi in the eastern Mogilev Region, has failed in his appeal to have a fine for leading unregistered worship overturned, a court official confirmed to Forum 18 News Service. He is now due to pay the fine of nearly one month's average wages for leading his church's harvest festival. Mikhail Sotnichenko, in whose yard the September service took place, told Forum 18 that the church does not agree with the state's action. "We are still holding services, of course." But the local Ideology Department head defended her actions. "Under the law a church must register, but they refuse registration," Anna Zemlyanukhina told Forum 18. "I don't agree that it's persecution. Let them meet - but they must register first." Forum 18 notes that while the number of such fines in Belarus has fallen in recent years the level of fines is often much higher. Meanwhile, the nationwide petition to change the restrictive 2002 Religion Law has gathered nearly 40,000 signatures, its spokesperson Sergei Lukanin told Forum 18.

15 November 2007

RUSSIA: Pentecostal and Muslim organisations dissolved

Among the commonest reasons for religious organisations losing legal status is unlicensed educational activity, or the late submission of a tax return, Viktor Korolev, the official in charge of religious organisations at the Federal Registration Service has told Forum 18 News Service. Liquidated organisations known to Forum 18 include both Pentecostal and Muslim organisations. An official who heads the department responsible for registration at a regional branch of the Federal Registration Service, Rumiya Bagautdinova, told Forum 18 that religious organisations must provide information about their activity every year. Check-ups take place every two years at most, she said. Two such check-ups of the now liquidated Bible Centre in Novocheboksarsk took place in April. They involved the Public Prosecutor's Office, local police and the FSB security service. "Their first question," Fyodor Matlash told Forum 18 "was whether we were publishing extremist literature! We explained that we don't publish literature of any kind; we don't have the equipment." Particularly since the Federal Registration Service was allocated wider monitoring powers, religious communities have complained of a marked increase in state scrutiny and bureaucracy.

13 November 2007

TRANSDNIESTER: Religious materials routinely confiscated at border

Protestants, Russian Orthodox and Jehovah's Witnesses have complained of continuing problems in bringing religious literature and objects through checkpoints operated by the unrecognised entity of Transdniester, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Religious material is routinely confiscated, the most recent known case being a Russian Orthodox priest, Fr Oleg Cernat, whose car was impounded for four days as he did not declare church candles. After agreeing to take the candles home, Fr Cernat's car was stopped again and he was also accused of driving away from the checkpoint without authorisation. Religious communities such as Baptists complain that confiscated literature is frequently not returned, and only members of registered communities are allowed to import literature. Transdniester is considering a draft Religion Law, which proposes to - among other restrictions - stop religious communities which do not have legal status from producing and importing literature.