RUSSIA: State interrogations of Komi non-Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox

State interrogations of members of the non-Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox community at Komi and those associated with them are claimed to have continued, Forum 18 News Service has learnt, including attempts to intimidate teenage school children, as well as municipal employees, who attend services at the monastery. This has taken place even after an apparently conclusive court ruling in the monastery's favour.

24 July 2003

RUSSIA: Komi non-Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox fight to retain Church building

An Orthodox monastery and parishioners have been harassed by local state authorities since they broke from the local Moscow Patriarchate diocese of Syktyvkar and Vorkuta to join the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR - which is not part of the Moscow Patriarchate). Forum 18 News Service has seen a video of the local Moscow Patriarchate bishop trying with a police escort to go to the monstery, and of the bishop accusing the non-Patriarchate Orthodox clergy of theft and of being "American fascists". Both the Moscow Patriarchate diocese and local state authorities then launched failed law suits against the monastery, aimed at seizing a wooden church built after the breakaway took place.

23 July 2003

RUSSIA: Last of 31 court cases for Komi Baptists?

For the past six years the local administration of Komi in north-east European Russia has banned completion of both Russia's largest Baptist Church and a nearby centre for the physically disabled. Forum 18 News Service has discovered that the Baptist's problems started after a visit by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Aleksi II. The latest obstacle placed by authorities in the way of completion of the church is a sales tax demand for three million roubles (approximately 100,000 US dollars, 730,000 Norwegian Kroner or 88,000 Euros) - even though the church has never been sold. Although local authorities are also preventing completion of the centre for the physically disabled, which the Baptists have now decided to give to the local authority, the local religious affairs adviser had high praise for the Baptists' charitable work.

9 July 2003

OSCE COMMITMENTS: OSCE MEETING ON FREEDOM OF RELIGION - A REGIONAL SURVEY

Before the OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting on Freedom of Religion or Belief on 17-18 July 2003, Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org/ surveys some of the more serious abuses of religious freedom that persist in some countries of the 55-member OSCE. Despite their binding OSCE commitments to religious freedom, in some OSCE member states believers are still fined, imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of their faith, religious services are broken up, places of worship confiscated and even destroyed, religious literature censored and religious communities denied registration.

4 July 2003

RUSSIA: Is Kostroma missionary black spot?

At the same time as five US citizens working with the evangelical Kostroma Christian Church were denied Russian visas last summer, Forum 18 News Service has learnt that another US citizen working in the city with the Christian humanitarian aid organisation Children's HopeChest was denied a visa. And US preacher Bill Norton, who used to visit Kostroma's Family of God church twice a year, has been barred from entry three times since last summer, making Kostroma – with seven visa denials - the location in Russia associated with the greatest number of known foreign church worker expulsions. Pastor Andrei Danilov told Forum 18 that the Russian Foreign Ministry had barred Norton "in connection with a threat to national security".

4 July 2003

RUSSIA: State opposition to Kostroma Pentecostals continues

In the latest incident of what Pastor Andrei Danilov regards as continuing state pressure, the regional justice department in Kostroma near Moscow ordered a "check-up" on the Family of God Pentecostal church in June. The church was given just days – three of which were public holidays – to provide documentation on church funds, church activity, congregation membership records and minutes of meetings. "Other churches haven't been asked," Danilov pointed out to Forum 18 News Service. But local religious affairs official Marina Smirnova defended such action against the church, which included a failed court case on accusations of conducting hypnosis. "This concerns the lives of OUR people... hopefully we caused Danilov to think twice, I call that a result."

24 June 2003

BELARUS: Despite protests, "anti-sect" schoolbook to remain

Pentecostal and Hare Krishna representatives have so far failed in their bid to have the education ministry withdraw a textbook which they say incites religious discord. The book for 18-year-old children, published by the Education Ministry last year, warns that Baptist, Pentecostal, Adventist and Jehovah's Witness activity is a breeding-ground for fanaticism. It also puts the Hare Krishna and Zen Buddhist movements on a par with the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo responsible for the 1995 gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and suggests that Krishna devotees need psychiatric help. The Orthodox are unhappy with a quotation that they say "hurts the feelings of believers". Orthodox Church legal advisor Andrei Aleshko told Forum 18 News Service that once his Church has studied the text it will call on the ministry to withdraw the book.

24 June 2003

BELARUS: New concordat gives Orthodox enhanced status

The 12 June concordat between the Orthodox Church and the state has given the Orthodox extensive influence in state bodies, with Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk hailing it as "a blank cheque to develop co-operation programmes with all branches of power". Forum 18 News Service notes that the concordat means the state now accepts the Orthodox designation of Belarus as its "canonical territory", and commits the state and the Church to work together in "the common fight against pseudo-religious structures". Although the final text no longer contains "anti-constitutional provisions" such as immunity from prosecution and media censorship powers for Orthodox clergy, member of parliament Ivan Pashkevich told Forum 18 he was worried that they will be incorporated into subsequent agreements between the Orthodox Church and individual state bodies which will be closed to public scrutiny.

20 June 2003

BELARUS: New spate of Pentecostal fines

Aleksandr Tolochko was fined 34 US dollars in Grodno on 4 June as part of the latest crackdown on Pentecostal home meetings in various towns and villages of western Belarus. "He hasn't paid the fine yet – he doesn't earn enough to pay it," Bishop Fyodor Tsvor of Grodno region told Forum 18 News Service. Among others fined were two Pentecostal women in Baranovichi, one a pensioner and one an invalid. Bishop of Brest region Nikolai Kurkaev blamed the highly restrictive new religion law. "You see the new law is working already," he told Forum 18. Igor Popov, religious affairs officials for Grodno region, denied to Forum 18 there is a campaign against Pentecostals but insisted all unregistered religious meetings are illegal.

10 June 2003

BELARUS: Armed police break up Hindu meditation

Armed police broke up a Hindu ritual and meditation evening in a private flat in the capital Minsk on 1 June, the group's leader Natalya Solovyova told Forum 18 News Service. The raid came exactly a week after a similar meditation meeting was broken up elsewhere in the city. The Hindu community has not been fined for meeting together, but Solovyova says members were warned that "if it occurs again, we will go on their police records, and legal consequences will begin the time after that." These raids have forced the Hindu community to move from flat to flat "like nomads", she added. No national or local religious affairs officials could explain why the religious meetings were forcibly broken up.

3 June 2003

BELARUS: Pentecostal evangelist to challenge fine

After a night-time visit by two police officers and a religious affairs official to an address rented by the Pentecostal Union in Zheludok, local evangelist Mikhail Balyk was fined 13 US dollars for allegedly conducting worship services in the town. Balyk told Forum 18 News Service that no worship services were taking place at the address cited - a domestic residence – and is preparing to appeal. His lawyer Dina Shavtsova told Forum 18 that unregistered religious organisations are often fined in this way, up to a maximum of 35 dollars. The main victims are small, established groups in rural areas.

30 May 2003

BELARUS: Who shapes up to new religion law?

In the wake of the restrictive new religion law which came into force last November, despite widespread protests from believers, Forum 18 News Service has discovered that very few educational or monastic communities of the Russian Orthodox and Catholic Churches currently meet the tough new restrictions. Few monastic communities have the required minimum ten members, while no educational institutions have a full teaching staff who know both state languages, Russian and Belarusian. If they want to continue to operate, they must make substantial changes before the re-registration deadline of 16 November 2004.