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.

27 May 2003

RUSSIA: Orthodox becoming first among equals

Without any change in the law or Constitution to provide for them, the steady increase in concordat-style agreements between the Russian Orthodox Church and various organs of state at federal and local level has given the Orthodox Church increased power, Forum 18 News Service reports after a wide-ranging survey. These agreements give the Church special access to institutions such as prisons, the police, the FSB, the army, schools and hospitals, and emphasise Orthodoxy as the legitimate ideology of Russian state tradition. It is open to question whether they violate Russia's international human rights commitments, but in practice these mini-concordats can render illegitimate the social activity of other religious organisations in the state sphere, thus leading to discrimination on religious grounds.

20 May 2003

RUSSIA: Supreme Court upholds Bible college closure

Today (20 May) Russia's Supreme Court ruled that the Vladivostok-based charismatic "Faith in Action" Bible College should be closed down for conducting religious education without a state licence. Afterwards, the defence lawyer told Forum 18 News Service that the college's parent church, the Church of the Living God, could now be pressurised by the regional authorities for conducting unlicensed professional education activity.

29 April 2003

TRANSDNIESTER: Police move to crush Baptist street libraries

Authorities in Bendery (Tighina) in the unrecognised republic of Transdniester in eastern Moldova have moved to crush a street library run by local Baptists. A Baptist statement reaching Forum 18 News Service reported that on 20 April police confiscated all the books for a second time. "This activity is illegal in Transdniester," the city police chief Valeri Smyk told Forum 18. The local security ministry insisted that the matter was nothing to do with them. The Baptists – who reject registration on principle – have long complained about harassment from the Transdniestran authorities, which insist that because they are not registered they should not be allowed to function.

21 April 2003

RUSSIA: Court closes down Bible College

On 21 March Primorsky Krai regional court in Russia's Far East ruled to close down the charismatic Faith in Action Bible College in Vladivostok. Speaking to Forum 18 News Service, the public prosecutor's representative in the case, Nina Saiko, defended the court-ordered closure, arguing that the college was conducting "educational activity" without a licence in violation of the education law. The college's lawyer Aleksei Kolupayev insisted to Forum 18 that it was not conducting educational activity "but simple study for religious believers, a right guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Russian Constitution." Others claim that the FSB (former KGB) has been harassing the college and looking for excuses to close it down.

15 April 2003

RUSSIA: Kalmykia's "common defence" against "non-traditional" religions

Local officials met Buddhist and Russian Orthodox leaders in Russia's southern, traditionally Buddhist republic of Kalmykia on 1 April to discuss their common "concern" about the growing influence of religious communities they deem untraditional. One official told Forum 18 News Service that officials were concerned about "incorrect trends" within Buddhism in Kalmykia, while the Orthodox were worried by the presence of Adventists, Baptists and Pentecostals. Kalmykia's Orthodox Bishop Zosima told Forum 18 that after Orthodox preaching, Adventists had been "cleared out" of the settlement of Iki-Burul and Russians in the previously Baptist-dominated settlement of Yashalta were returning to Orthodoxy.

14 April 2003

RUSSIA: Are Kalmykia's Protestants "western spies"?

Foreign missionaries working with Protestant communities in Kalmykia, the Lord's Love evangelical church and the Salvation Army, have been barred from Russia, Forum 18 News Service has learned. Citing the FSB (ex-KGB), they have been attacked in the local state press as "western spies" who "frequently operate within various missionary organisations, hiding behind lofty charitable ideals." Commenting on efforts by the Salvation Army, Christian Missionary Alliance and Mission Aviation Fellowship to overturn entry bans, the newspaper said this "just goes to show how greatly intelligence agencies are interested in their presence in Kalmykia." After the article described the Salvation Army as "one of the most powerful totalitarian sects in the world", it was banned from holding events for children, Forum 18 has been told. Despite this, local authorities still seek the aid of Protestants to help needy people the authorities cannot help and to assist with anti-drug programmes. Forum 18 has also learned that it is planned to change the way religious communities represent their interests to local authorities, to the disadvantage of religious communities which are not Orthodox, Muslim or Buddhist.

11 April 2003

RUSSIA: Few complaints over Kalmykia's state support for Buddhism

Despite large state subsidies for building Buddhist temples and training Buddhist monks, while "the basics of traditional religions are taught in a historical-informational context" in schools, officials and Buddhist leaders reject suggestions that Buddhism has become Kalmykia's state religion. "In Russia the government and churches are separate, so it doesn't unite us that much," Buddhist leader Telo Tulku Rinpoche told Forum 18 News Service. Members of religious minorities voiced few complaints about this government support for Buddhism.