New Belarus law codifies rising religious repression- (23.11.2002)

Catholics in Belarus Arrested in Religious-Liberty Protest- (21.11.2002)

Full Gospel Church to defy religion law- (05.11.2002)

President signs restrictive religions law- (30.10.2002)

What hope for True Orthodox parishes ?- (11.10.2002)

Europe's most repressive religion law goes to final vote- (02.10.2002)

Authorities try to demolish independent Orthodox Church - (31.07.2002)

Further massive fines for Hindu park meditation - (30.07.2002)

Belarus adopts religion law despite criticism by minority faiths - (01.07.2002)

Protestants in Belarus pray against what they call discriminatory religion bill - (19.06.02)

Religious censorship and compulsory re-registration under restrictive new law? - (30.05.2002)

Anti-Catholicism bubbling up in Belarus? C (16.01.2002)

New Belarus law codifies rising religious repression

by Michael Wines

NY Times (23.11.2002)/HRWF International Secretariat (26.11.2002) In the last four months, Tatyana and Sergei Akadanovy have been arrested twice, sent to jail for 10 days and fined more than $1,000, an unimaginable sum in impoverished Belarus.

An apartment they help rent has been broken into and vandalized. Mrs. Akadanova has been severely beaten on the steps of their apartment, a fate that separately befell six friends, and the police have issued warnings that the Akadanovys and their friends are all criminals who should be avoided.

In fact, the police may be right: the Akadanovys and their friends are Hindus. And in Belarus, Hindus who gather together in their gods' names are, by definition, almost always in violation of the law.

Belarus, which underwent more than its share of religious repression under Soviet rule, now has a new religion law, "About the Freedom of Confessions and Religious Organizations." And even before it fully takes effect, persecution of Hindus and people of other faiths not approved by the government and some that are has been ratcheted sharply up.

The effect is to hamstring any rivals to the Belarus branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, which helped draft the new law and is a pillar of support for the autocratic government of President Aleksandr Lukashenko.

A western Belarus chapel of the Russian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which has split from the main Orthodox faith, was bulldozed in August. Several Minsk branches of the Full Gospel Pentacostal Church, an evangelical Protestant faith that is among the largest minority religions here, were notified in September that their prayer services were illegal. The city's Hare Krishna temple received the same notice. In October the head of the New Life Protestant Church was summoned to a Minsk district administration office and told that unspecified complaints had been filed against his church.

All that and more preceded the new law, which Mr. Lukashenko signed on Oct. 31 and which took effect a week ago. Religious and human rights officials say that the law fits a pattern of repression they trace back at least three years, and that even mainstream faiths have been targets.

"There's been a web of restrictions and control of religious communities in the last few years," Felix Corley, editor of the London-based Keston Institute's news service and an expert on religious trends in Belarus, said in a telephone interview. "You can't have outdoor events. You can't build a church without permission from the authorities, and you can't get permission. This new law has really codified and clamped down on everything."

The law has 40 articles of bewildering complexity, but at its root, it outlaws regular meetings of worshipers of any faith not registered with the state, and strictly limits the places where even registered faiths can hold services.

Registering is a daunting task: no individual church may have fewer than 20 members. Any organized faith must have at least 10 churches and be able to prove that it had a church in Belarus before 1982 a time of religious repression under the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov.

That merely begins to describe the law's restrictions, which govern church publications, visits by foreign priests, religious schools, charities and a welter of other activities.

The State Department and the European Union, which last week denied Mr. Lukashenko a visa because of Belarus's rights record, have said the law violates international principles of religious freedom.

The bill's authors, on the other hand, say the Russian Orthodox faith is so intimately woven into Belarussian culture that the state is obligated to protect its leading role from dangerous sects which, they insist, are the legislation's true targets.

The state legally recognizes 26 faiths, but while a preamble to the new law mentions Judaism, Catholicism, Lutheranism and Islam, it singles out the Orthodox religion as playing "a determining role" in national culture and government.

"This law is not directed against any religious minority, but at protection of the rights of majority citizens," said Andrei I. Alezhko, who played a major role in writing it. Mr. Alezhko, a legal adviser to Metropolitan Filaret, the Belarus head of the Russian Orthodox Church, describes himself as the head of an anticult human rights group called Ozon.

"All religions are equal before the law," said Vladimir B. Lameko, the vice chairman of the Belarus Parliament's committee for religious affairs, although "that does not mean that they are as large when compared with each other."

But in Borovlyany, a prosperous village of brick homes some 20 minutes outside Minsk, Pastor Boris Cheroglaz scoffed at the notion of religious equality here. In 1999, his outpost of the Full Gospel Pentacostal Church had 1,000 members. Since then it has been driven from one building where it held services and is in danger of losing another. It has also lost 400 worshipers, 300 in the last year alone.

Most, he said, stopped attending services for fear of government reprisal. "People were just afraid, scared because the memories were still fresh from the time when people were persecuted for their beliefs," he said.

The Borovlyany church is anything but alone in its predicament. There are more than 450 registered Pentacostal churches in Belarus, which makes Pentecostalism perhaps the nation's second-largest faith. Another 200 are unregistered; it is not uncommon for registrations to be rejected on technical grounds.

Then again, it could be worse. The Akadanovys' 150-member Hindu community, the Light of Kalyasa, has repeatedly been denied registration on technical grounds. Most recently, the couple said, officials refused even to provide registration papers. An effort to summon Hindu leaders to a meeting in a Minsk park last July collapsed when the police arrested the Akadanovys and 13 other worshipers at the park's entrance, accusing them of staging an illegal demonstration. A month later, the apartment they used as a temple was broken into and ransacked; when the couple and others carried banners in a march protesting their treatment, they were arrested again.

Mrs. Akadanova, 34, suffered a concussion after she was beaten outside the couple's flat in early September. After 10 days in prison for her role in the July meeting, she faces a 15-day sentence if she cannot pay a 1.5 million ruble fine the rough equivalent of $1,000 for staging the protest in August.

"I was already in this jail once," she said in an interview in a Minsk restaurant. "It's torture."

Rather than discouraging believers, however, the government's actions are simply driving Hindus underground, the Akadanovys said. "Some of them pretend to be a group of psychologists so they can meet and meditate," Mrs. Akadanova said. "But the authorities already know about us, so we cannot hide and conceal our activities. And we do not know what the next sanctions will be against us. We can't gather, even at private apartments. But we cannot give up our beliefs."

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Catholics in Belarus Arrested in Religious-Liberty Protest

Zenit (19.11.2002)) / HRWF Int (21.11.2002) - Website: www.hrwf.net/ Email: info@hrwf.net - Two lay Catholics face massive fines after being detained for protesting a new law that restricts freedom of religion, Keston News reports.

Igor Zakrevsky and Sergei Peskin face trial after protesting in the center of this capital.

"We wrote to Parliament protesting against the law and collected petitions, but that didn't help, so we decided to take to the streets to express our opposition," Zakrevsky said.

The two carried placards displaying slogans such as "The authorities want to control our souls." They walked around the central streets, then stood by the statue of Lenin opposite the Parliament building, where they were detained.

Cardinal Kazimierz Swiatek has spoken out against the new law. He pointed out that, although Catholics are not the main targets of the statute, "many groups, especially Protestants, will be harder hit, as they are not so well established."

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Full Gospel Church to defy religion law

Keston Institute (05.11.2002) / HRWF International Secretariat (18.11.2002) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - The Full Gospel Union of Pentecostal churches in Belarus has declared publicly that it will defy the repressive new religion law signed by President Aleksandr Lukashenko on 31 October. "The entry of this law into force will be a blow to freedom of conscience, one of the fundamental freedoms given to individuals by God and on which basic democratic institutions are founded," the head of the Union declared in a 1 November statement received by Keston News Service. Other Belarusian religious and human rights organisations, together with the US State Department, have similarly condemned the new law.

Source: Keston Institute - www.keston.org

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President signs restrictive religions law

AP 30.10.2002 / HRWF (04.11.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - President Alexander Lukashenko signed a law Thursday that enshrines the Russian Orthodox Church's dominance in Belarus and restricts the activities of smaller religious groups.

Lukashenko's office released a statement saying the law, which immediately drew criticism from minority religious communities, "is aimed to prevent religious expansion of destructive sects and occultism."

Human rights advocates have said the law s discriminatory, and the Keston Institute, which monitors religious freedom in former communist countries, has called it "the most repressive religion law in Europe."

The law bans organized prayer by religious communities of fewer than 20 citizens and prohibits religions that have been in Belarus for less than 20 years from publishing literature or setting up missions.

"This law returns the Protestants of Belarus to a time when Protestant churches were forced to act illegally," said Nikolai Sinkovets, bishop of the Evangelist Christian Baptist church.

Chief Rabbi Sender Uritsky also criticized the law, saying it could create serious problems for Jews in the former Soviet republic.

A coalition of minority denominations had appealed to Lukashenko to veto the measure after it was passed by parliament.

Lukashenko, who refers to himself as "a Russian Orthodox atheist," has cracked down on dissent and media freedom in Belarus, making him an outcast in the West. He has expressed strong nostalgia for the Soviet Union, and has maintained or revived many communist-era institutions.

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What hope for True Orthodox parishes ?

Keston Institute (11.10.2002)/ HRWF (14.10.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - info@hrwf.net - A True Orthodox parish in Minsk has lodged a formal complaint over official failure to respond to its registration application within the prescribed three-month period. Belarus has repeatedly refused to register any Orthodox parishes outside the Moscow Patriarchate - whether of the True Orthodox Church, the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church or other jurisdictions - and on 1 August Belarus bulldozed an Autocephalous Orthodox Church (See KNS 2 August 2002). Bishop Agafangel was critical of the role the new law gave the Moscow Patriarchate. "The Moscow Patriarchate is a Soviet Church that needs great changes and improvements. I am against the law giving pre-eminence to such a sick structure." All his Church wanted was "equal conditions. We want to revive freely, open parishes, build churches, conduct missionary activity and have legal rights just like any other Church."

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Europe's most repressive religion law goes to final vote

by Felix Corley, Keston News Service

HRWF (02.10.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email : info@hrwf.net - Amendments to Belarus' religion law which if adopted will make it the most repressive in Europe go for final approval tomorrow (2 October) in the upper chamber of Belarus' parliament, the Council of the Republic. "The new autumn session begins at 10 am tomorrow morning and the religion law is the first substantive item on the agenda," Council of the Republic spokesperson Aleksandr Kryzhanovsky told Keston News Service from the Belarusian capital Minsk on 1 October. He said the debate and voting on the draft could be over within two hours. "I can't say if the senators will adopt the law or not: they have differing views of it," Kryzhanovsky told Keston. "Some think it is right and will support it. Others think it is inadequate."

Kryzhanovsky explained that if the chamber adopts the law it then goes to President Aleksandr Lukashenko for signature. He has three days to sign it into law, otherwise it goes back to the lower chamber of parliament. If the upper chamber rejects the law it likewise goes back to the lower chamber.

If signed by the president, the new law would outlaw unregistered religious activity, require compulsory prior censorship for all religious literature; ban foreign citizens from leading religious organisations; publishing and education would be restricted to faiths that have ten registered communities, including at least one that had registration in 1982; and there would be a ban on all but occasional, small religious meetings in private homes.

Kryzhanovsky reported that the draft law had brought "many hundreds" of letters flooding in. "The absolute majority back the law," he claimed. The Russian Orthodox Church's exarchate in Belarus has strongly backed the draft law and pressured deputies of the lower house to adopt it in June.

The Belarusian authorities have declined to consult the Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on the draft. "When this draft law was published we offered the relevant Belarusian authorities our assistance and that of the ODIHR's Advisory Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief," ODIHR spokesperson Jens-Hagen Eschenbaecher told Keston from Warsaw on 1 October. "However, this offer was not taken up."

However, a 28 September analysis of the draft law - prepared for the OSCE by Professor Cole Durham, a member of the ODIHR Advisory Panel, Melinda Porter, and Brian Gross of the Brigham Young University International Center for Law and Religion Studies - criticised a whole series of provisions of the draft law, especially what it termed "burdensome registration requirements". It called for work on the draft to be halted until its "defects" had been removed.

Oleg Gulak, head of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, told Keston from Minsk on 1 October that he had reached agreement in Warsaw in September with Michael McNamara, human rights officer at the ODIHR, that the OSCE would be prepared to send specialists on international standards on freedom of religion to a seminar for parliamentarians to be organised by the Helsinki Committee in Minsk, but that the chairman of the Council of the Republic had written back on 27 September declining the offer.

"We would obviously be concerned if any participating State adopts a law which did not comply with OSCE commitments," Eschenbaecher told Keston.

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Authorities try to demolish independent Orthodox Church

Keston News Service (29.07.2002)/HRWF International Secretariat (31.07.2002) - Websitehttp://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - Just three days after the authorities of Berastavitsa district in western Belarus ordered the demolition of a newly-built church for the local Autocephalous Orthodox parish in the town of Pahranichny, demolition workers moved in on 26 July and tried to destroy the building with bulldozers, Keston News Service has learned.

A last-ditch vigil and protest by parishioners and their supporters around the building has so far held off the demolition, though one church defender is now serving a fifteen-day prison term and six have already been fined. Officials insisted to Keston that the building is a private house and that it must be destroyed as it has been built illegally.

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Further massive fines for Hindu park meditation

Keston News Service (26.07.2002)/HRWF International Secretariat (30.07.2002) - Websitehttp://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - Tatsyana Akadanava, head of a small Hindu community in the Belarusian capital Minsk, has been fined the equivalent of a year's wages after being accused of leading an unsanctioned meditation ceremony in a public park that was broken up by the police on 13 July.

On 24 July an administrative court in Minsk fined her one and a half million Belarusian roubles (825 US dollars, 815 Euros or 525 British pounds), reinstating a fine imposed on 15 July, then withdrawn after international officials saw the receipt.

Akadanava's lawyer, Natalya Filipchuk, told Keston News Service that the cases against the Hindus should never have been brought to court. Those fined have lodged appeals, but are pessimistic about the outcome. All the Hindus fear that, if the fines are not paid within two weeks, court-appointed assessors will visit their homes to identify property to be seized.

Source : http://www.keston.org/

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Belarus adopts religion law despite criticism by minority faiths

by Yuras Karmanau

AP (27.06.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (01.07.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - The Belarusian parliament on Thursday adopted a law on religion that enshrines the Russian Orthodox Church's dominant role and that sharply limits activities of religions that have been in Belarus less than 20 years.

Critics said the law could encourage tension between faiths and that it was a step backward for the former Soviet republic.

The parliament on Wednesday had put off the second and final reading of the bill to its fall session, but on Thursday morning parliamentary leaders gathered enough signatures to put it on the day's agenda. It passed by a vote of 85-2.

"There was unprecedented pressure on the deputies," said lawmaker Olga Abramova, who walked out of the session during the vote. She said Metropolitan Filaret, the Russian Orthodox Church's leader in Belarus, had invited some deputies to the bishopric and shown them a film "Expansion" that "showed Protestant churches in a negative way."

The Russian Orthodox Church, both in Belarus and in Russia, complains that other religions are poaching converts from people who historically would have been Orthodox believers.

"The law returns society to a totalitarian order not far from what had been previously, establishing the monopoly of one world-view ... and in fact declares war by the state on national and religious minorities," said a statement signed by scores of leaders of protesting organizations. It "throws the country 80 years back, to Stalinist times."

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is an open admirer of the Soviet Union and under his rule the country has retained many Soviet-style control that some other former republics have abandoned.

The law, whose preamble sets out the Orthodox Church's "dominant role," bans organized prayer by religious communities of less than 20 citizens and prohibits religions that have been in Belarus for less than 20 years from publishing literature or setting up missions.

These provisions could lead to "conflicts between religious confessions in Belarus," Abramova said.

The U.S. Embassy in Belarus also criticized the measure this week.

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Protestants in Belarus pray against what they call discriminatory religion bill

AP (16.06.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (19.06.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - Protestants across Belarus prayed Sunday against a draft law on religion that minorities fear could become a tool for government persecution if it is passed by the ex-Soviet republic's parliament.

The bill, which received parliament's preliminary approval on May 31, would ban organized prayer except by registered religious communities of at least 20 Belarusian citizens and would prohibit religions that have existed in the country less than 20 years from publishing literature or setting up missions. It would also require government approval for all religious publications before distribution.

Worshippers in the country's 750 Protestant congregations prayed Sunday for parliament to reject the bill, said Ales Velichko, spokesman for the Union of Evangelical Christians. He said 30 to 40 percent of Belarus' Protestant congregations would not be able to reregister under the law, since they have less than 20 people.

A coalition of religious minorities, including Protestants, Muslims and Jews, has called for postponing the second vote on the bill, set for later this month, and for a public discussion on the issue. They say the bill would strengthen the dominating position of the Russian Orthodox Church at the expense of other faiths.

"The passage of this law will make the domination of the Russian Orthodox Church permanent in Belarus and start the wheels of religious genocide turning," Jewish community leader Nikolai Khaskin said.

Lawmaker Sergei Kostyan, one of the bill's backers, said the law was necessary "to put up a barrier against all these Western preachers who just creep into Belarus and discredit our Slavic values."

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has cracked down on dissent and retained Soviet-style controls on the economy, has called himself "a Russian Orthodox atheist."

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Religious censorship and compulsory re-registration under restrictive new law?

Keston News Service (28.05.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (30.05.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - Amendments to the Belarusian religion law will be discussed by the lower house of parliament on 31 May, a parliamentary official told Keston News Service.

Religious and human rights representatives have told Keston that the long-running process to amend the religion law for the third time has been conducted in some secrecy and confusion. "We get the impression that the religious affairs committee and the parliamentary apparatus want to limit access as far as possible to the current draft of the text," said a representative of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee.

Unregistered religious activity will be banned, foreigners will be prevented from leading religious organisations, religious literature will be subjected to prior compulsory censorship and religious groups with fewer than 20 adult citizen members in any one location will be denied the possibility of registering, if new proposals to amend the religion law which begin their passage through parliament this week go through unchanged.

Members of several faiths in Belarus, as well as local human rights activists, have told Keston News Service of their concerns. "If it is adopted there will be serious problems," one Baptist said.

Source: http://www.keston.org/

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Anti-Catholicism bubbling up in Belarus?

Broadcast of mass is halted; newspaper attacks church

Keston Institute (16.01.2002)/ HRWF (17.01.2002) C Website http://www.hrwf.net C Email info@hrwf.net -The live transmission of a Catholic Mass here was abruptly halted Jan. 6, and the head of Belarus' first national radio channel refused to explain why, the Keston Institute reported today.

An independent Minsk paper linked the cancellation of the broadcast to the government's efforts to protect Russian Orthodoxy and curtail the growth of "non-traditional" religions.

Father Vladislav Zavalnyuk, who regularly led the service, told Keston he was optimistic that the "misunderstanding" would be resolved and that the broadcasting of the Mass would resume on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, the editor of Vitebsky Rabochy, a newspaper owned by the local administration in the northeastern town of Vitebsk, strongly defended his paper's decision to carry an unsigned article attacking the Catholic Church and calling for a halt to its activities.

"It wasn't religious intolerance; the article contained only facts," Vladimir Romanovsky told the Keston News Service.

A journalist at the Vitebsky Kurier, a rival, non-state paper, said his publication had printed a rebuttal of the Vitebsky Rabochy article on Jan. 4. "We believe their article was anti-Catholic and incited religious hatred," he said. "We believe all denominations must be equal."

In Minsk, the Byelorussian-language Mass led by Father Zavalnyuk from the Church of Sts. Simon and Helen -- which has been broadcast regularly for the past eight years -- was not broadcast last Sunday either.

Yelena Babak, head of cultural broadcasting at the first national radio, denied that the state authorities, the KGB or the Orthodox Church had put pressure on the station. She claimed there was nothing special in the decision and that it was merely part of their "renewal of the schedules."

The independent Minsk paper Nasha Svaboda linked the cancellation of the broadcast to the government's efforts to enforce a 1995 Cabinet of Ministers decree that restricts the activities of religious workers in an attempt to protect Russian Orthodoxy and curtail the growth of "non-traditional" religions.

This republic of 10.3 million people, sandwiched between Russia and Poland, and north of Ukraine, is 80% Eastern Orthodox.

Most broadcasting stations in Belarus are state-controlled. National television has no regular religious broadcasts, but the first national radio channel broadcasts regular Orthodox readings and music on Saturday evenings. Some FM radio stations also occasionally carry Christian programming.

Asked why he believed Catholics were the only denomination with regular broadcast services, Father Zavalnyuk declared: "Our liturgy is more compact -- we need only 53 minutes. The Orthodox liturgy needs at least two hours."

The Vitebsky Rabochy article -- entitled "Curb Catholic Expansion!" and published in the paper's last issue of the year -- claimed that Catholics represent a serious threat to "traditional" Russian Orthodoxy, thus affecting the "country's security and psychological health of Belarusians, particularly the young generation."

The article called on the authorities to take "concrete steps" to protect Russian Orthodoxy, arguing that Catholic institutions should be banned since, "in particular, they are liable to entice our children from Orthodoxy into Catholicism."

A journalist at the rival paper Vitebsky Kurier told Keston this was the first such article locally attacking the Catholic Church. "The local authorities founded Vitebsky Rabochy," said the journalist, who preferred not to be quoted by name. "We are surprised they allowed the publication of such an article."

Last year, a series of documentaries on state-owned television, entitled "Expansion," targeted Protestants as well as Catholics, as "destructive groups" that engage in "fanatical rituals" and "pose a threat to society."

Another series shown on state television accused Protestant churches of engaging in human sacrifices and poisoning children. Protestant groups were called "agents of the West" who should be banned from Belarus. Efforts by Catholic and Protestant groups to halt these broadcasts were rejected by the authorities and the courts, Keston said.

Keston Institute: http://www.keston.org

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