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Pastor fined for leading unregistered worship
By Felix Corley
Forum 18 (12.12.2003) / HRWF Int. (15.12.2003) Email info@hrwf.net - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Church members in the town of Kobrin, near Brest in south western Belarus, have pledged to continue meeting for worship despite a fine yesterday (11 December) on the pastor Nikolai Rodkovich for leading the unregistered
> Pentecostal church. "We don't want to register our church," Rodkovich's wife Tamara told Forum 18 News Service from Kobrin on 12 December, "but we have no intention of halting our services. We're ready for anything.
"Under the harsh new religion law, which came into force in November 2002, unregistered religious activity was declared illegal. However, the fine on Rodkovich is the first such fine known to Forum 18 since the summer.
Vasili Marchenko, the official in charge of religious affairs in Brest region, said he knew nothing of the fine on Pastor Rodkovich. "We have no such pastor on the list of registered religious communities," he told Forum 18 from Brest on 12 December. "I have a whole list of registered religious organisations and his church is not there." Told that Rodkovich's church refuses registration on principle, Marchenko responded: "If anyone was fined it would have been for violating the law." He declined to discuss why religious communities could not function without registration.
Tamara Rodkovich recounted that the local policeman came to the church's Sunday service on 23 November and instructed her husband to appear at the local administration. "He had to go twice," she reported. "The first time they talked to him, trying to persuade him to register the church, but he refused. The second time they fined him." He has ten days to pay the fine or the money will be deducted from his pay packet.
The administrative commission of the Kobrin district administration fined Nikolai Rodkovich 50,000 Belarusian roubles (156 Norwegian Kroner, 19 Euros or 23 US Dollars) under Article 193 of the Code of Administrative Offences, which punishes the creation or leadership of an unregistered religious body. The commission declared that Rodkovich had "conducted a meeting without having a statute and permission to conduct meetings from the
district administration, a fact established on 23 November 2003".
The Kobrin church has existed since 1952 and has some 300 members. Pastor Rodkovich argues that under the constitution, believers are free to meet without registration and links the latest pressure on the church to the new religion law. Tamara Rodkovich reported that the policeman's visit and the fine was the first such incident for the church since the new law was adopted. "The last fine was five years ago," she noted.
A spokesperson for the Freedom of Conscience Information Centre told Forum 18 from the capital Minsk on 12 December that this is the first known fine on Protestant congregations since a spate of such fines in spring and early summer of this year "It's difficult to say if his is a one-off or whether there will be more."
The spokesperson added that the Kobrin church is one of about 50 such congregations in Belarus of a Pentecostal union that refuses registration on principle. "They maintain this stance even for their communities in Germany and the United States. This is a principled position - they say they don't need registration." The union is separate from the much larger Pentecostal Union led by Bishop Sergei Khomich, which does not oppose registration and has gained re-registration as a national body this year.
There is similarly a Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians/Baptists that refuses registration on principle. It has some 30 congregations in Belarus. So far it has not reported any major incidents since unregistered religious activity was declared illegal with the new law last year.
Source: F18News http://www.forum18.org/
Lingering Legacy of Militant Atheism
By Geraldine Fagan
Forum 18 News (19.11.2003)--Website: http://www.forum18.org -- HRWF Int. (20.11.2003) C Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - The influence of Soviet-era atheist ideology upon the Belarus remains strong, several Orthodox and Protestant representatives in the republic have recently suggested to Forum 18 News Service. According to Baptist Union press secretary German Rodov, Belarus "was a sort of testing ground for the latest weapons in the Soviet anti-religious armoury." Orthodox dean of Grodno (Hrodna) city Fr Aleksandr Veliseichuk similarly pointed out to Forum 18 that the republic was designated to be the first in the Soviet Union "to become 100 per cent atheist." Correspondingly, Grodno's Pentecostal assistant bishop Naum Sakhanchuk maintained, "there were more atheists who were simply indifferent towards religion" running Soviet Russia, whereas Belarus "had more of the 'militant godless' type." Their legacy is so prevalent, according to one anonymous Orthodox source, that Belarus is currently witnessing "the rebirth of dark communist times."
While a statue of Lenin stands in front of Belarusian government buildings on Minsk's Independence Square, this is a not unusual sight in most former Soviet towns and cities. Perhaps uniquely in the former Soviet Union, however, the square's metro station has recently had its name changed BACK to Lenin Square, presbyter of Minsk Reformed Church Aleksei Frolov (Alaksiej Fralou) remarked to Forum 18. And while Belarus may have no government body bearing the Soviet-era name of the Council of Religious Affairs, many of the officials working for the State Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs are "from the old days," according to German Rodov. Orthodox representatives similarly remarked to Forum 18 that they were often "the same people" who worked in the field prior to 1991, and
maintained that the State Committee's Expert Council is staffed largely by former teachers of scientific atheism.
Again, this is not unheard of in the former Soviet Union. By contrast with Russia, however, Forum 18 found the extent of the network of religious affairs officialdom in present-day Belarus to be quite remarkable.
In Russia, there is no centralised national body of full-time officials dealing with religious affairs. The nearest equivalent is the presidential Council for Relations with Religious Organisations, which meets several times a year and over half of whose members are representatives of religious organisations. A typical Russian region has one state official responsible for liaison with religious organisations, often as part of a wider brief of non-related issues.
In Belarus, to Forum 18's knowledge, there are no representatives of religious organisations on any state body dealing with religious affairs, with the exception of Andrei Aleshko, a lawyer to the Belarusian Orthodox Church, who sits alongside approximately 14 academics on the Expert Council attached to the State Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs.
The State Committee itself - which has at least five specialists at republic level - normally has two full-time officials in each of Belarus's six regions and the capital city of Minsk, Forum 18 was also told. Each of these regions is subdivided into approximately 20 administrative districts, Pentecostal bishop of Vitebsk (Vitsyebsk) Arkadi Supronenko further explained, each of which has its own Department for Relations with Religious and Social Organisations. Typically made up of two or three state officials, its head- who is usually the vice-chairman of the district executive committee - normally deals with religious issues, he said. In addition, said Supronenko, each district has a "commission which monitors compliance with Belarusian legislation on freedom of conscience." According to Vitebsk region's religious affairs official, this body is also usually headed by the district executive committee vice-chairman, but meets "on a social basis." Its approximately four other members are not state officials, Nikolai Stepanenko explained to Forum 18, but might be "a teacher, a doctor or the president of the local collective farm." The task of this body, he said, was to monitor compliance with the Belarusian law on religion, such as by informing an unregistered religious community that they should register. "The main thing is to ensure that the state doesn't interfere [in religious life] and the Church doesn't become politicised," Stepanenko maintained.
Before Forum 18 posed any questions, one of the two local officials dealing with religious affairs in Brest region stated that, with a broad spectrum of 653 registered religious organisations, Brest was the "most religious region in Belarus," and that the religious situation there was "quiet and peaceful." Asked why it was therefore necessary for the regional administration to employ two full-time religious affairs officials, Vasili Marchenko replied that "mutual understanding [between them] demands constant liaison with the state." This was refuted by Auxiliary Catholic Bishop of Grodno Aleksandr Dziemianko, for example, who assured Forum 18 that "the different confessions can find a common language on their own."
German Rodov pointed to the State Committee's Expert Council as being particularly influential in religious affairs. According to the 2002 law on religion, this body analyses registration applications from religious communities whose creed is "previously unknown" in Belarus and vets imported religious literature and related audio and video material.
The Expert Council may also be directed to analyse the ongoing activity of a registered religious organisation, however: In 1997, for example, it concluded that the Minsk Krishnaite community was "a destructive totalitarian sect."
While none of the representatives of religious confessions with whom Forum 18 spoke reported any problems importing literature, Pastor Viktor Zdanevich of Brest's Fortechnaya Street Baptist Church remarked that state analysis of religious literature was "like getting a car mechanic to perform an operation instead of a surgeon - those experts write God with a small letter but their own with a capital."
Indeed, in a typical passage from his 2002 book "The Basics of Religious Studies," Expert Council chairman Professor Anatoli Kruglov writes: "Religion does not teach a believer to strive to lead a dignified life, to fight for his freedom or against evil and oppression. This is all supposed to be performed for him by supernatural forces, above all, god. All that is left for the believer to do is to be his pathetic petitioner, to behave as a pauper or slave... eeligion's promises to give a person everything that he seeks in it are but illusion and reception." Following a section which considers atheism as "the highest form of free thought," Kruglov declares the Marxist-Leninist definition of freedom of conscience to be "authentic" (unlike that of "bourgeois ideology") and claims that, following the incorporation of this principle into Soviet legislation in 1918, "no religion was accorded any preference or subjected to any form of oppression" in Belarus.
While Professor Kruglov's book is intended as an introductory course for students in higher education institutions, a similar tradition of scholarship informs the latest Belarusian study aids for younger pupils. One example acquired by Forum 18 is a 2003 question-and-answer textbook for final-grade high school pupils designed to accompany the new "Man in the World of Culture" course. (See F18News 24 June 2003 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=90 ) Here, pupils are asked to chose the correct definitions of "religion" from various options, including "a particular form of social consciousness in which dominant external forces are reflected in a fantastical way in a person's consciousness, and earthly forces take the form of the non-earthly" (correct), "a system of scientific knowledge concerning the salvation of mankind" (incorrect) and "teachings of the 'church fathers' which aim to substantiate the existence of God" (incorrect).
Pentecostal assistant Bishop Naum Sakhanchuk told Forum 18 that he believes the current repression of various non-Orthodox confessions in Belarus to be much more closely connected with this atheist legacy than with state support for the Belarusian Orthodox Church. One anonymous Orthodox source agreed, maintaining that the 2002 religion law was adopted in the interests of the state, and not those of the Church. "It was made out to be for the benefit of the Church so that society would accept it," this source remarked to Forum 18. "Now the atheists say it is against sects, but they are waiting for the day when they can persecute everybody."
Source: F18News http://www.forum18.org/
Ahmadiyya Muslims among banned religious organisations
By Geraldine Fagan, Forum 18 News Service
Forum 18 News Service (04.11.2003)/ HRWF Int. (06.11.2003) C Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - A government list of 16 religious organisations banned in Belarus includes Ahmadiyya Muslims, the Belarusian Orthodox Church's main researcher on new religious movements confirmed to Forum 18 News Service on 19 September. According to Vladimir Martinovich, who heads the Minsk-based Venerable Iosif of Volotsk Consultation and Information Centre, the list also includes Aum Sinrikyo, satanists, the Church of Christ (Boston Movement),the White Brotherhood, Scientology, Vissarion's Church of the Last Testament and the Bogorodichny Tsentr.
"We aren't free," Ahmadiyya follower Tanveer Ahmad remarked to Forum 18 in the western city of Grodno on 17 September. When acquaintances ask why they have not heard of Ahmadiyya on inquiring about Ahmad's faith, he continued, "I tell them that it's because we're banned." According to Ahmad, there are currently at least 30 Ahmadiyya followers at several locations in the republic, including some 13 native Belarusians. A Pakistani citizen who has been studying medicine in Belarus for almost ten years, Ahmad has left the republic to become a surgeon since Forum 18 spoke to him.
Generally considered to be a sect of Islam, Ahmadiyya followers are not permitted to call themselves Muslims in Pakistan, Ahmad told Forum 18, and their current leader lives in exile in Great Britain. Unlike other Muslims, he explained, the group reveres its nineteenth-century founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian (India) as "the Messiah for the present age" and believes that the prophet Jesus was not taken up to heaven by God but died a natural death in Kashmir.
"It is an obligation of our faith to say how we differ from other Muslims," Ahmad maintained. Even though Ahmadiyya followers in Belarus would like others to know about their beliefs, he said, it is possible to speak about them only informally in response to individual inquiries. Unable to obtain state registration in the republic, Ahmadiyya believers "can do nothing collectively" there, said Ahmad. They cannot import or distribute
literature or have an official representative as in other countries. They cannot gather legally, let alone rent premises, he added, "so we read prayers by ourselves." While Ahmad himself did not deal with what he believes to have been Ahmadiyya's only application for registration in Belarus in 1994 or 1995, he told Forum 18 that state officials rejected it. "They said that they do not register sects of Christianity or Islam as there will be conflicts between them."
Ahmadiyya followers in Belarus have not fought against this decision, however. "It is a sin not to obey the law," remarked Ahmad, who maintained that while jihad ("holy struggle") is justified either when a state does not allow Muslims to observe their religion or against Muslims who kill other Muslims, violence is its worst form. "We are a peaceful community," he told Forum 18. "We can talk or write about our grievances but we cannot try to change the situation by force."
Speaking on 23 September, the official in charge of religious affairs in Vitebsk region confirmed to Forum 18 that Ahmadiyya was banned in Belarus, but said that he did not know why. "It is OK if they keep to themselves and if their prayers do not attract others," Nikolai Stepanenko remarked. Ismail Aleksandrovich, who heads the Religious Association of Muslims in Belarus, told Forum 18 on 20 September that Pakistani student followers of
Ahmadiyya had been active in the republic some five years ago. He maintained that they had since left the country of their own accord on failing to win local support, however, and that the Muslim community had turned down their offers of funding and religious literature.
Vladimir Martinovich told Forum 18 that his centre conducts "research into sects" ("sektovedeniye") and that he regards the terms "sect" and "cult" as neutral and primarily dependent upon circumstances, since "any religious organisation can be dangerous at a particular time or place." With its definitive list of "destructive sects," however, the Belarusian state appears to take a different view. On 16 September the religious affairs official for Brest region told Forum 18 that state analysis of religious literature prevented only that produced by "destructive sects" from entering the republic. When Forum 18 then asked whether controversial groups in Russia, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, were included on the state's list of banned organisations, Vasili Marchenko replied that "the law recognises them and they are registered, so we can't call them a destructive sect."
Registration is not necessarily a guarantee that the Belarusian state will adopt a neutral position towards a particular religious organisation, however. While registered, the charismatic Full Gospel Association encounters various forms of state opposition. In addition, a five-page March 2000 expert analysis of one of its member churches
approved by Professor Anatoli Kruglov in his capacity as chairman of the Expert Council attached to the State Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs concludes that the church is a "neo-mystical religious-political destructive sect" whose growth poses "a significant threat to the individual, society and state" of Belarus.
Source: F18News http://www.forum18.org/
Authorities check up on Sunday School pupils
By Geraldine Fagan
Forum 18 News Service (13.10.2003)/ HRWF Int. (14.10.2003) C Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - One of the provisions in the new religion law worrying Baptist pastor Viktor Zdanevich lists "the attraction of minors to religious organisations and also the teaching of religion to them against their will or without the agreement of their parents or guardians" among offences liable to prosecution. During the Soviet period, "some of our pastors were imprisoned for that," he explained to Forum 18 News Service in the south-western city of Brest on 15 September.
Zdanevich's 1000-strong congregation still meets in the church they were permitted to build in 1982. Previously part of a larger community belonging to the unregistered Baptist Council of Churches, he told Forum 18, the church is colloquially known as Fortechnaya Street Baptist Church ("if it were on Lenin Street, we'd be Lenin Street Baptist Church") and has registered - but autonomous - status. The congregation is currently completing an adjacent Sunday school building for 170 children, Zdanevich pointed out to Forum 18, "but we have many more than that". Construction started in 2000, he said, following eight years of negotiation with the local authorities.
Recent experience by communities within the Baptist Union amplify Pastor Zdanevich's cause for concern. On 10 April the pastor of Gethsemane Baptist Church in Minsk region reported a 7 April request from his local council in the village of Machulishchi for a list of children attending the church's Sunday school and the passport details of its teachers. Told that this information was required by Minsk Regional Executive Committee, the pastor maintained that officials refused to put the grounds for the request in writing, so he refused to comply.
Also on 10 April, Pastor Pavel Firisyuk of Salvation Baptist Church, likewise in Minsk region, reported a 4 April request from the secretary of his local village council in Kolodishchi for the full names, addresses, telephone numbers, educational qualifications and passport details of the congregation's pastors and Sunday school teachers, as well as the full names and dates of birth of all Sunday school pupils. Told that this information was required by the Commission for the Affairs of Minors attached to Minsk Regional Executive Committee, Firisyuk wrote that he gave the pastors' details but not those of the Sunday school teachers and pupils. "We believe this to be a violation of believers' rights," he explained, "as well as of Christ's commandment: 'Let the little children come to me.'"
On 14 April the head of Baptist Union churches in Minsk region, Gennadi Brutsky, wrote to the State Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs for clarification of these incidents, which, he noted, had also been reported in other localities. "We consider such actions by some public officials to be an attempt to return our country to its totalitarian past, which is unacceptable for a country in the process of building a democratic society," Brutsky wrote.
Responding to Brutsky almost exactly a month later on 13 May, Committee vice-chairman Vladimir Lameko wrote that the request for information regarding Sunday school teachers and pupils was part of a check-up on the conformation of religious organisations with the religion law. The vice-chairman of Minsk Regional Executive Committee had instructed local authorities to identify cases of religious instruction of minors without the permission of their parents or guardians, he explained, in addition to instances of involvement by foreign citizens in Sunday schools without corresponding authorisation.
Such a check-up is the legal obligation of all local authorities, pointed out Lameko, adding that state departments dealing with the affairs of minors at all levels have the right to demand of organisations such information as is necessary for their work according to a decree issued on 27 May 1967. He also noted, however, that in the Committee's view local authorities should inform the leaders of religious organisations about the reasons for such check-ups, and have accordingly been made aware of "the inadmissibility of not providing corresponding explanations when conducting similar check-ups in future".
Lameko concludes by remarking to Brutsky that "the Committee cannot agree with your evaluation of the actions of state departments".
Source: F18News http://www.forum18.org/
Religion law stunts church growth
By Geraldine Fagan
Forum 18 News Service (13.10.2003)/ HRWF Int. (14.10.2003) C Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - Another provision in the new law on religion of concern to Baptist pastor Viktor Zdanevich is that "the territorial activity of mission is restricted," he told Forum 18 News Service in the south-western city of Brest on 16 September. According to Article 14 of the law, a religious organisation consists of at least 20 adult citizens living in one or several neighbouring territories and "functions only on this area".
Speaking to Forum 18 in his Pentecostal church in Grodno on 17 September, Naum Sakhanchuk outlined the implications of this provision. "If my church is registered in the city of Grodno, for example, I have no right to operate elsewhere," he said. As assistant bishop, however, Sakhanchuk is able to minister in the other registered Pentecostal churches in Grodno region, he continued, since they come under the registered regional Pentecostal association, "but if there is no church in a particular place, I have no right to evangelise there". Should church members distribute literature on the street two or three times, added Sakhanchuk, their organisation is liable to liquidation by court order.
As an autonomous Baptist congregation, Pastor Zdanevich's church appears worse off than Sakhanchuk's, since it does not come under the auspices of an umbrella organisation. Registered in the city of Brest, it cannot function outside the city limits.
The regional official in charge of religious affairs, Vasili Marchenko, confirmed this to Forum 18 on 16 September. According to the 2002 religion law, he maintained, the territory of the activity of an organisation is where it is registered. "So Brest city if it is registered in Brest city."
Zdanevich's church is also unable to create a mission. Marchenko pointed out that, according to the new law, missions may be founded only by regional or republic-wide religious organisations. Asked whether this did not restrict autonomous communities, Marchenko insisted that "none of our autonomous ones have a mission".
Zdanevich told Forum 18 that his church has not submitted documents for reregistration as its elders are currently considering those points in the law they believe run against Gospel teaching. "For me, the Gospel comes first and the law comes second," he remarked, "whatever country I am in."
Ultimately, however, Zdanevich said he was not concerned by the potential affects of the new law: "We have been through the underground already - they can oppress individuals, but not the church."
Zdanevich also pointed out to Forum 18 that the law's provisions inevitably "make it difficult to organise new churches". One attendee at meeting to discuss the 2002 law hosted by the State Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs in Minsk on 12 September maintained that this also proved to be of some concern to the Belarusian Orthodox Church, whose representatives raised the issue of how close localities needed to be to constitute neighbouring territories - could a parish be formed by small groups of believers living in disparate hamlets? According to this source, the issue was not resolved at the meeting. Interviewed by Forum 18 on 23 September, however, the Orthodox dean of the central district of Vitebsk city Fr Aleksandr Rakhunok denied that this issue posed any problems for his Church. "78 per cent of Belarus is Orthodox, it never happens that we have fewer than 20 parishioners in one locality."
Sakhanchuk told Forum 18 that problems organising new churches predate the 2002 law on religion. In Brest region, he said, no new Pentecostal churches have been registered for two years and in Grodno region for three years.
Sakhanchuk also described a practice in which state pressure was exerted on some of those listed as founding members in a registration application. "People who have lived through persecution don't care, but these are all new converts - if one turns away then the application is rejected."
Speaking to Forum 18 on 19 September in Minsk, head of the charismatic Full Gospel Association Aleksandr Sakovich said that this phenomenon might take place in rural areas, but "they don't use those methods in big cities". However, he did report a practice in which a local authority sometimes requested details of the premises a newly formed religious community seeking registration planned to rent. "Then they contact and put pressure on the organisation offering its premises, and then the community is refused registration as it has nowhere to meet."
While Zdanevich maintains that the provisions of the new law restricting mission are aimed particularly at Protestant churches, Forum 18 found that some Catholic representatives were also concerned about them. The chairman of St Paraskeva Greek Catholic parish council in Polotsk, Mikola Sharakh, noted that the law did not allow for development and effectively created a "reservation" for the church.
"Any Christian church must preach and evangelise, but this law permits it to preach only to whoever entered the church building, so that the church becomes a passive organisation," a Roman Catholic source who preferred not to be named similarly remarked to Forum 18. "People might argue that the churches are open, but what freedom is that? It is a silhouette."
Source: F18News http://www.forum18.org/
Obstacles to religious events outside the home
By Geraldine Fagan
Forum 18 News Service (08.10.2003)/HRWF Int. (08.10.2003) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - Should a religious community become too large to meet for worship at a residential address or be prevented from doing so by the state authorities, it may choose to rent premises such as a cinema or house of culture for services. A religious organisation's form of worship might also involve holding events outdoors: Roman Catholics mark the feast day of Corpus Christi with street processions, for example, while many Protestant churches baptise new members in rivers or lakes. In 1999 the decree on protests and demonstrations was extended to religious gatherings, however, so that events such as these require the advance permission of the local state authorities.
A hostile local authority may withhold that permission. For example, a 2 October 2002 circular letter from Grodno regional executive committee to Grodno's cinema directors, seen by Forum 18 News Service, orders them to terminate all contracts related to religious worship in cinemas, "in order to broaden and optimise the activity of establishments offering a direct cinematic service to the public".
Responding to a request from New Life Full Gospel Church to use a house of culture in Minsk's Factory District for Bible study, the district's administration wrote on 9 November 2001 that this would not be possible due to decision No. 44 of 28 April 2000, "which affirms the inadmissibility of organised religious instruction and the location of religious organisations in the district's cultural establishments".
In response to the church's repeat request to the higher instance of Minsk City Council, it received a rejection on 24 January 2002, which explained that the formulation of the dates of the proposed meetings ("Sundays 10am-1pm and Thursdays 7-9.30pm every week for a period of six months starting on 6 March 2002") did not satisfy the legal requirement of stipulating precise dates.
Dina Shavtsova, a lawyer specialising in religious freedom issues, added that Baptists in the town of Bobruisk, Gomel region, were recently refused permission to hold an outdoor baptism "for no particular reason". In cases when the use of a public building for a religious event is denied, she told Forum 18 in Minsk on 19 September, "the reason most frequently given is that the premises concerned are not intended for such purposes".
The Pentecostal assistant bishop of Grodno region reported that the state authorities there no longer allow churches to rent public swimming pools for baptisms. The situation regarding the use of rivers and lakes varied greatly within the region, added Naum Sakhanchuk: "If our relations are OK with the local authority we write a request for permission to perform an outdoor baptism." If not, he told Forum 18 on 17 September, there was no point in writing. "I'll be refused - they'll say that the river is polluted, or that swimming is prohibited in the lake."
The decision to refuse to let cultural venues to religious organisations is not in force throughout the country, the head of the charismatic Full Gospel Church Aleksandr Sakovich noted, having been taken only by district executive committees in Minsk. While the situation was nevertheless difficult in this respect in Grodno and Gomel regions, he told Forum 18 on 19 September, in Mogilev, Vitebsk and Brest regions it is "tolerable". His own congregation's inability to rent public swimming pools, added Sakovich, "does not affect how we perform baptisms - we are not afraid".
An autonomous Baptist church in the western city of Brest, by contrast, reports no difficulties whatsoever with holding outdoor baptisms. Showing Forum 18 group photographs of the participants in annual baptisms on 16 September, pastor of the church Viktor Zdanevich said that he had experienced no difficulty in obtaining permission from the local authorities to hold the events.
Forum 18 found a similar geographical variation regarding Catholic religious processions. A Catholic in Minsk who preferred not to be named told Forum 18 that the annual Corpus Christi procession through the capital, which involves between 6,000 and 15,000 participants, has gone ahead every year since being prohibited in 2000. Since that year, however, it has been diverted from central streets "to make sure it is not seen," said the source, and it now takes between two and three months for the Catholic Church to obtain permission to hold it. By contrast, auxiliary bishop of Grodno diocese Aleksandr Dziemianko told Forum 18 on 17 September that there were no problems in obtaining state permission to hold Corpus Christi processions in the region.
Citing the local Grodno order prohibiting the use of cinemas for worship services, Shavtsova said that such documents were supposed to be officially registered as legal acts with the Ministry of Justice. While this used to be the case, she said, she had learnt from an acquaintance employed at the Ministry that it had begun not to approve such local instructions. "So now they are just described as 'methodological recommendations,'" Shavtsova remarked to Forum 18, adding that it was a rarity for such decisions to be issued on paper anyway.
Source: F18News http://www.forum18.org/
Is home worship in small groups illegal?
By Geraldine Fagan
Forum 18 News Service (07.10.2003)/HRWF Int. (08.10.2003) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - Religious activity by groups of fewer than 20 people appears illegal under Belarusian law. Article 193 of the Administrative Offences Code punishes creation or leadership of an unregistered religious body, and the 2002 law on religion specifies that registration is compulsory. In May and June, Pentecostal evangelists Aleksandr Balyk and Aleksandr Tolochko were fined under Article 193 for allegedly conducting unregistered home worship in the north-western region of Grodno, while four similar fines were levied earlier in the year against Pentecostals in the south-western region of Brest (see F18News 3 and 20 June 2003).
While all unregistered religious meetings could be prosecuted in theory such cases appear to be isolated, however. Speaking to Forum 18 News Service at Grace Pentecostal Church in Grodno on 17 September, the Pentecostal assistant bishop of the region said that his church had since challenged successfully the fines levied against Balyk and Tolochko. "These cases could happen every day," Naum Sakhanchuk remarked. The only reason they do not, he maintained, is that unregistered Pentecostal groups hold their meetings discreetly and disperse quickly afterwards.
In Vitebsk region there has been one similar case this year, local Pentecostal bishop Arkadi Supronenko told Forum 18 on 22 September. In an undated report to their local district executive committee in Lepel, nine Pentecostals report that they were holding a Bible study at a private home in the village of Slobodka at 4.45pm on 17 March when two men entered the house with neither introduction nor permission and started asking questions.
According to the Pentecostals' statement, one of the men - who later said he was the chairman of the village council - accused the group of violating the law by visiting the house and "reading the Bible without his permission". The Pentecostals also complain that, while this man accused them of "propaganda and agitation," he began to "agitate" them to visit a nearby Orthodox church, since Orthodoxy was "the cult of our fathers and grandfathers." According to Supronenko, the action by the village council chairman was later found to be unlawful.
Speaking to Forum 18 in Minsk on 19 September, Dina Shavtsova, a lawyer specialising in religious freedom issues, related another similar recent case in the capital. In early 2002 a group of seven people - a local police officer, representatives from the municipal police, Council for Religious Affairs and passport and visa departments, a video camera operator and two KGB officers - interrupted the home worship of eight Unitarian Christians in a Minsk flat, she said, saying that they were responding to a public complaint.
The video camera operator unlawfully filmed the leader of the unregistered group, Pastor Pavel Rogach, while he telephoned her for legal advice, added Shavtsova. In April 2002, however, Minsk Central District Court ruled unconstitutional a local administrative committee charge against Rogach under Article 193 of the Administrative Offences Code.
There appears to be disagreement among religious affairs officials about the legality of such incidents. Speaking to Forum 18 on 16 September, the official in charge of religious affairs in Brest region, Vasili Marchenko, pointed out that Belarus' new law on religion differed from Russia's in that it did not contain the legal concept of a religious group, which may function without full rights on an unregistered basis. Asked whether this made illegal the regular worship at home by a group which has fewer than 20 members and is therefore unable to comply with the law's criteria for registration, Marchenko said that it was "OK for them to meet as long as they don't disturb the public order". He insisted that this issue had not arisen so far in practice in Brest region.
In Vitebsk, the regional official in charge of religious affairs maintained that a group of nearly 20 members may gather freely for between three and six months prior to registration, but no longer: "otherwise they could go on meeting for years while refusing to register." Speaking to Forum 18 on 23 September, Nikolai Stepanenko acknowledged that such a provision is nowhere contained in law.
The chairman of the republic's State Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs appears to take a slightly different view. In their statement to Lepel District Executive Committee, the nine Pentecostals quote Stanislav Buko as telling Narodnaya Gazeta (People's Newspaper) on 3 December 2002 that the new law on religion "in no way restricts joint Bible study at a believer's home or the joint prayer of all those who live at a residential address or of a group of believers".
Source: F18News http://www.forum18.org/
Old believers cry SOS
By Geraldine Fagan
Forum 18 News Service (01.10.2003)/ HRWF Int. (03.10.2003) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - "Who needs this? We don't," the head of the priestless Old Believer Church in Belarus complained to Forum 18 News Service, lamenting that the compulsory re-registration procedure under the country's new religion law is unnecessary and unduly burdensome. In addition to heading the 38 communities of the Pomorye Old Orthodox Church in Belarus, Petr Orlov is, in his own words, "elder, administrator, architect, builder, bookkeeper and caretaker" of his parish in Polotsk, 200 kilometres (125 miles) north-east of the capital Minsk, where around 60 regularly attend worship.
Under the new religion law, which came into force last November, all religious organisations in Belarus must re-register by the deadline of 16 November 2004 (see F18News 11 September 2003) if they wish their activity to remain legal.
Thanks to the new law, Orlov must now compile a new charter for the Pomorye Old Orthodox Church in Belarus, arrange a synod in Polotsk to approve it and then submit a final re-registration application to the State Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs in Minsk. The parish charter also requires approval by the local authorities, which may involve several visits to the regional executive committee in Vitebsk, Orlov told Forum 18 in Polotsk on 24 September. "By the time they've finished it's their charter, not ours, but everyone functions according to their own internal arrangement anyway."
A retired sailor who has journeyed as far afield as Antarctica, Orlov's good health allowed him to design and supervise the construction of his Church of the Dormition of the Holy Mother of God in as little as 18 months. The majority of the faithful in half a dozen priestless Old Believer parishes along Vitebsk region's border with Lithuania, however, are nearly 80 years old: "There's no one to write their charters."
Even if Orlov does find local parishioners able to draw up documentation for these communities, they would face further time-consuming bureaucratic procedures. A charter must first be approved by the local village council, then by Orlov some 140 kilometres away in Polotsk, he explained to Forum 18, and finally by the regional executive committee in Vitebsk. "That's two buses to Polotsk and a train to Vitebsk - what if they ask for more changes after that?"
All this travelling and paperwork takes place against a backdrop of minimal financial support, Orlov points out. While, he maintains, the Belarusian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) receives massive state aid - "driveways tarmacked, fences painted, everything" - and Catholics and Protestants are assisted by the West, "no one helps the Old Believers." Although there are approximately 50,000 Pomorye priestless Old Believers in Belarus, he says, "the donations still don't match up to the costs."
According to Orlov, local Council for Religious Affairs (CRA) representatives claimed at a meeting in Vitebsk on 15 September that the 2002 religion law was intended to counteract "new, destructive" religious organisations, an aim with which he is broadly in agreement. On 23 September, Vitebsk CRA plenipotentiary Nikolai Stepanenko indeed maintained to Forum 18 that the 1992 religion law "opened the doors wide for pseudo-religious sects and neo-cultic organisations." He also pointed out that the majority of the registration details submitted under the old law required updating.
In line with the state's view, the Orthodox dean of the north-western city of Grodno likens the new law's effect on unfamiliar religious groups to that of a moratorium on the use of genetically modified seed. Fr Aleksandr (Veliseichuk) also acknowledged to Forum 18 that the law benefited the Belarusian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) by granting legal personality status, the right to hold a bank account and to put forward an opinion as an organisation. Otherwise, however, "it is difficult to say who the law is for," he remarked on 18 September.
The auxiliary bishop of Grodno's Catholic diocese, Aleksandr Dziemianko, suggested to Forum 18 on 17 September that the state simply "considered such a law to be necessary". Recent press articles maintained that it would exclude small "sects" from Belarus, he added.
Speaking to Forum 18 in Minsk on 19 September, Vladimir Martinovich of the Belarusian Orthodox Church's Venerable Iosif of Volotsk Consultation and Information Centre suggested that the 2002 religion law would not prove effective against groups such as Aum Shinrikyo and the White Brotherhood, since they did not register as religious communities anyway.
The Pentecostal bishop of Vitebsk region, Arkadi Supronenko, surmised that nobody needed the new law. "We could have got along just fine with the old one," he remarked to Forum 18 on 22 September.
Source: F18: http://www.forum18.org/
Despite protests, "anti-sect" schoolbook to remain
By Geraldine Fagan
Forum 18 News Service (24.06.2003) / HRWF Int. (25.06.2003) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - The Ministry of Education has rejected Pentecostal and Hare Krishna calls for the withdrawal from state schools of a textbook partially concerning religion which they argue incites religious discord. Forum 18 News Service notes that the book, "Man in the World of Culture", 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, which was responsible for the fatal gas attack on the Tokyo subway in March 1995, and suggests that Krishna devotees need psychiatric help. Andrei Aleshko, legal assistant to Minsk's Orthodox diocese, said he is concerned about a quotation in the book criticising Orthodox worship. "If once we have seen the text we agree that it hurts the feelings of believers," he told Forum 18 from Minsk on 24 June, "the Church will call on the education ministry to withdraw the book."
The textbook was approved by the education ministry last year for use by eleventh-grade (18-year-old) pupils in Russian-language secondary schools, and has a circulation of 147,200 copies. Most schools in Belarus teach in Russian.
The 3-page section of the book under dispute introduces pupils to "non-traditional religious organisations and sects". Although every religion purports to be in possession of absolute truth, it maintains, "particularly propitious conditions for the manifestation of fanaticism are created by the activity of sects," the most widespread in Belarus being Baptists, Pentecostals, Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses. According to the book, sects typically claim exclusivist ideological principles" and tend towards isolationism, while those espousing non-traditional doctrines also employ "new techniques which transform the psyche of the people they recruit".
Turning to non-traditional religious organisations, which are variously described as "new religious movements," "New Age religions," "non-traditional cults," "totalitarian sects" and "pseudo-religious formations," the book lists the International Society for Krishna Consciousness [Hare Krishnas] and Zen Buddhism alongside groups such as Aum Shinrikyo and the Russian movement the White Brotherhood. These organisations are characterised by unquestioning acceptance of doctrine and blind subordination to a teacher, guru, leader or prophet, claims the book, as well as insistence that members "divorce themselves from the real world".
The textbook also refers to "the common technique of shutting off the mental faculty of reason by means of endless rhythmical repetition of the same phrase." Krishna devotees, it points out, must repeat the 32-syllable Maha Mantra anything else. "Religious believers such as these typically feel the need to be within their community at all times and are afraid of leaving it," the section concludes. In such instances, it is alleged, "psychiatric help is certainly required".
Writing to education minister Pyotr Brigadin on 8 April, Pentecostal Bishop Sergei Khomich demanded that the textbook be withdrawn from schools, arguing that it will contribute to "the continued incitement of interreligious discord in our country". Since the Pentecostal Union is a registered religious organisation, he points out, Pentecostals should not be listed alongside "sects renowned for their destructive activity, such as the White Brotherhood and Aum Shinrikyo".
In his 7 May reply to the Pentecostal leader, Vladimir Shcherbo of the education ministry's general secondary education department claims thatthe word "sect" is used in the new textbook as a scientific theoretical term without evaluation or implication of antisocial tendency. While the current edition of the textbook will not be withdrawn, "corresponding changes... concerning the spiritual potential of religion" will be introduced when it is next published, promises Shcherbo. In a 15 April letter addressed to the country's general public prosecutor, members of the Minsk Krishna Consciousness Community likewise call for the withdrawal of the textbook, since the information published within it "does not correspond with reality and damages the reputation of Krishna Consciousness believers". The Krishna devotees complain in particular about the book's apparent definition of their organisation as a sect.
In a 7 May reply to the community, chairman of the State Committee for Religious Affairs, Stanislav Buko, also maintains that the term "sect" is used in the textbook as a scientific term without evaluation or implication that an organisation so described should lose its state registration. Making no reference to any of the book's allegations specifically relating to Krishna worship, Buko concludes that, if Krishna devotees believe that the textbook violates their legal rights or interests, they may resolve the issue "in the legally prescribed manner". On 3 June the Minsk Krishna
Consciousness Community again wrote to the general public prosecutor requesting that "all legal measures be taken to halt illegal actions aimed at offending the religious feelings of believers and the incitement of religious discord in society".
In their original letter to the public prosecutor, the Krishna devotees pointed out the "atheistic character" of the textbook. At the end of the disputed section dealing with sects and non-traditional religious organisations, five quotations relating to religious belief are printed under the heading "Let's take note." Four of these are indeed negative ("To believe means to refuse to understand," "Religion is a weakness...") The final quotation, attributed to parapsychologist Wolf Messing, is specifically critical of Orthodox Christian worship: "When that phrase ['Holy God... have mercy on me'] is repeated hundreds and thousands of times, a hypnotic state results. On top of that there are countless prostrations, hammered out before icons."
Aleshko said he had not seen a copy of the book and asked Forum 18 to supply a copy. "If I ask the education ministry for it, maybe they won't give it to us," he declared. So far, however, the Pentecostals and Hare Krishnas are apparently the only groups to have protested against the new textbook.
Source: F18News http://www.forum18.org/
Armed police break up Hindu meditation
by Geraldine Fagan
Forum 18 News Service (12.06.2003)/ HRWF Int. (03.04.2003) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - On 1 June four armed police officers broke up a ritual and meditation evening held at a private flat in the capital Minsk by approximately six members of the Light of Kaylasa Hindu community, the group's leader Natalya Solovyova told Forum 18 News Service on 7 June. The raid came exactly a week after a similar Hindu meditation meeting was broken up elsewhere in the city.
Solovyova told Forum 18 that at around 6pm on 1 June, a local police officer arrived at the flat where the Hindus were meeting. He told the group they had no right to gather and escorted three of those present to the local police station, where he took their passport details. Thereafter believing the disruption to be over, said Solovyova, the group carried on worship, but were disturbed several hours later by the arrival of four police officers with machine guns. According to Solovyova, the four issued various threats, including imprisonment, described the Hindus as "sectarians" and commented that "if we were Orthodox Christians, they would have no issue with us".
Solovyova also reported that during the raid on the meditation session in a private flat in another part of Minsk on 25 May, one uniformed and one plain clothes police officer arrived at the flat at around 7pm. She said the pair behaved aggressively towards the approximately five worshippers present, warning that the owners of the flat would encounter problems as a result of the meeting and claiming that the group had "no right to gather at all, at any time".
So far on these occasions, said Solovyova, the Minsk Hindu community has not been fined, but she added that they had been warned that "if it occurs again, we will go on their police records, and legal consequences will begin the time after that." At no stage did the police officers refer to any part of the law, she said.
Solovyova explained that these raids had forced the Hindu community to move from flat to flat "like nomads". They can no longer meet at premises in a semi-rural area outside Minsk which they had used as a temple, she said, since a meeting there was broken up by police last autumn.
The group tried to register unsuccessfully before the new more restrictive religion law came into force last November. "Since then the pressure has increased," Solovyova added. She reported that the previous leaders of the community, Sergei and Tatyana Akadanova, who were given ten-day sentences last September for holding an unauthorised demonstration to protest against earlier state actions against the community, are currently in the United States seeking political asylum.
Forum 18 tried to find out why these Hindu meetings have been raided by police, but on 9 June the telephone of Alla Ryabitseva, the head of Minsk City Council's Department for Religious and Ethnic Affairs, went unanswered. Contacted by Forum 18 the same day, Aleksandr Kalinov at the Belarusian State Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs said that his department had no documents on the Minsk Hindu community. While there was a registered Society for Krishna Consciousness, he said, "we only work with registered organisations."
Source: http://www.forum18.org
Non-Moscow-Orthodox "banned" from registering
Forum 18 (02.04.2003)/ HRWF Int. (03.04.2003) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - State officials insist that the True Orthodox Church, which has three parishes and some 300 adherents, does not exist in Belarus. "There are no such parishes. There is no such Church," Aleksandr Kalinov of the government's Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs told Forum 18 News Service. Not only parishes of the True Orthodox Church, but those of the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church have been denied the right to register, while Belarus' president has vowed to use all state forces to protect the unity of the Moscow Patriarchate's Exarchate in the country.
"Officially there is no ban on registering Orthodox parishes which are outside the framework of the Moscow Patriarchate," Oleg Gulak of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee told Forum 18. "But in practice - of course there is."
Source: http://www.forum18.org
True Orthodox battle on for legal worship
Forum 18 (02.04.2003)/ HRWF Int. (02.04.2003) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Fr Leonid Plyats, priest of the True Orthodox parish of St John of Kronstadt near Minsk, told Forum 18 News Service that his community will fight on to be able to worship openly and legally despite the rejection on 27 March of his parish's suit to overturn the denial of registration. Denis Yelizarev of the government's Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs insisted that the Committee's assessment against the parish had been correct. "They slandered other faiths, that's why they were banned."
Source: http://www.forum18.org
Free House churches banned in Belarus
by Stefan J. Bos
ASSIST News Service (08.01.2003)/ HRWF Int. (10.01.2003) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net -Authorities in the former Soviet republic of Belarus have told Christians and other religious communities they can no longer hold meetings in their homes without prior permission, news reports said Friday, December 13.
The Keston News Service (KNS) quoted the senior religious affairs official in the Belarusian capital Minsk, Alla Ryabitseva, as saying that if "more than ten people gather together for a religious meeting without official permission they would be committing a crime."
Ryabitseva reportedly made the remarks to religious communities registered in the Frunze district of Minsk at a meeting to explain new religious legislation, which human rights watchers described as "Europe's most restrictive law."
"She said private homes are not places designated for the holding of religious meetings and therefore such permission is obligatory," said KNS, which has close knowledge about persecuted Christians.
Dina Shavtsova, a Minsk-based involved in religious liberty cases, told KNS that "the uncertainty surrounding the norms of the religion law allows local officials to give their own interpretation" to the legislation, that came into force November 16.
Shavtsova was quoted as saying that this legal development "leads to the direct limitation of the rights" of citizens. She said "a whole range of Evangelical churches which don't have their own church buildings have been deprived of the right to rent halls in Minsk."
"They can now only meet in home groups, though even this possibility is now dependent on the whims of one or another bureaucrat," the lawyer added. Several church leaders and Christians have reportedly been summoned by local officials to explain their activities.
Bishop Sergei Khomich, head of the Pentecostal Union which has more than 490 registered communities in the country, said he had heard that Pentecostal leaders would be invited in the future. Other church leaders had similar complaints.
"They (the authorities) have all our activity under control," confirmed Georgi Vyazovsky, pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Minsk, another non traditional denomination, in an interview with KNS.
He said regional authorities had already seen a copy of a magazine published by his church criticizing the Orthodox view on icons, as part of what appears to be censorship rules for religious publications.
"We have not even sent out the copies yet, so they (the officials) must have got them from the printing house," the pastor was quoted as saying.
While the Orthodox Church leaders have expressed support for the new religious law, the United States and the European Union have strongly condemned Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko for signing the new legislation.
Because of his perceived poor records on human rights, Lukashenko was recently banned last month entering the Czech Republic during the landmark NATO summit in Prague.
Belarus President allows Christian radio show
Unprecedented move comes amid concern about religious freedom
by Stefan J. Bos
ASSIST News Service (08.01.2003)/ HRWF Int. (10.01.2003) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net -Just over a month after he signed what critics call "Europe's most restrictive religion law," the president of Belarus has agreed to allow a Christian radio program to air daily in his ex-Soviet republic, an official said Tuesday, December 17.
In a move organizers describe as "an answer to prayers" President Alexander Lukashenko made clear that Christians can broadcast the "Alpha Hour" show on Alpha Radio, the country's second largest FM radio network, said Operations Manager J. Gator Henry.
Henry, 38, told ASSIST News Service that the station's president, "has personal...assurances" that the "Alpha Hour" show "will be allowed to air 7 days a week, one hour per day," for a potential audience of 1,5 million in Minsk and the nearby city of Vitebsk.
"This process to get to this point has taken more than eighteen months, three personal meetings with Alpha Radio in Minsk, a multiplicity of email communications, and more than two years of prayers, by many people around the world."
Troubled nation
The apparent permission also comes amid international pressure on Lukashenko to improve human rights in his troubled nation. Henry suggested however that a lack of money, not legal troubles are still "preventing the 'Alpha Hour' radio show" from going on the air.
"We are in need of ten thousand dollars to facilitate the necessary training with the crew and staff at Alpha Radio," which Henry said will take approximately four to five weeks.
He stressed the funds would cover the first month of broadcasting as well as the transfer of one thousand "contemporary Christian songs" in the Russian language, which have been donated to the Alpha Hour by Radio TEOS in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Project Belarus
The total cost of operating the "Alpha Hour" radio show is about $135,000 annually under a two year contract, Henry said.
He made clear that the program is part of his Florida based ministry Project Belarus Inc., which was established as a charitable organization for the sole purpose of financing and administering the radio show.
"It is our intention and prayer that through Project Belarus", the world-wide church would "enable us to finance this radio ministry," Henry added.
Wife "inspiration"
J. Gator Henry and his wife Vitalia, who is from Belarus, will leave Florida and settle in nearby Kiev, Ukraine, from January, to co-ordinate the radio show. "My wife is the inspiration behind all of this, and the one whom the Lord has utilized to bring about this unprecedented and historical opportunity," he said.
"She is from Minsk, and her heart breaks for the people of her home country, as does mine." J. Gator Henry is also working in the region as Senior Producer for CBN-CIS, the former Soviet Union division of the Christian Broadcasting Network from American evangelist Pat Robertson.
Henry admitted that the Belarusian authorities could still jeopardize his activities. "We do not know if one day they will come and attempt to pull the plug," he said.
"But we do know that right now, at such a time as this, the door is open. And we, as those professing to belong to Jesus Christ, have a mandate from God to walk through this door faithfully, and boldly."
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