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CSCE (10.12.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (11.12.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - United States Helsinki Commission Co-Chairman Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ) today praised Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel for vetoing a proposed law on religion. "The veto of this legislation was the right thing to do. I hope Czech Parliamentarians will follow his lead," said Smith.
Announcing the veto, President Havel's spokesman reiterated concern about the law's possible effect on church engagement in health and social services. Officials of the Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, one of the officially recognized religions in the country, also welcomed the veto.
Co-Chairman Smith added, "President Havel is rightly concerned about the law's possible impact on traditional areas of church life. But let's not forget that the existing registration requirements already make it difficult for some smaller religious groups to gain legal recognition in the Czech Republic. The proposed law would make their situation even more difficult."
Under the proposed law, religious groups seeking state recognition would have to submit an application with the signatures of at least 300 people. This starts the clock on a ten-year waiting period during which recognition is not possible, regardless of the size of the religious community. Proponents of the law argue that allowing groups to submit an application with only 300 signatures constitutes a "liberalization" of the current system. Such religious groups, however, would have essentially the same status as civic organizations, but not the same rights as recognized religions.
Moreover, during the new ten-year waiting period, religious groups seeking recognition would have to submit annual reports to the government on their activities. Then, after ten years, a religious group that has met these first two requirements must submit an application for full recognition with 20,000 signatures - double the number of signatures currently required. "In reality," suggested Smith, "religious groups desiring recognition would have to struggle with a new ten-year waiting period, intrusive reporting requirements, and overcoming the hurdle of obtaining 20,000 signatures - something only a handful of the 21 religions currently recognized could do."
"In short, this legislation would make it more difficult - not easier - for smaller religious groups to be placed on an equal legal footing with other currently recognized groups. Registration systems that withhold benefits for smaller groups are incompatible with the Czech Republic's OSCE commitments," concluded Mr. Smith.
Materials from the Helsinki Commission's October 11, 2001, briefing on "Religious Registration in the OSCE Region" are on the Commission's website, www.csce.gov, as are other materials regarding "freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief."
The United States Helsinki Commission, an independent federal agency, by law monitors and encourages progress in implementing provisions of the Helsinki Accords. The Commission, created in 1976, is composed of nine Senators, nine Representatives and one official each from the Departments of State, Defense and Commerce.
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By Ivan O. ?tampach
HRWF International Secretariat (15.10.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - The present legislation supports the establishment of the well-established large and influential churches and is directed against new spiritual movements and small religious communities. This narrows and curtails the Czech spiritual scene; that which is new, courageous and creative is perceived as suspicious if not downright dangerous. The Act of the former Federal Assembly No. 308/91 Coll. titled On Freedom of Religious Faith and the Position of Churches and Religious Communities and the Act of the Czech National Council No. 161/92 Coll. titled On Registration of Churches and Religious Communities as amended (for the sake of legal continuity), which supplements the former Act, consider the religious communities, which the Communist regime had allowed to be active publicly, to be the registered ones. These organisations did not have to meet any other conditions but, at the same time, no other organisation was let into this circle. Therefore, the public institutions treat various entities in different kinds of ways.
The religious communities, whose persecution by the totalitarian system was (in comparison with the other ones) intensified up to factual prohibition on public activity, have had and still have to meet demanding conditions. They are disadvantaged today just for the reason that they were even less acceptable for the previous regime. The condition precedent for registration of such a religious community is to prove that there are 10,000 persons of age, who acknowledge being members of the religious community seeking registration. In practice, this means it is necessary to submit 10,000 signatures.
Besides providing for inequality of religious communities, the Act thus palpably interferes with the privacy of citizens and it is questionable whether this is in accordance with the Constitution because everyone is entitled to protection of such a personal piece of information as profession of religious faith, especially if some religious movements evoke distrust, ridicule and even signs of antagonism and one is endangered by acknowledging adherence to such a movement.
It is also very difficult to attain the prescribed number of adherents. According to my personal findings, the Church Department of the Ministry of Culture has received several dozens of applications since the beginning of the nineties. Only the Religious Society of Jehovahs Witnesses has succeeded in stepping over the high threshold over this period of time. Discrimination against the religious communities, which had been subject to a more severe persecution by the totalitarian regime, is quite obvious. For those Christian churches, which are members of the World Council of Churches (which is virtually impossible for them, particularly for financial reasons) when filing the application, the sufficient number of signatures is 500. The fact that the various affected entities did not defend their rights before the Constitutional Court indicates a remarkable restraint on their part. Milder forms of criticism resulted in repeated assurances that an amendment or a new piece of legislation would be adopted in the near future.
We will be able to understand the importance of registration when we put together everything that follows from such a registration in practice. Above all, registered religious communities are entitled to a state contribution to cover the salaries of the clerics. They also receive financial aid for investments and possibly even for operation. They are entitled to set up primary, secondary and higher vocational schools, which are financed from the state budget to the same extent like the public schools. Public budgets participate in reconstruction and maintenance of the buildings of the church. Contributions, which (along with other sources, of course) allow for operation of the social institutions of the church, come from the same source. The registered churches are entitled to teach religion at primary schools. Management of the school is obliged to enable the qualified persons, appointed by the given church, to enter and use the schools premises, light, heating, etc., at no cost to the church. The registered religious communities have a gratuitous access to the public mass media, at least according to a sort of common law. The clerics of the registered churches can participate in clerical service in the army. The persons, who are entitled to enter prisons and carry out clerical service there on their request, are selected from the registered religious communities. The first and primary consequence of registration is the simple fact that the religious community is recognised as a partner of the state in any negotiations and that it acquires legal personality, which allows for entering into various contractual relationships (employment, occupational activity, purchase, sale, lease, other financial operations in its own name, etc.).
The Church Department of the Ministry of Culture prepared a proposal for principles of a new Act, which is to regulate registration of religious communities, among others.1 From the point of view of equality, the definition of legal entities, which are still referred to under the disputable label of churches and religious communities in the proposal, remains to be open because it is obvious that Christian churches are also religious communities. The proposal also addressed the hitherto unclear issue of industrial relations of the clerics. In many respects (in connection with the finding of the Constitutional Court with the ref. no. S 211/1996), the Principle 18 wishes to divest them of the protection provided by the Labour Code. It is remarkable that the Constitutional Court does not regard this as breach of their civil rights. According to the proposal, the Act would also address the technical issue of registration of church legal entities.
The commentaries on the principles of the new Act on the position of religious societies state that the Act is to eliminate the present discrimination. And it is true that all registration applicants are in the same position according to the proposal. Membership of the World Council of Churches shall not be of any importance any more. Therefore, in this respect, the proposed Act really eliminates discrimination. In comparison with the present practice, the radical reduction of the required number of signatures from 10,000 to mere 300 seems as liberalisation. However, when we read the text of the proposal more carefully, we will find out, with great surprise and disappointment, that this facilitated registration has virtually no consequences. It actually only constitutes a legal personality, which is similar to that of citizens association (Principle 5). Everything that has ensued from registration (access to the funds, activity in the army and in prisons, establishment of church schools, etc.) would now only ensue from accreditation, which would become a sort of a higher degree of registration (Principle 6). However, the conditions for accreditation defined in the proposal are far stricter than the ones valid at present. According to the Principle 7, duration of registration (of the 1st degree) amounting to 10 years is required. The required number of adherents is to be increased to 20,000 in practice (speaking precisely, the number is increased to 0.2 % of the population of CR according to the most recent census). In addition to that, the first degree of registration requires fulfilment of new, qualitative conditions, not defined up until now. However, these conditions are described in such a way that they are legally irrelevant. For example, obstacles to registration are to include mental pressure (what is it and how can it be identified?) or such kind of treatment of the members of the community and the family members, which leads to their physical, mental or economic destruction. The term destruction is certainly a metaphor but it is not clear how something like this can be interpreted in legal practice. It is a question whether such a vague definition would have any legal force to prevent mental pressure or destruction if such phenomena were objectively identified in significant, well-established churches. The wording of these qualitative criteria shows the verbal style of anti-cult or contra-cult groups, who often C just for reasons given by their ideologies C refuse non-traditional religious movements.
Even here, in the spirit of legal continuity, the churches and other religious communities, which have been registered up until now, attain not only registration but also accreditation automatically, even if they have less than three hundred members and they attain this status probably even without being examined whether they meet the qualitative criteria. In this respect, discrimination against new religious communities persists. According to the proposed Act, the criteria for obtaining favourable conditions for normal public activity would be (taken as a whole) much stricter in practice than they are at present.
The fact that the criteria for registration are to be made markedly stricter is not discussed in public. Privately, this fact is acknowledged and reduction of influence of dangerous sects is mentioned as the reason. This cannot be admitted officially because the Czech legal system does not know the term sect. When an originally classified document on extremism was discussed by the government in 1995, JUDr. Pavel Zeman, the then director of the Church Department of the Ministry of Culture, responded with a written opinion dated August 30th 1995. In his written opinion, he protested against statements, which were worded as if Mormons, Advent Christians or Jehovahs Witnesses were in conflict with the legal system.2 The new head officials, who came after the elections in 1998 (the post of a director of a department is probably regarded as a political position), embarked C regardless of legal limitations C on a combat against sects with new vigour. It is praiseworthy if someone wants to protect the population against the destructive influences, against fundamentalism, fanaticism, authoritarianism and similar phenomena. However, there is the question whether these undoubtedly harmful phenomena and actions against them are not just the pretence for settling certain disputes of competitors. This raises the following question: is such a struggle for good morals of religious communities the task of a democratic state at all? The proposal itself (in the preface) admits that the proposed stricter rules are the result of discussions of commissions, on which representatives of churches sit together with the representatives of the state. If the principle of equality is still valid, the Act should ensure effectively that registration or accreditation of a religious community could be withdrawn regardless of its antiquity or size, if it behaves in a sectarian way in this sense because it is obvious that authoritarianism or fundamentalism does not occur only with new applicants, which apply for registration and subsequently for accreditation, but also with the ones, which are granted the registration and accreditation automatically.
Fortunately, the attempts to support the traditional, well-established religious scene and to restrict the rights of the new, small and different communities have not remained unnoticed. The media started to take notice of such attempts and the Czech Helsinki Committee has been monitoring them for several years. In its reports on the state of human rights, these attempts are mentioned in the analyses of Karel Salajka, a lawyer. On February 16th 2000, the CHC organised a seminar with participation of lawyers, religionists and representatives of the religious communities, whose rights are restricted in practice today and would be restricted even under the new Act. They intend to formulate comments on the bill on the basis of a professional discussion.
Hopefully, the public institutions shall remain neutral and shall not introduce a new strange union of throne and altar. The public bodies should not tie themselves with any of the religious organisations and should not possibly compensate their lack of credibility in this way. They should provide all religious organisations with the same room for their service to the public. It should be left up to the citizens to choose what they shall see their spiritual support in. Nobody should be privileged and nobody should be limited.
Czech Republic law proposition on religious registration
HRWF International Secretariat (11.10.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - There is a law proposition on registration of religions currently going through the legislative process in the Czech Republic. The current law on religious registration is generally understood (within political circles) to be discriminatory and this new proposal is meant to upgrade the existing law. However, the person in the Ministry of Culture responsible for drafting the law has drawn upon the Austrian law passed a few years ago as her "inspiration" and justification for this proposal.
The current law certainly is discriminatory as there is just one possibility to register as a religion and this requires having 10,000 members (or something similar) - so obviously all small religions have been excluded from registration.
The new law essentially provides for 2 levels of registration. The first category requires that a religious group must have 300 members. There are a number of conditions for registration, most of which are mechanical such as providing all the names and signatures of the 300 members, structure, central belief system etc. However, there is one condition allowing the government to deny registration that is arbitrary and open to
interpretation by courts and officials. This states that registration can be denied if the group "restricts individual freedom especially by utilizing psychological and physical pressure to create dependency leading to physical, psychological and economic damages of these persons or their family members, damaging their social relationships including restricting the psychological development of youth, restricting their educational rights or preventing adequate medical treatment" (rough translation).
Being registered as a religion and having a specific legal corporate structure from which to operate seems to be the main and only benefit of the first level of registration. The distance between this and the second level is not only completely unnecessary and disproportionate; it creates almost insurmountable barriers for small religions that they will never be able to overcome. The law proposal states that after having been registered as a first level group for 10 years and after having reached at least 10,000 members (and fulfilling some other conditions such as filing yearly finance reports etc.) the group would be eligible for the second level of registration. This level gives the group additional rights/privileges such as the right to perform marriage, certain kinds of funding, etc.
There are of course many more details but the above gives an adequate picture of what the law proposal covers. Were the arbitrary conditions for registration removed this law would at least provide unbiased conditions for religious groups to register - however it would still place unnecessary barriers between all small religions and the larger established ones. (NB there is an amendment which grants "traditional" churches the possibility to register at the "higher" level even if they do not have 10,000 members provided they can show that they have an international presence lasting for some hundred years or more.)
The status of the law is that it has now been adopted by the Parliament and sent to the Senate. By the end of October the Senate has to amend/vote on the law and it then returns back to the Parliament. The Senate can make any changes it wants, though the Parliament does not have to accept them.
Whilst this law proposal improves slightly on the existing law it still allows for biased and discriminatory conditions for registration. United Nations, Council of Europe and OSCE human rights standards all point out that measures discriminating against minority religions and favouring state or traditional religions are not in accordance with the prohibition of non-discrimination.
Whilst late in the day it would still be advantageous to have the law proposal reviewed by the OSCE Committee of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief in order to have the discriminatory and biased clauses edited out of the bill.
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