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RUSSIA
Public opinion divided over tuition of Orthodox culture
in state schools
Keston Institute (04.12.2002)/ HRWF Int. (04.12.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - According to her Constitution, Russia is a secular state. According to the 1992 law on education, state education is secular in nature. On 22 October, however, Education Minister Vladimir Filippov sent to Russian regional education departments a 30-page prototype of a new curriculum subject - "The Foundations of Orthodox Culture". He has insisted the subject is lawful since it was only being recommended to regional educational authorities, and that it would be an optional subject. However, the document does not specify that it is optional, nor that it is a purely "culturological" subject. Anatoli Pchelintsev of the Institute of Religion and Law pointed out to Keston that, according to Article 5 of the 1997 law on religion, religious instruction may be conducted within state schools at the request of pupils' parents or guardians and with the children's agreement. However, the law also stipulates that such tuition must be OUTSIDE the state curriculum, and by religious organisations themselves (rather than state-employed teachers).
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Fear of forcible deportation and torture
Amnesty International (04.12.2002)/ HRWF Int. (04.12.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Uzbek citizen Mannopzhon Rakhmatullayev, an imam (Islamic leader) at the mosque of the Russian town of Marx, is believed to be in danger of imminent, forcible deportation to Uzbekistan, where he risks being tortured or ill-treated in incommunicado detention. He is also at risk of being sentenced to a long term imprisonment following an unfair trial.
On 2 October, officers from the procuracy of Saratov region detained Mannapzhon Rakhmatullayev following a request by Uzbekistan to hand him over to the Uzbek authorities. They accused him of illegally leaving Uzbekistan when he travelled to Saudi Arabia in 1992. According to Mannapzhon Rakhmatullayev, his travel to Saudi Arabia for hadj (pilgrimage to Mecca), was legal as he had received a visa and passed the border controls at Tashkent airport.
On 16 October 2002, the Procurator General of the Russian Federation reportedly sanctioned Mannapzhon Rakhmatullayev's handover to the Uzbek authorities. However, his lawyer protested against the decision and lodged a complaint with the Saratov Regional Court, which was considered on 25 and 26 October. Although the judge ordered the release of Mannapzhon Rakhmatullayev, he was re-arrested when leaving the courtroom and taken to investigation-isolation prison No. 1 in Saratov, where he is currently believed to be held. His lawyer was told that the reason for the new arrest was another request by the Uzbek authorities to hand him over. Uzbekistan is now accusing him of "religious extremism" on charges of "attempting to overthrow the constitutional order of Uzbekistan" and "possession of firearms".
Mannapzhon Rakhmatullayev's lawyer told Amnesty International: "The accusations are ridiculous. He is clearly not guilty of these accusations; it is a political case."
The General Procurator of the Russian Federation is believed to make a decision very soon concerning Mannopzhon Rakhmatullayev's deportation. Vitaly Ponomarev from the Moscow-based human rights group Memorial told Amnesty International: "We know of other cases where people were deported without giving them the possibility to appeal the decision of the procuracy, although this is granted by law." It is therefore important that international pressure is brought immediately.
Background information
Amnesty International has documented many cases of persons that were forcibly deported to Uzbekistan upon request of the Uzbek authorities and were subsequently tortured or sentenced to death and executed. The organization believes that the forcible return of Mannapzhon Rakhmatullayev to Uzbekistan by the Russian authorities would be contrary to the Russian Federation's obligations under international law. In particular, Russia's obligation under Article 3 of the United Nation Convention against Torture, prohibits the return of a person to a country or territory where they may face serious human rights violations. It also violates the norms enshrined in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Both were ratified by the Russian parliament in May 1998 as part of Russia's obligations on entering the Council of Europe.
Uzbekistan has detained and imprisoned thousands of people on accusations of "religious extremism". The detainees and prisoners have included members and presumed members of independent Islamic congregations, members of banned Islamist and secular opposition parties and movements, and their relatives. Amnesty International has received persistent allegations that many of those arrested were tortured by police to extract 'confessions', and that many in fact had weapons and narcotics planted on them in order to fabricate cases. Heavy sentences, including death sentences, were imposed after trials which were conducted in circumstances giving serious cause for concern. In the majority of cases known to Amnesty International, those detained were denied prompt access to a lawyer of their choice, to their families and to medical assistance.
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Russian Orthodox Church in favor of religion classes in schools
Interfax (20.11.2002) - / HRWF Int (20.11.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - The Russian Orthodox Church welcomes the Education Ministry's plans to start Orthodox culture classes in Russia's secondary schools.
"This is a huge step aimed at tackling the legacy of state atheism, thus giving children who believe in God a chance to feel like they are at home at school, rather than in a hostile environment," Father Vsevolod Chaplin, deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchy's public relations department, told Interfax.
He noted that guidelines need to be developed in order to make the teaching of the Orthodox culture as voluntary as possible and to put a system in place so as to enable those of other faiths to study their own religious culture, be it Islam, Judaism or Buddhism.
The priest stressed that curricula of this type exist worldwide successfully. In almost all European countries, secular schools have religious classes, including as an obligatory subject, and are funded by the government "This is the norm, and what we have here is a deviation from the norm," he said.
How About Teaching Tolerance?
Moscow Times (19.11.2002) / HRWF Int (20.11.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - The Education Ministry's plan to allow the teaching of a course called Orthodox Culture in state schools raises many questions.
As the ministry's description of the course makes clear, this is not a secular course in religion. It is a course intended to immerse children, beginning in the first grade, in the Orthodox worldview. The course is to be taught by regular teachers -- has anyone thought about how they are to be trained? -- and priests will be allowed in the classroom "as consultants."
The church also sees the course as giving moral guidance to Russia's children. In an address to a conference on education last month, Patriarch Alexy II said schools should give children not only knowledge but "an upbringing."
How will parents feel about the Russian Orthodox Church taking on this role in their children's lives? Many will likely welcome it, but what about those who do not?
The ministry stresses that the course is optional, but this does not mean that a child will have the option of taking Orthodox Culture or, say, a course in art history or Spanish language offered in the same time slot.
It means each school will have the option of including the religious course in its curriculum. What is not clear is how the decision is to be made at each school.
There is also no clear provision for children who choose not to attend. What about the 7-year-old whose parents are Jewish or atheist or Catholic or Muslim or just feel that religious beliefs should be taught at home or in the family's chosen church? Where is this child supposed to go when his classmates gather for Orthodox Culture? The church opposed suggestions that the course be offered after school, arguing that children would not take it seriously enough. But if the course is optional, that is where it belongs, or better yet in neighborhood parishes on Sunday morning. Children who do not want to take the course should not be ostracized.
The Education Ministry's new course seems to assume that to be Russian means to be Orthodox Christian. Yet as President Vladimir Putin reminded us just last week, during his memorable offer to arrange a circumcision for a French journalist who questioned the military's actions in Chechnya, Russia is a multi-confessional country.
But it is not a country that embraces its many confessions. Anti-Muslim feelings are growing as the war in Chechnya seethes and skinhead attacks on non-Russians are on the rise. Synagogues and Jewish cemeteries have been defaced.
Instead of a course in Orthodox Culture, isn't a course in ethnic and religious tolerance what Russia's children really need?
Schools to teach Orthodox culture
by Andrei Zolotov
Moscow Times (18.11.2002) / HRWF Int (19.11.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - With the apparent blessing of the Kremlin, the Education Ministry has defied resistance even from within its own ranks and taken a major step toward introducing an Orthodox Christian component into the public school system.
Education Minister Vladimir Filippov last week released a 30-page description of an optional course called "Orthodox Culture," which can be taught in public schools as a part of the basic curriculum if regional education officials or a school's principal decides to do so.
Filippov said he was submitting the course, developed by Orthodox educators, only for "consideration." But one of the authors said it gives a green light to those who have balked at introducing such a course and attempts to provide a framework for the wide variety of courses already taught in about 60 of Russia's 89 constituent regions.
"It means the ministry does not mind if such courses are introduced," said Hierodeacon Kiprian Yashchenko, dean of the pedagogical department at St. Tikhon Orthodox Theological Institute and one of the authors of the course. "You know our bureaucrats -- they use their offices according to their worldview. Most of them are atheists and they say it is impossible because the school is separate from the church. Yes, we are separate from the state, but we can cooperate, can't we?"
Yashchenko, who has a doctorate in pedagogical science, said he led the group of educators who compiled the program from what is already being tested in the Noginsk district of the Moscow region, Smolensk, Kursk, Belgorod and other regions of Russia. Although the intention is to immerse children in the Orthodox worldview, the course is taught by regular teachers and does not include any church ritual. "Priests may be consultants," he said.
The 30-page document is a vast catalogue of themes, including Biblical subjects, Orthodox tradition, asceticism, liturgy, literature and art. By the end of the course, a student could be asked to write a paper on one of 64 subjects, such as "Faith and Science," "Moscow as the Third Rome" or "Orthodox Understanding of Freedom."
The ministry says the course, which it recommends teaching once a week in primary school and twice a week in secondary school, is to be part of the main curriculum but with attendance to be voluntary.
"Russia is a multinational country, and even within one subject of the federation there are places where there are practically no Orthodox," Interfax quoted Filippov as saying in Novosibirsk. On the other hand, he said, Orthodox culture has existed in Russia for more than a thousand years and there is an "objective need" to learn it in school.
The program does not spell out how the decision to teach the course is to be made, whether a certain percentage of parents, for instance, has to request the course. And if the course is taught, there is as yet no provision for children who choose not to attend.
Religious education in public schools is a highly sensitive and controversial subject anywhere in the world and especially in Russia, where interpretations of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state vary greatly, and a system of church-state relations is being painfully developed after decades of Soviet atheism.
The program appears to have bypassed the Education Ministry apparatus, which Orthodox Church officials have described as among the most reluctant to cooperate with the church.
"We have not produced, ordered, reviewed or issued any such program! We have a [secular] religion studies program, but no 'Orthodox Culture!'" Tamara Tyulyaeva, an official with the Educational Ministry's department of general education, said angrily in a telephone interview Thursday. "There were such attempts, but we have a simple answer: We are a secular school system and will never introduce any confessional program -- neither Moslem, nor Jewish, nor our dear Orthodox. Otherwise we'll get such a mess!"
Opponents of religious education in public schools -- who at various stages included State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov, Deputy Speaker Irina Khakamada and the Yabloko party -- say it will divide people and sow xenophobia.
"This document smacks of the Middle Ages and obscurantism," government spokesman Alexei Volin was quoted in Friday's Gazeta as saying. "If the Education Ministry considers it necessary to introduce studies in religion, the course should include the basics of all religious world views and the history of atheism in addition."
The Orthodox Church has argued that secular religion classes do not offer students a choice of worldview, because religion is taught from a nonreligious perspective. An Orthodox class, however, would add a moral dimension otherwise missing in the post-Soviet school system and would help reverse the proliferation of crime, drug-addiction and alcoholism, the church said.
"The moral disorientation of many young people, their loss of a meaning in life, becomes the soil for various vices and threatens Russia's future," Patriarch Alexy II wrote in an address to a state-church conference on education in October. "That is why all of us -- religious leaders, [state] authorities and society -- have to realize that school should give not only a sum of knowledge, but also an upbringing."
The conference, which took place Oct. 10-11, appears to have played a pivotal role in the Education Ministry's paper, which is dated Oct. 22. In addition to Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist leaders, the conference was attended by presidential envoys Georgy Poltavchenko and Sergei Kiriyenko, State Duma members and Educational Ministry officials.
Izvestia quoted Poltavchenko -- the presidential envoy to the Central Federal District who is a practicing Orthodox Christian -- as saying at the conference that it is time for an "Orthodox Culture" course across Russia. Kiriyenko, from the Volga Federal District, also named education as one of the fields where the state should cooperate with "traditional" religions. With most post-Soviet school programs still permeated with atheism, a religious course would offer students an alternative, he said.
A former employee of the Moscow Patriarchate's department of education and catechism, who did not want to be named, said the decision was likely made on the sidelines of that conference. He also said the government's program to help Muslim education in Russia, aimed at preventing Russian Muslims from traveling to the Arab world's often radical schools, played a role in the Moscow Patriarchate's lobbying efforts.
That perhaps explains why official Muslim leaders did not protest the Education Ministry's decision. "We are not against our Orthodox brothers finding out as much as possible about their culture," said Mufti Ravil Gainutdin, chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia. He stressed, however, that the voluntary aspect is crucial and complained that Russia's Muslims and other religious groups are unable to reach all schools because they "suffered even more than the Orthodox Church during the Soviet period," Interfax reported.
Nafigulla Ashirov, the Mufti of Siberia who is seen as a more radical Muslim leader, strongly opposed the Orthodoxy course. "Russia is living through one of the most complicated moments in its history, and raising this issue when the Chechnya wound is bleeding in the south of Russia, when skinheads are walking the streets of Moscow, is a direct violation of the Constitution," Ashirov said in a telephone interview Friday.
Human rights activists are among the fiercest opponents of the program. The For Human Rights group led by Lev Ponomaryov complained to the Prosecutor General's Office earlier this year about a textbook titled "The Basics of Orthodox Culture" by Alla Borodina, but the complaint was thrown out.
"The textbook's authors help the growth of xenophobia and nationalism in our society," Interfax quoted Ponomaryov as saying. "This textbook, which is already used in state schools, imposes the views of one confession on schoolchildren and thus violates the principle of a secular state."
Yashchenko said the second edition of Borodina's textbook will be corrected to take into account human rights activists' complaints.
"We in the Church are first and foremost against violating the will of children and their parents," he said by telephone Friday. "If it turns into the Divine Law [the doctrinal course taught in tsarist Russia], if we don't take into account that most children are not church-goers, if it does not create a field for thinking, then we will definitely kill the cause. Then it will turn out like before the Revolution, when everybody went to the Divine Law, knew the prayers and holidays, but lived differently."
The Education Ministry's program can be found at www.ed.gov.ru/sch-edu/prkult/let.html
Moscow Church official assails state approach to school programs
Interfax (18.11.2002) / HRWF Int (19.11.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - Metropolitan Sergiy of Solnechnogorsk, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate's executive office, has criticized what he called the "atheist" approach of Russian officials to school programs.
Deputy head of the Russian government office Alexei Volin said last week that in Russia, which is a multi-confessional and multiethnic state, the teaching of the fundamental principles of the Orthodox culture is dangerous. "Russia is a secular state. Religions must not be taught at Russian state schools. This reminds me of obscurantism in the Dark Middle Ages," Volin said.
The Russian Orthodox Church has reacted angrily to this statement. "The rejection of Orthodox culture as a subject is rooted in the long- time religious atheism of individual government officials," Metropolitan Sergiy told journalists in Moscow on Monday.
He expressed regret that, as before, "everything in our society, including higher education, is fermented with atheism."
Meanwhile, if the state is separated from the church in this country, atheism must also be separated from the state," he said, noting that he meant the teaching of Orthodox culture, not the Orthodox religion.
"It would be a political mistake to exclude Orthodox culture from our school programs. All educated people must know the principles of Orthodox culture," he said.
He also noted that "in places populated by representatives of other religions, the essentials of Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist and other cultures could be taught." "This would enrich our peoples and help consolidate our society," Metropolitan Sergiy said.
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The Law of God, First Reading
Secular authorities are ready to reintroduce religion to schools
Cyril Vassilienko
Vremia Novoste? (11.10.2002)/ HRWF Int. (21.10.2002) Email info@hrwf.net -Website: htpp://www.hrwf.net C Summary : At a forum of religious leaders and plenipotentiary representatives of the President it was announced yesterday that school curricula will soon include religious education classes. This is the first time that the Ministry of Education has made an exception to the strict rule regarding separation of Church and State. Lessons in Orthodox Culture will encompass the history and foundations of the traditional faith. A second innovation is that the subject is to be taught directly by priests who will have their theology diplomas recognised by the government. The authorities also intend to include Islamic and Buddhist faiths, despite certain inequalities between these latters and orthodoxy.
The Russian government intends to introduce religious education in schools. This was the meaning of the statement made yesterday by three plenipotentiary representatives of the president in the federal districts during a meeting with leaders of the Russian traditional faiths. It is not possible to construct a law-abiding society solely by organisation or by force, stated the plenipotentiary representative of the central federal district, Gorgui Poltavtchenko. And the reasons for the demographic crisis are not only to be found in economic problems, but also relate to morality. It is necessary to spiritually reinforce the moral foundations of society, and to achieve that without returning to Russian traditions is unrealistic. Sergue? Kirienko, plenipotentiary representative of Privolzh agreed with his colleague, remarking that the former leaders of the country were indifferent towards the conception of the world of citizens, but that nowadays the State is no longer the conception of the world that forms the basis of society. According to his colleague from the south district, Viktor Kazantsev, without religious education, the authorities will never manage to inculcate within Russians the meaning of patriotism lost during the perestro?ka.
Up until now, the Russian Orthodox Church has never been able to obtain such a free rein from the authorities, despite repeated requests from Patriarch Alexis II, and one of the highest authorities in the Church, the Metropolitan Cyril of Smolensk and Kaliningrad that the children not be prevented from coming (to them). The Ministry of Education has been categorically opposed to the introduction of religious disciplines in non-religious schools. Government officials have only recently agreed to the teaching of religious doctrine within classes on world cultural history. However, in principle, regular history and literature teachers would explain the eternal truths to students.
Yesterday plans were revealed to incorporate a new Orthodox Culture course into school syllabuses, which would cover the history and foundations of the traditional faith. Different regions would decide how many hours to devote to its teaching. The deputy Minister of Education, Lonid Grebniev, assured the plenipotentiary representatives as well as the regional authorities, that his department has practically finished preparing his recommendations on the subject of this programme. The main change resides in the fact that schools are being advised to invite priests as instructors. The state controlled standard for the subject of theology will be reinforced to enable them to legally work in secondary educational establishments. Therefore, according to Mr Grebniev, diplomas issued by religious colleges will be equivalent to a state diploma. In addition, the Minister promised to raise the question of whether theological diplomas gained previously would be recognised by the state.
The representatives of the president and spiritual leaders restated that their initiative would in no case demolish the postulates of the separation of Church and State. The Metropolitan Cyril offered once for all time to agree on the terms and to return to pre-revolutionary interpretations. Secularism is the absence of clerical intervention in politics, the Metropolitan stated, and a non-religious secular school is one which is freed from subordination to clerical power. This is the sum of it, and there is no other interpretation.
The senior officials have promised to open out the development of spiritual education at school not only to the Orthodox church, but also to representatives of other religions. In regions where the majority of the population is not Orthodox, the introduction of similar courses in Islamic and Buddhist culture has been suggested. However, in practice, the representatives of these faiths find that dialogue with educational governing bodies is much more difficult. Speaking at the forum, the Mufti Ravile Gaillenoutdine explained that there were not always equal rights for Muslims and Christians. The Ministry of Education recently refused to grant a licence for the teaching of theology at the Russian Islamic University, whereas at the same time it gave a licence and accreditation to the Saint Tikhonov Theological Institute he stated. The plenipotentiary representatives agreed to examine this question. Even the Metropolitan Cyril passively supported them, asking and why dont orthodox schoolchildren learn the fundamentals of Islamic doctrine? Surely that is the route towards tolerance.
Translation: HRWF UK Bureau
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Five more U.S. Protestants denied entry
Keston News Service (04.10.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (04.10.2002) - Website htp://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - Five U.S. Protestant church workers based in the city of Kostroma were denied entry visas to Russia this summer in accordance with the same legal provision cited against thebanished Irkutsk-based Catholic Bishop Jerzy Mazur - "in the interests of ensuring state security". "We cannot understand the motivation," one of the five, Jack Wollman told Keston News Service. "We had done everything legally and above board." Meanwhile, Leo Martensson, a Swedish missionary who was also expelled from Russia, has so far failed to have the deportation order overturned in the courts.
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Previously unpublicised case brings Cathotic persona non grata to seven
Keston News Service (17.09.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (19.09.2002) - Website htp://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - Keston News Service has recently learnt that a French Catholic monk, Brother Bruno Maziolek, was denied an entry visa to Russia in December last year, bringing the number of foreign Catholic clergy known to have been barred from the country to seven. Br Bruno, who had run a social ministry not far from the town of Pereslavl-Zalessky since 1991, was informed by the Russian security services in March that he was deemed a danger to the Russian Federation. A Catholic source in Moscow maintained that a local Orthodox priest, Fr Oleg Razumov, was behind the expulsion; a charge which Fr Razumov denies.
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Russia Reported
ly Has a Blacklist of Catholic Priests
Bishop Werth of Novosibirsk Says More Expulsions Planned
Zenit.org (15.09.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (17.09.2002) - Website htp://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - Russia has compiled a blacklist of Catholic priests it intends to expel in the near future, according to the Catholic bishop of western Siberia.
Commenting on the "new wave of persecution" against the Catholic Church in the federation, Bishop Joseph Werth of Novosibirsk made this disclosure during a series of conferences and meetings held last week in Switzerland. He was invited there by the group Aid to the Church in Need. Bishop Werth, whose comments were published by the Vidimus Dominum news service, said the police blacklist includes about a dozen names of foreign Catholic priests who will soon be expelled.
To date, Bishop Jerzy Mazur of St. Joseph in Irkutsk, eastern Siberia, as well as four priests of Italian, Polish and Slovak nationality, have been expelled.
Bishop Werth said that Russia needs a "spiritual rebirth, because people want to experience a real inner conviction." Only 1% of Russian Orthodox go to church.
According to the bishop, the hostility against the Catholic community is supported by representatives of the Orthodox hierarchy, but they do not have much following among the people.
"At the popular level, the faithful don't hate the Catholic minority," Bishop Werth said. "Last April, about 2,000 Orthodox organized anti-Catholic demonstrations in a dozen cities. Despite calls from Orthodox parishes, people did not come out en masse to the streets to protest against the Catholic presence."
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Expulsion of Catholic Priests from Russia escalates
Father Edvard Maszkiewicz is latest victim
Zenit.org (12.09.2002)/HRWF International Secretariat (13.09.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net While the Vatican was protesting the latest expulsion of a Catholic priest from Russia, authorities there were expelling yet another one.
Following the expulsion over six months of a Catholic bishop and other priests, sources of the Church in Russia reported that Father Edvard Maszkiewicz, a Polish Salesian, was impeded Tuesday from returning to his parish.
Father Maszkiewicz, a parish priest in Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia, was detained for several hours by the police on the border with Byelorussia, when he was returning by car from Warsaw.
A police commander told him that "his church had been closed, his parish removed and, therefore, he no longer needed to be a priest in Rostov-on-Don." His visa was canceled, Catholic sources reported.
Father Maszkiewicz, 45, had been living in Russia for over 10 years. He succeeded in building a church in that city. On Monday morning, unknown individuals fired on the church.
Earlier on Tuesday, Father Jaroslaw Wisniewski, another Polish priest, was deported to Japan from the Khabarovsk airport, where he had landed the previous day.
Authorities gave no explanations for the expulsion, the official agency Itar-Tass stated.
The Vatican protested against the expulsion of Father Wisniewski, alluding to the possibility of a persecution against the Catholic Church in Russia.
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Swedish Protestant is latest deportee
Keston News Service (12.09.2002)/HRWF International Secretariat (13.09.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - A Swedish Protestant is the latest in a growing number of religious deportees from Russia, as the authorities step up their campaign against foreign religious workers. The deportation of Leo Martensson, who had worked in Russia as a missionary for nine years, was ordered on 10 September and his visa was cancelled. 'This was an illegal decision - there is no basis for it,' Martensson's lawyer Aleksandr Antipyonok told Keston News Service. In addition to being deported, Martensson was fined 500 roubles. His wife and daughter are still in Russia.
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Tension Rises Over New Faiths
by Sergei Blagov
IPS (30.08.2002) / HRWF International Secretariat (04.09.2002) Email info@hrwf.net Website http://www.hrwf.net - Religious affiliations are being kept out of the next census in Russia in the face of growing tension between the traditional church and newer denominations.
The State should not dictate "how to behave, whom to elect and how to unite," Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday. The government should seek only to help religious communities and to create better conditions for them, President Putin told the official RIA news agency.
The new census is due in October.
There are about 21,000 traditional religious groups registered in Russia, including 11,000 Orthodox groups, 4,700 Protestant and 3,000 Muslim groups. Most others are smaller denominations.
Recent studies show that a little more than half of Russia's 146 million people consider themselves Russian Orthodox, though few attend church services regularly.
The new religions have attracted fewer than 300,000 members but they have become controversial. The Russian Orthodox Church has been critical of these new groups and has even aimed criticism at mainstream Protestants and Roman Catholics.
The Russian Orthodox Church protests against what it sees as "foreign evangelisation". Orthodox clergymen have accused the Catholic Church of aggressively recruiting believers from their faith. The Orthodox leaders have objected strongly to the Pope's visits to former Soviet states and rejected a proposed visit to Russia.
The Russian Orthodox Church said in a recent report that Catholic clergy were giving religious instruction to "financially dependent" children in orphanages and shelters. It accused the Vatican of treating the Orthodox Church like a rival company in a marketplace. Catholic leaders called the accusations groundless.
The Russian Orthodox Church, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism were recognized by a law passed in 1997 as "traditional religions". Non-traditional religious groups unable to prove their existence in the country for more than 15 years were to be registered with the government or disbanded. About 9,000 of these new religious groups registered, but about 8,000 have not. Some say they are finding it difficult to register because local government officials are making the process difficult and time consuming.
Many members of "non-traditional" denominations still face religious discrimination, and remain understandably reluctant to reveal their beliefs, Anatoly Pchelintsev, head of the Moscow-based Institute of Religious and Legal Affairs told IPS.
The "traditional religions" enjoy more government support. Cabinet minister Vladimir Zorin announced in May that the government had initiated amendments to grant more tax benefits to traditional religious communities. The proposed amendments have not yet become law.
Earlier this year Russian authorities barred Jerzy Mazur, a Catholic bishop of Polish nationality in eastern Siberia, and Stefano Caprio, an Italian Catholic theology teacher from entering Russia. No explanations were g iven, despite Pope John Paul II's request to Putin.
Russian clergymen see foreign evangelisation as a part of expansionist policies by overseas denominations. But Sergei Ryakhovsky who heads the Russian Union of Christians of the Evangelical Faith, says the government is trying to help the Russian Orthodox Church in order to limit competition to it.
The visas of several foreigners who are not of the Orthodox faith have been revoked in recent months. In a recent case in June, authorities cancelled the visa of Alexei Ledyayev, founder of the New Generation Church based in Riga in Latvia. Others have had their visa requests denied.
But many of these differences boil down to differences of opinion. Boris Falikov, professor of religious studies at the Moscow University of Humanities says it is difficult to draw the line between "aggressive evangelizing" and legitimate missionary activity.
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Catholic bishop:
Russian authorities deny visa to third priest
Putin fails to explain
by Sarah Karush
AP (28.08.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (04.09.2002) E-mail info@hrwf.net Website http://www.hrwf.net - A third Catholic priest has been forced to leave Russia after authorities refused to issue him a new visa, the head of the Catholic Church in Russia said Wednesday.
Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz also said that President Vladimir Putin failed to explain the reasons behind the expulsions in his reply to a letter from Pope John Paul II. The pope had requested that Putin help one of the barred clergyman, a bishop, return to his diocese in Siberia.
Bishop Jerzy Mazur was turned back at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport in April when he returned from a visit to his native Poland. The incident came two weeks after the Rev. Stefano Caprio, an Italian who had served for more than a decade in Russia, had his visa revoked.
Kondrusiewicz told The Associated Press that a third priest, the Rev. Stanislav Krajniak, was recently refused a new visa. Krajniak, a Slovak citizen who worked in the city of Yaroslavl, about 240 kilometers ( 150 miles) northeast of Moscow, left the country before his visa expired on Tuesday, Kondrusiewicz said.
The visa denials began amid tense relations between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church, which has long criticized the Catholic presence in Russia, accusing the Vatican of poaching converts. Relations worsened in February when the Catholic Church converted its four "apostolic administrations" in Russia to full-fledged dioceses.
"The Orthodox Church doesn't give visas, so we can't say the Orthodox Church took away the visas," Kondrusiewicz said. "But it is such a coincidence that precisely after Feb. 11 (when the dioceses were established) ... this whole campaign began."
"This is a campaign against the Catholic Church," he added.
In May, the pope wrote to Putin asking that he intervene in the Mazur case and help the bishop return to his diocese, the Vatican said. The Vatican's foreign minister, Monsignor Jean Luis Tauran, complained in June that the Vatican had received no response from Putin.
Kondrusiewicz said Wednesday that Putin replied about a month ago.
"The answer did not satisfy us," and Putin did not explain the visa refusals, Kondrusiewicz said. He declined to give further details.
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Church, state, and the proselytism controversy in Russia
[The following column, by Geraldine Fagan and Lawrence Uzzell of Keston News Service, appeared originally in the Moscow Times.]
Keston/CWNews.com (30.07.2002)/HRWF International Secretariat (31.07.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - President Vladimir Putin's Russia treats certain activities as crimes even though there is no formal law forbidding them: for example, news stories about atrocities in Chechnya. Now the Putin government is taking steps to suppress another activity on which the written laws of the Russian Federation are silent: the religious offense of "proselytism."
The concept of proselytism is a specifically Christian one-- on which Christians do not even agree among themselves. Some Christian denominations, such as the Anglicans, specifically renounce the practice of actively seeking converts from other Christian bodies. Others, such as some of the evangelical Protestants of the American "Bible belt," work actively to expand at the expense of the Roman Catholics in Latin America or of the Orthodox Church in Russia. But even those Western denominations that consider proselytism a violation of ecumenical etiquette do not expect the secular state to enforce that etiquette-- any more than they would expect the state to ban the eating of meat on Fridays.
The last few months have seen an increasingly intense campaign by the Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow against the alleged proselytism of Roman Catholic clergy in Russia. This same period has seen a new crackdown by Russia's secular authorities against the Catholics, most dramatically in the expulsion of Bishop Jerzy Mazur. The connection between these two trends remains somewhat mysterious; neither Putin's Kremlin nor Patriarch Alexei II's church bureaucrats encourage the free flow of information. In effect, a certain "division of labor" has emerged, with secular officials taking concrete measures against Roman Catholics and the Moscow Patriarchate providing the propaganda campaign to justify those measures.
This division of labor nicely fits Putin's political interests: He can satisfy Russia's domestic xenophobes while still presenting a more or less civilized face to world opinion. He and his top appointees have failed to make any public statement justifying Bishop Mazur's expulsion, but they have also failed to reverse it.
Bishop Mazur is still languishing in Warsaw, three months after officials at Sheremetyevo Airport barred him from returning to Russia. The Kremlin seems to have calculated that the new alliance against terrorism gives it more leeway to take domestic measures against religious minorities of all kinds, not just Muslims. In May, Pope John Paul II weighed in personally with a letter to Putin requesting a full explanation for Bishop Mazur's expulsion. When the Keston News Service recently visited Rome, we were told that the Vatican had yet to receive a reply.
Meanwhile, the Moscow Patriarchate has launched a new media campaign against the Roman Catholics, releasing detailed accounts of specific episodes in which the Catholics have allegedly engaged in proselytism in Russia. (For example, the Catholics are said to have used some of their orphanages unfairly to win converts among Orthodox children.) The Catholics have responded with detailed denials, and we are now seeing a full-scale war of words between the two confessions.
Depressing though it may appear, this latter development actually should be seen as a step in the right direction. For the first time the Moscow Patriarchate has implicitly accepted that its sweeping accusations against the Roman Catholics should be substantiated by concrete facts, not just generalized polemics. Some of the accusations may even turn out to be true: after all, there are hundreds of Catholic priests and nuns in Russia, and it is unlikely that all of them have behaved responsibly all the time.
Like the Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholics have various factions within their own ranks. Some Catholics, such as Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz in Moscow, believe that the lead in evangelizing the Russians properly belongs to the Orthodox Church, and that Catholics should not try to win converts from among those Russians who are already practicing Orthodox Christians. Others are just as eager as Bible-belt Protestants to pursue "the conversion of Russia."
Unlike the Protestant denominations, however, the Roman Catholic Church is a centralized, hierarchical structure. The Moscow Patriarchate has every moral right to ask that the Vatican enforce among its own faithful the Pope's stated view that the Orthodox Church is one of the "two lungs" of historic Christianity.
On the other hand, the Orthodox side has a responsibility to be more precise in using the emotion-laden term proselytism. The Moscow Patriarchate has even applied that label to Protestant missionaries working in Central Asia to evangelize Uzbeks and others who were raised as atheists and whose ancestors were Muslims. In effect, the Patriarchate is saying that it would be better for the Uzbeks to remain non-Christians than to become Protestants-- a position that makes no sense from the standpoint of the Orthodox Church's own theology.
Unfortunately, theology seems to play only a minor role here: The Patriarchate seems unwilling to tolerate efforts to convert anyone in the former Soviet Union by any religious body that did not collaborate with the Soviet regime.
Unlike the Mormons or Hare Krishnas, Roman Catholicism is not a novelty in Russia. Before the Bolshevik takeover there were hundreds of Catholic parishes within what is now the Russian Federation, serving local pockets of ethnic Poles and other traditionally Catholic minorities in places as far east as Vladivostok. The Soviet regime liquidated nearly all those parishes; Archbishop Kondrusiewicz and his clergy are now working to revive them. If the Moscow Patriarchate so chooses it has every right to preach against this Catholic revival-- but the secular authorities have no right whatsoever to prevent it.
Lawrence Uzzell is head and Geraldine Fagan is Moscow correspondent for the Keston Institute (www.keston.org), an independent research center based in Oxford, England. They contributed this comment to The Moscow Times (www.themoscowtimes.com).
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Two Russian women jailed for part in violent sect
Reuters (24.07.2002)/HRWF International Secretariat (25.07.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - A Moscow court jailed two young women, members of a group promising to bring ''happiness through suffering,'' for between six and eight years on Wednesday for their part in the organisation's violent activities.
Russian news agencies reported that the court found the two guilty of organising an illegal armed group and the illegal imprisonment and systematic torture of five youngsters.
Russian television pictures showed boys in the courtroom displaying their severely beaten buttocks.
RTR state television said the group PORTOS -- the Poeticised Association for the Development of a Theory of Public Happiness -- had promised a good education to children from poor families.
The children were then made to work 16 hours a day and beaten for any transgressions.
''I thought the organisation would help me get into higher education,'' Dmitry Lukyanov told RTR.
Irina Derguzova was sentenced to eight years in jail and Tatyana Lomakin to six. The women's lawyers said they intended to appeal the verdict in the Supreme Court.
The two young women were shown standing in a cage in the courtroom, as is common in Russian courts.
News reports said that during an investigation into the group's activities, police found more than 10 air guns and hunting rifles on property used by PORTOS.
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Muslim women in Russia sue after being barred from wearing headscarves in ID photos
AP (19.07.2002)/HRWF International Secretariat (23.07.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - Three Muslim women went to court in Russia's Tatarstan region Friday to argue that they must not be forced to take off their headscarves for official identification photographs, a news agency reported.
A court in the regional capital Kazan heard opening arguments from the plaintiffs and Interior Ministry officials and set the next hearing for Aug. 2, Interfax said.
A legal expert for a group that unites Muslims in western Russia, Anver Galyamov, said he believed the case was the first of its kind in the nation. Russia is predominantly Orthodox Christian but Muslims form the second-largest religious group.
In Tatarstan a large portion of the population is Muslim, and an increasing number of ethnic Tatars have begun practicing Islam again in the decade since the collapse of the officially atheist Soviet Union.
The plaintiffs, three women from the city of Nizhnekamsk, filed suit after the Interior Ministry's passport and visa service barred them from wearing head coverings in ID photographs. The main form of identification in Russia is a document called an internal passport that is required for all adult citizens.
The plaintiffs cited the Quran, the Muslim holy book. Islam calls on women to be modestly dressed, and Islamic law in most Muslim societies requires women to cover their heads in public.
The women say forcing them to be photographed without headscarves violates their rights and dignity, Interfax reported. They said if a Muslim woman is without a head covering in her passport photo, any official can ask her to take off her scarf for ID purposes, which would shame her.
In Moscow, a top Muslim leader said he supports the women's request to cover their heads for the photographs.
"It's a matter of conscience for every Muslim woman and her natural right," Interfax quoted Talgat Tadzhuddin, Russia's senior mufti, as saying.
"If there is freedom of conscience in this country, it should be implemented in life," he said.
A representative of Tatarstan's passport and visa service, Alexei Nikolayev, told the court in Kazan that a headscarf makes identification difficult because it covers the ears, neck and hair and hides the shape of the face, Interfax reported.
According to Interfax, the Russian Interior Ministry's passport and visa service ruled in 1998 that head coverings could be worn for identification photographs in some exceptional circumstances, but revoked that ruling last month.
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Moscow court upholds ruling allowing Church of Scientology to continue operating
World Religion News Service (18.07.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (22.07.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - The Church of Scientology's Russian branch won a legal victory Thursday when the Moscow City Court upheld a lower court's ruling allowing the group to continue operating in Russia.
Authorities in the Justice Ministry had sought to shut the group down based on a widely criticized 1997 religion law that requires all religious groups to register with Russian authorities.
A Moscow district court dismissed the ministry's request in May, arguing that liquidating a religious organization that doesn't pose a threat to public order is a violation of freedom of religion.
Prosecutors appealed, but the Moscow City Court upheld the lower court's decision Thursday, Galina Krylova, lawyer for the Church of Scientology, said on Echo of Moscow radio.
Several religious groups, particularly foreign-based ones, have met with legal troubles since the passage of the 1997 law and say it limits religious freedoms Russia that were won with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The law was championed by the dominant Russian Orthodox Church.
The Church of Scientology said it has tried to register eight times since 1998, but was either ignored or met with refusals. In Russia, the church has 200,000 members and 73 centers.
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Diverse opposition to measures outlawing religious extremism
Keston News Service (17.07.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (18.07.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - Approved by the upper house of the Russian parliament on 10 July and currently awaiting the signature of President Vladimir Putin, "On Counteracting Extremist Activity" is provoking vehement, albeit low-level, criticism from diverse quarters.
At a round table in Moscow on 8 July, some 20 representatives of a variety of public spheres as remote from one another as the Orthodox "patriotic" movement and the radical underground press declared the law to be "anti-democratic and anti-constitutional." Particular concern has been expressed about the definition of extremist activity as "the propaganda of exclusivity, superiority or inferiority of citizens on account of their attitude towards religion."
"Any religious organisation considers its doctrine to be the true one," one lawyer told Keston News Service, "and a state official might find incitement to religious discord in that."
Source: http://www.keston.org/
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Mixed fortunes for Mari-Els Protestants
Keston News Service (16.07.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (15.07.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - The evangelical Ioshkar-Ola Christian Centre in the capital of the Mari-El republic (approximately 500 miles or 800 kilometres east of Moscow) successfully re-registered in 1997 and owns its own meeting-place. Yet "we don't feel freedom of conscience here," the church's pastor told Keston News Service.
He said that the Mari-El authorities had prevented the church from holding public evangelisation events in 2001. He believed the obstructions were due to both his own background as an army officer and to that of the church, which was founded by US missionaries and maintains foreign contacts.
Like a local Baptist pastor, he complained of opposition from the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox bishop of Ioshkar-Ola and Mari-El told Keston of what he regarded as the "danger" posed by "sectarians", but Mari-El's local official in charge of religious affairs insisted to Keston that, according to Russia's 1997 religion law, "each person chooses their own faith and has the right to preach if it isn't against the law."
Source : http://www.keston.org/
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Chinese journalist held over Falun Gong info
by Vladimir Kovalyev
St. Petersburg Times (11.06.2002/ HRWF International Secretariat (12.06.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - A Chinese journalist who was in St. Petersburg to report for The Epoch Times, a U.S.-based newspaper, on the Shanghai Summit between President Vladimir Putin and leaders from China and the former Soviet Central Asian Republics was arrested on Friday for handing out leaflets in support of the Falun Gong movement in front of the Astoria Hotel, the Agency for Investigative Journalism reported on Monday.
Veni Vang was charged with petty hooliganism. She was found guilty the same day in the Admiralteisky District Federal Court, which sentenced her to five days in prison.
"If she was sent to China she would have been tortured and killed there," Bobbi Bani, a member of the Falun Gong movement from the United States and one of the 200 members of the movement who visited the city for the summit, said on Monday. "I'm not a politician. This was just a case of staging a peaceful appeal to let people know what we practice."
According to a friend of the journalist, who asked not to be identified, Vang was detained after handing the leaflets in the area close to Astoria hotel, where Chinese Prime Minister Jiang Zemin was staying at that time. He said Vang was detained while trying to check into the Angleterre Hotel and taken to a police station at 6 Zakharyevskaya Ulitsa.
"This was not linked to her journalistic activity," her friend said.
While the charge was laid under Russian law and by Russian police, members of the group said that they believe the arrest was made at the behest of the staff of the visiting Chinese Prime Minister.
"The real motive for her detention was the fact that, in July of last year, during Jiang Zemin's visit to Malta, Vang openly criticized the policy of repression and killings of Falun Gong members in China. This time she was recognized by one of guards of the Chinese prime minister," a press release issued by Falun Gong members on Monday said.
"We can only assume that there was pressure on the Russian police from the Chinese authorities to 'temporarily isolate' a troublesome journalist," the release said.
The Chinese consulate could not be reached for a comment on Monday.
State Duma lawmaker Yuly Rybakov and representatives of the human-rights group Memorial, sent an information letter to Oleg Mironov, Russia's human-rights supervisor, saying that Vang had participated in a press conference dealing with the treatment of the Falun Gong in China, held in St. Petersburg on June 4.
"The press conference was about the persecution of Falun Gong members in China since 1999, of the repression, torture and killings that branded tens of millions of people as outlaws, depriving them of basic human rights and freedoms," the letter said.
The letter also said that district administrations within the city have refused to allow the Falun Gong members to hold demonstrations in the city.
"They have always been refused the right to hold meetings. Russia has an agreement with China that the states would not support movements which are targeting power in the other's country," said Yury Vdovin, co-chairperson of the local human-rights group Citizens' Watch, in a telephone interview on Monday. "But I don't think this really qualifies as such a movement."
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Presidential bill outlawing religious ? extremist activity ? passes first reading
By Geraldine Fagan
Keston News Service (07.06.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (10.06.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - A draft law banning religious organisations found to have committed "extremist activity" passed its first reading in the Russian Duma (parliament) yesterday (6 June) by 271 votes to 141. The bill, which is being proposed by President Vladimir Putin via the Duma Committee for Legislation, relates to "extremist activity" conducted by religious organisations as well as political parties, social and other organisations.
Originally entitled "On the Struggle Against Extremist Activity" (See KNS 5 February 2002), the draft law is now called "On Counteracting Extremist Activity." Officially adopted by the Legislation Committee on 29 April, the text voted upon by deputies yesterday differs considerably from that earlier reported by Keston.
The draft law's list of definitions of "extremist activity (extremism)" now includes the following religion-related items: "Hindrance of the legal activity of religious organisations or of the carrying out of religious rites," "hooligan acts or acts of vandalism in relation to political, racial, national or religious intolerance" and "causing harm to the health or property of citizens due to their convictions, race, nationality or creed."
The new text contains slight changes in the procedure by which a religious or other organisation may be banned for conducting "extremist activity." Article 6 states that such an organisation must first receive written notice of the inadmissibility of its actions from a state organ, which should provide concrete grounds for the warning.
If, according to Article 7, the organisation concerned nevertheless commits "extremist acts" which result in either "damage to the personality, rights and freedoms of the person or citizen, the health of citizens, the environment, social order, public security, property, the legal or economic interests of physical or legal persons, or to society and the state" or which "create a real threat of such damage," then that organisation faces a liquidation or ban by court order.
Another significant change in the new draft is its greater impact upon bodies supporting - but not committing - "extremist activity." The earlier draft provided in the first instance for the confiscation of a particular issue of a publication or the blocking of an internet site found to contain "extremist material", with no implication for the publisher. Article 12 of the new text, by contrast, states that organs of the mass media circulating "extremist material" (defined as "published material containing appeals to carry out extremist activity") are liable to immediate liquidation. In addition, according to Article 11, any organisation assisting extremist organisations by financial or material means (provision of premises, facsimile or telephone equipment, for example) also faces liquidation.
While the earlier version of the bill stated that charges would be brought against individual members of an organisation only if they had been found to have committed concrete violations of the law, and that an entire organisation could be liquidated should its individual members engage in extremist activity only if this was with the knowledge of at least one of its ruling organs, the latest draft is less specific. Article 15 states merely that "membership of or adherence to an extremist organisation or employment in organs of the mass media prior to their liquidation or ban for conducting extremist activity do not constitute grounds for limitation of civil rights or prosecution with the exception of instances prescribed by this federal law."
While the Russian media reports today (7 June) that, as previously, the draft law was accompanied by a supplementary bill proposing amendments and additions to related legislative acts, these are cited as the Criminal Code and the laws on the police, education and military service. In its original form (see KNS 5 February 2002) the supplementary bill included proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, the law on social organisations and the 1997 law on religion.
On 7 June Lev Levinson, parliamentary aide to Duma deputy Sergei Kovalyov, confirmed to Keston that the latest supplementary bill does indeed not contain any proposed amendments to the 1997 law on religion, including the creation of a federal successor body to the Council of Religious Affairs. (See KNS 6 February 2002)
Speaking to Keston on 5 June, lawyer to the Jehovah's Witnesses Artur Leontyev said that he thought the bill would pass its three readings by the end of the parliamentary session on 1 July.
Source: http://www.keston.org/
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Baptist church to be razed by ring road
By Geraldine Fagan
Keston News Service (06.06.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (10.06.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - A Baptist prayer house in the city of Kazan (500 miles or 800 kilometres east of Moscow) is being threatened with demolition in order to make way for the Tatar capital's new ring road.
Completed in 1997, the prayer house is an imposing two-story building surrounded by one-story country-style houses (dachas) in an outlying district of Kazan. Built with donations from its 400-strong congregation and foreign supporters, the church contains various teaching and meeting rooms in addition to its spacious main worship hall.
Like the Soviet-era branch of the Baptist Council of Churches (also known as the Initsiativniki Baptists) from which it broke away in 1993, the independent Kazan Baptist congregation rejects current Russian registration requirements as "unacceptable", parishioner Nadezhda Sharipova told Keston News Service in Kazan on 24 May.
Since the church therefore constitutes a "religious group" according to Russia's 1997 law on religion, it does not have legal personality status and is consequently unable to possess property in its own name. According to the same law, however, "premises and property necessary for the activities of a religious group are provided for the use of the group by its participants." (Article 7, Part 1) In the eyes of the state, explained Sharipova, the prayer house is thus a private building belonging to a parishioner, Andrei Yelizarov.
"We are unregistered, but the law allows for that form of existence, and we have never met with difficulties due to it before," the church's pastor, Mikhail Trofimov, told Keston on 27 May. After being warned of the proposed route of the ring road in late August 2001, Trofimov and the congregation's 250 full members signed a letter addressed to the head of Kazan municipal administration suggesting three solutions to the church's plight. These were: 1) that the proposed route of the ring road be changed, 2) that a similar building be made available in its place or 3) that a plot of land be allocated where the church could build a new prayer house, "although such a solution is extremely burdensome for us when one takes into account that in our community we do not have New Russians (nouveau riche) or businessmen who could sponsor a new building. ?
In March this year, according to Trofimov, the church received a reply stating that land for construction would be offered - ? the most difficult option for us . ? Directed to address a request for land to Kazans Municipal Architecture and Town Planning Department, the church was informed on 6 May by its chairman, Askhat Gilyatzetdinov, that the competent department to deal with the issue was in fact the Tatar capitals Municipal Department for Relations with Social Organizations and the Media. In addition, wrote Gilyazetdinov, ? objects connected with cultic performance belong to forms of property use requiring special agreement via public hearings. ?
Pastor Trofimov told Keston that the church has yet to receive a reply to its similar request submitted to Airat Zaripov, chairman of the Municipal Department for Relations with Social Organisations and the Media, on 24 May.
In an interview with Keston on 28 May, chairman of Tatarstans Council for Religious Affairs, Renat Nabiyev, said that he was not aware of the unregistered Baptist congregation or the threat to its prayer house posed by the planned ring road. Asked what would be the most likely outcome, he replied : ? Nothing - what can you do if it is in the way ? ? After consulting by telephone with his Councils Protestantism specialist, Igor Kornilov, he continued : ? If theyre unregistered it is the problem of the private citizen who owns the building. If it were a registered community then it would be a different matter. ? Nabiyev stressed to Keston, however, that there would be ? compensation or a new place. ?
While heartened that the various state departments have so far addressed their correspondence to the Kazan Baptist Church rather than a private individual, Pastor Trofimov remains concerned at the great expense incurred should the congregation - as seems likely - have to build from scratch. ? We have 120 children and we want to build a school for them, ? he told Keston, ? but we cant due to the uncertainty of this problem. ?
Source: http://www.keston.org/
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Protestants evicted from rented halls
By Geraldine Fagan
Keston News Service (06.06.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (10.06.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - In mid-April four Protestant churches - the charismatic Cornerstone Church and Free Church, the Baptist Free Bible Church and an unregistered Pentecostal congregation - were all evicted from state premises which they had been renting for worship services in the capital of Tatarstan, Kazan.
Speaking to Keston on 26 May, Free Church elder Yuliya Borisenkova said that her congregation of approximately 150 and Cornerstone's congregation of approximately 500 had been renting two halls for services in a House of Culture (cultural centre) belonging to the Tatar Ministry for Internal Affairs, situated at 26 Karl Marx Street in central Kazan.
According to Borisenkova, there had been "some sort of complaint" about the church meetings from residents opposite, which, in her view, had been fabricated. Keston also wondered why the residents were particularly concerned by the meetings in the right half of 26 Karl Marx Street - Kazan's historical Lutheran church building. The left half is still
occupied by the German Lutheran Centre of the Republic of Tatarstan, which continues to host weekly services by Lutherans, evangelicals and Messianic Jews.
After the Free Church's rental agreement had simply not been renewed six weeks ago, said Borisenkova, her congregation had managed to continue worship for a month at Nazareth Baptist Church. It is currently renting premises from one of the city's social organisations.
Interviewed by Keston on 27 May, lawyer to Cornerstone Church Anatoli Pagasi said that, of the other three churches affected, Free Bible Church had been renting a lycee for three years, while the unregistered Pentecostal congregation had been meeting at the Builders' House of Culture for five. It was against the latter church, he said, that a public complaint had been made.
Adhering to the conservative tradition of Soviet-era Pentecostal churches, the congregation's leaders had preached against the use of contraception, explained Pagasi. This had provoked the elderly mother of one parishioner and his wife to write a letter of complaint to Tatarstan's Council for Religious Affairs, he said, in which she asked officials to take measures to stop the "sectarians" from forcing her son and daughter-in- law to have children. When, in Pagasi's words, the Council had responded to two such complaints by saying that, according to the Russian constitution, it was "not her business what they did at night," the woman wrote to Tatar president Mintimer Shaimiyev to complain that the Council for Religious Affairs was not performing properly since it refused "to take measures against the sect."
Since the republic's presidential administration does not deal with such issues, said Pagasi, this letter was referred back to the Council for Religious Affairs. In Pagasi's view, by this stage the Council's members simply did not wish to deal with the issue and so passed the letter on to the Kazan municipal authorities. Pagasi surmised that at Kazan's Municipal Department for Relations with Social Organisations and the Media, Chairman Airat Zaripov "had reacted like Stalin - no person equals no problem" and had evoked a 1993 local decree ruling that state premises could be rented only with the permission of the local authorities - which the Pentecostals apparently did not have. While this was taking place, said Pagasi, checks were also made regarding similar rental agreements elsewhere.
In an interview with Keston on 28 May, chairman of Tatarstan's Council for Religious Affairs, Renat Nabiyev, denied that any such decree existed, maintaining that the eviction of the Pentecostals was due neither to a "limitation of the law" nor to "politics." The only reason he could suggest was that "it could be due to repair work on the building or something." Nabiyev also maintained that (contrary to Article 19, Part 2 of the republic's 1999 local law on religion), religious organisations do not have to obtain permission from the Council for Religious Affairs in order to rent premises in Tatarstan.
This last point was confirmed by Yuliya Borisenkova. However, she added, if the Council for Religious Affairs finds out [about a contract] there could be problems from them." The difficulties with rental appear to extend beyond Kazan municipality, she suggested, since a church which her congregation had founded in the eastern Tatar city of Naberezhnyye Cholny in 1993 was also evicted from its rented premises this month.
Source: http://www.keston.org/
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Duma fails to pass resolution against Catholic Church
Sought To Prohibit Presence of the Church in Federation
(Zenit.org).(16.05.2002) / HRWF International Secretariat (17.05.2002) C Website http://www.hrwf.net - A draft resolution entreating President Vladimir Putin to prohibit the Catholic Church's presence in Russia did not receive the necessary number of votes for its adoption by the Duma.
A considerable number of parliamentarians (169 Deputies) in attendance at the meeting voted in favor of the proposal presented by parliamentarian Viktor Alksnis. But the resolution, failing to meet its required 226 votes (of the 450 Duma seats), was not passed. Only 37 Deputies voted against it; 4 abstained.
With the resolution, Alksnis, Deputy of the Regions of Russia group, reproached the Catholic Church for creating four dioceses in Russia, a measure that, according to him, regards his country as "a spiritual desert" and seeks to "impose its will on the Russian nation."
When announcing its decision on February 11, the Vatican explained in a press statement, that the sole objective of the four dioceses was to respond to the spiritual needs of Catholics in that country, in respect of their right to religious liberty. It denied the intent to "proselytize" among the Orthodox.
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Russia denies bias in religious row
Reuters (24.04.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (24.04.2002) C Website http://www.hrwf.net - Moscow defended on Tuesday its decision to refuse a senior Vatican cleric entry into the country, and denied it was persecuting Russia's tiny Catholic minority. Polish bishop Jerzy Mazur was deported from Moscow to Warsaw on Friday en route to his eastern Siberian diocese. Mazur has worked in Irkutsk since 1988. The Polish foreign ministry demanded an explanation from the Russian ambassador on Monday, but stopped short of issuing a public rebuke. A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman accused the media of misreporting the row as a clash between Russia and Poland. "We must stress that the actions taken in connection with Jerzy Mazur have no relation whatsoever with his nationality," he said. The latest incident has fuelled Catholic suspicion that Russian authorities are backing the Orthodox Church in its dispute with the Vatican. Ties between Rome and Russia's dominant Orthodox Church are at low ebb due to accusations from the Orthodox leadership that Catholics are poaching Orthodox faithful. The Orthodox Church has effectively blocked a visit to Russia by Polish-born Pope John Paul, even though it has the backing of President Vladimir Putin. The Pope is widely credited with undermining communist rule in the Soviet bloc, and is still regarded with suspicion by some Russians. A long history of conflict between Catholic Poland and Orthodox Russia has further complicated chances of reconciliation.
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Justice Department seeks to liquidate
Magadan Catholic parish
Keston News Service (22.04.2002) / HRWF International Secretariat (23.04.2002) C Website http://www.hrwf.net C Email info@hrwf.net A legal case in the Russian far eastern town of Magadan is to decide on whether a foreign citizen without a residence permit may lead a Catholic parish. The Church of Christ's Nativity, headed by Father Michael Shields, has been warned by the justice department of Magadan region that it is contravening Russia's 1997 law on religion. However the lawyer representing the parish told Keston News Service that the parish is challenging this interpretation of the law at Magadan city court. The majority of Catholic priests in Russia are foreign citizens, and few have managed to obtain a residence permit.
Keston News Service: http://www.keston.org
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Russia, Vatican in a new skirmish
AFP (20.04.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (22.04.2002) C Website http://www.hrwf.net C Email info@hrwf.net - The battle for Russia's souls heated up Saturday as the Vatican accused Moscow of grave violations of religious freedom over its barring of a Roman Catholic bishop.
Bishop Jerzy Mazur, bishop of a vast diocese based in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, was refused re-entry to the country late Friday by border guards who withdrew his multiple-entry visa at a Moscow airport.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Moscow had breached a 1989 treaty which guarantees religious freedom when it refused to allow the bishop to return to the country following a trip to his native Poland.
"What happened to Monsignor Mazur, a few days after what happened to Italian priest Stefano Caprio, represents a serious violation of the commitments undertaken by the Russian government," Navarro-Valls said.
Mazur on Friday became the second Vatican representative to be refused entry or expelled from Russia in a month, after Caprio, an Italian priest, had his visa confiscated on April 5.
The bishop himself told AFP from Warsaw that he was "shocked and stunned."
"The Catholic Church is being harassed from all directions but this time they have dealt a heavier blow," he said.
Also in Warsaw, Polish Foreign Minister Boguslaw Majewski said the Russian authorities had provided "no satisfactory information" on the incident. Prime Minister Lezlek Miller said the Polish government would issue a statement in the near future.
The moves come amid rising tension between Russia's dominant religion of Orthodox Christianity and the minority Catholics. The Orthodox authorities accuse the Vatican of seeking to proselytize on their territory.
The leader of Russia's Catholics responded to the expulsion with fury, accusing Moscow of leading "an organised campaign" against his Church.
"The events of the last months shows that there is an organised campaign underway against the Catholic Church in Russia," said Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz.
"Russian Catholics are asking themselves: who will be next. How long will all this last," said Kondrusiewicz, President of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Russia.
He called on the Russian government, "and particularly President Vladimir Putin, in his role as guarantor of the constitution... to defend religious freedom and not allow discrimination against Russian Catholics."
Kondrusiewicz, who is currently in Lugano, Switzerland, made his comments in a statement to the Vatican news agency Fides.
Navarro-Valls said Russia had violated religious freedoms guaranteed under the 1989 treaty on the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, of which it is a signatory.
He said the bishop had been expelled despite the Vatican intervening with the Russian authorities "demanding an explanation and asking for the bishop's entry visa to be restored."
The Vatican would call "for a revision of the measures adopted so that Bishop Mazur can soon return to his flock in eastern Siberia."
The incident is being viewed with deep concern by the Vatican, which is finding itself outmanoeuvred in its battle with the Russian Orthodox Church.
The expulsion of the bishop, who was returning from a trip to his home country, pointed up the Vatican's key weakness in Russia, which is that almost all of its clergy are foreigners.
As such they are vulnerable to increasing pressure from Russian MPs who have publicly urged Russia's foreign ministry to refuse them visas.
The Church has tried to fill the Soviet-era void with priests from abroad, many of whom are of Polish, German, Ukrainian or Baltic origin.
They serve the spiritual needs of around 500,000 Catholics, a tiny minority of Russia's 145-million-strong population, the majority of which considers itself Orthodox.
From his base in Irkutsk, Mazur has been the leader of 50,000 Catholics scattered throughout the world's vastest parish -- some 10 million square km stretching across five time zones -- since 1999.
Fides said the expulsion deprived "the largest Catholic diocese in the world of its own pastor."
Friday's incident is just the latest in a series of increasingly frequent clashes between the two Churches which appear to have dashed 81-year-old Pope John Paul II's dream of a visit to Russia
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Catholic Bishop turned back
MoscowTimes.com (22.04.2002) / HRWF International Secretariat (22.04.2002) C Website http://www.hrwf.net C Email info@hrwf.net - Passport officers at Sheremetyevo Airport refused entry to a Roman Catholic bishop who was returning to his diocese, in effect revoking his right to live and work in Russia and escalating a conflict with the Vatican, Catholic officials said.
Bishop Jerzy Mazur, a Polish citizen who is one of four Catholic bishops in Russia, arrived at the airport Friday with a valid visa, saw it canceled on the spot and was forced to fly back to Warsaw, Poland.
Mazur, who has been based in eastern Siberia since 1998, was the second Catholic cleric to be denied entry to Russia in recent weeks.
"Russia's Catholics may get the impression that a wide-scale anti-Catholic campaign is under way in Russia in which state structures are regrettably taking part," Igor Kovalevsky, general secretary of the Conference of Catholic Priests of Russia, said Saturday.
About 100 Orthodox protesters denouncing Catholic "expansion" gathered outside Mazur's cathedral in Irkutsk during Sunday morning Mass.
"They had signs like 'Russians, defend Russian culture' and 'Pope, stay in the Vatican,'" Natalya Goletkina, a Catholic journalist and press secretary for the cathedral in Irkutsk, said by telephone.
"It was most unpleasant and our parishioners were quite worried about clashes. But the demonstrators dispersed before the end of the Mass and it all ended without incident."
A statement from Mazur's diocese said the 48-year-old bishop was stopped at Sheremetyevo's passport control and told he was on a black list of people barred from entering Russia.
"They canceled Bishop Jerzy Mazur's multi-entry Russian visa, which had not expired, without explanation and declared him persona non grata. Diplomatically, this in effect amounts to expulsion from the country," the statement said.
Earlier this month, Italian priest Stefano Caprio had his valid multi-entry visa confiscated by Russian passport control as he was catching a flight to Milan at Sheremetyevo Airport. Caprio, who had worked in Russia for more than a decade, was told he was on a black list compiled by the secret services.
"Every country in the world, including the United States, has a list of certain citizens from other countries who are banned from entering that country," deputy border service director Alexander Yeryomin said Saturday in an interview on Ekho Moskvy radio. He provided no other explanation for revoking the visas.
The Foreign Ministry would not comment on either incident. But Mazur had angered the ministry earlier this year by referring to a disputed region in Russia's Far East by its Japanese name, Karafuto Prefecture. The area includes islands Russia calls the Kurils that the Soviet army seized at the end of World War II.
Speaking during a visit to Switzerland, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the head of the Catholic Church in Moscow, said: "The events of the past months are showing that an organized campaign against Russia's Catholic Church is going on."
In Rome on Saturday, the Vatican called Russian Ambassador Vitaly Litvin and issued a stern protest. Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls termed the incident a "grave violation" of Russia's commitment as a signatory of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which commits countries to recognizing basic human rights and freedoms.
Russia's relations with the Catholic Church have been tense for many years, largely because the Russian Orthodox Church jealously guards its prerogatives as the country's dominant faith. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, church leaders have complained about "proselytizing" by "foreign" churches, particularly Catholics.
"I am sure the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church is behind this both cynical and blunt campaign," said Anatoly Pchelintsev, director of the Institute of Religion and Law in Moscow. "It is no secret that at least half of Russian Orthodox hierarchs are either former or current agents of the KGB or FSB, which have a great influence in Russian power structures."
Relations between Catholics and Orthodox have worsened since the Vatican established formal dioceses in Russia in February, upgrading them from the former status of "apostolic administrations."
The Russian Orthodox Church considers Russia to be its "canonical territory" and says no other church has the right to form dioceses, the seat of a bishop.
There are four in Russia, based in Moscow, Saratov, Novosibirsk and Irkutsk. Mazur was named to head the Irkutsk diocese, which covers an area larger than the United States, territorially the largest Catholic diocese in the world.
Of Russia's 144 million people, two-thirds describe themselves as Orthodox. There are approximately 600,000 Catholics, including 50,000 living in Mazur's diocese.
Mazur is among about 200 foreign priests who have helped Russia's Catholics revive religious traditions since the end of Communist rule. "For me as a bishop, this is a great tragedy, a blow, because you cannot return to the people who are entrusted to you," Mazur said upon returning to Warsaw, according to Poland's PAP news agency.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2000, Mazur said many of the Catholics are descendants of Poles, Lithuanians, Germans and other Catholics sent to Siberia as exiles. Preaching to them is not proselytizing but helping them reclaim their past, he said.
The Conference of Catholic Bishops of Russia issued a statement Saturday appealing to President Vladimir Putin to guarantee freedom of religion. "Foreign priests have increasingly faced difficulties in performing their pastoral duties," the statement said. "Are the times of persecution for one's faith really returning?" (LAT, AP, Reuters)
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Yet another Catholic priest threatened to be kicked out of the country, and a parish state registration may be canceled
Slavic Center for Law and Justice (12.04.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (15.04.2002) C Website http://www.hrwf.net C Email info@hrwf.net - The Slavic Center for Law and Justice intends to go to court with a complaint in the interests of the Roman Catholic Parish of Nativity in the city of Magadan. The Magadan Justice Department made the claim to the parish, which read that the parish priest Fr. Michael Shields, a US citizen, does not have a residence permit in Russia, which, as the Department alleges, is a violation of the Russian law. The Justice Department suggested that the said "infringement" be eliminated, otherwise the parish registration may be recognized as invalid.
The Roman Catholic parish in the city of Magadan received governmental registration on April 1, 1999. Fr. Michael Shields was invited by the parish for the implementation of religious activity, which was in complete accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation. In 1998, Fr.Shields applied to the internal affairs department for residence permit, but his request was refused. Many other priests and two bishops of the Catholic Church in Russia have found themselves in similar situations, and the "solution" to the problem proposed to them by the internal affairs officials was marriage to Russian citizens!
Contrary to the statements of the Justice Department, the parish did not break the law. According to the Russian law, to be a parish priest and a leader of the church organization, Fr. Shields did not need to be a permanent resident in Russia.
The Slavic Center for Law and Justice prepared and sent a rebuttal of the Justice Department's claims. However, on March 26, 2002, the Justice Department sent repeated warnings with analogous demands to the parish. In the opinion of the Slavic Center for Law and Justice, the given case creates a dangerous precedent of the breach of the rights of religious organizations. It may have serious consequences - in the first instance for the Roman Catholic church in Russia, in which an overwhelming majority of clergymen are foreign citizens from 22 countries of the world. "If the court passes a decision that is not in favor of the Magadan parish", explains co-director of the Center Vladimir Pyakovskii, "similar judicial cases in other cities will be initiated before long. The Catholic Church was literally eradicated during the time of Stalin's persecutions and now it revives itself, but they may be left without clergymen"
"The case initiated by the Justice Department against the Roman Catholic parish, -added Anatoly Pchelinsev, director of the Institute for Religion and Law, -is only part of the wide scale campaign unleashed against the Catholic Church in Russia". Literally the other day the entrance into the country was prohibited for another Catholic priest, an Italian Stefano Caprio, who served in Russia more than ten years and helped implement a series of important humanitarian projects sponsored by the Catholic Church.
Anti-Catholic hysteria took on the most threatening forms after the decision of the Church leadership on the re-organization of its temporary structures in Russia (the Apostolic Administrations) into the permanent ones (dioceses). Thus, in Pskov the government banned the building of the Catholic Church building, supposedly because of the protests from the local Orthodox archbishop. In many cities all over the country there have been pickets and meetings against "Catholic expansion", and also around 10 similar actions have been planned for the 28th of April.
"This provokes bewilderment and anxiety, that the government, instead of protecting the constitutional rights of its citizens, it is in fact indulging in the acts of extremists, which kindles religious hostility, -says Anatoly Pchlintsev. It is a very dangerous tendency forour multinational, multiconfessional society."
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Russia bans Italian priest
Associated Press (10.04.2002)/HRWF International Secretariat (11.04.2002)- Website http://www.hrwf.net - Russia has banned a Catholic priest from Italy from returning to his parishes, the priest said Wednesday, amid heightened tensions between the Vatican and Russia's dominant Orthodox Church.
The Rev. Stefano Caprio, who has lived in Russia since 1989, said he realized after landing in Italy that passport officers had ripped his visa as he left Moscow on Friday. Caprio said by phone that he was refused a new visa and was told he was on a list of banned foreigners compiled by Russian security services.
A spokesman for the Russian Border Guard Service, Sergei Ivanchenko, confirmed Wednesday that Caprio was refused entry into Russia. ``Every nation has the right to determine who can stay on its territory,'' he said.
The Foreign Ministry refused to comment.
A Catholic spokesman in Russia, the Rev. Igor Kovalevsky, said the church had no reason to believe Caprio had violated Russian law or done anything to provoke his exclusion from the country.
The Vatican called in the Russian ambassador over the issue, Caprio said, adding that the meeting was expected to take place Thursday. Representatives of the Italian Embassy in Moscow were to meet with Foreign Ministry officials on Thursday, he said.
The incident comes at a time of increased discord between the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches.
Earlier this year, the Vatican upgraded its presence in Russia to full-fledged dioceses. This angered the Orthodox Church, which views the Catholic presence in Russia as an invasion of its canonical territory and an attempt to poach Orthodox believers.
Caprio, who had traveled to Milan for a four-day visit to meet with his bishop, said his visa problem could be connected to the tension surrounding the Catholic Church in Russia. But he said he has never had any personal problems with authorities and was at a loss as to why he was targeted.
``Right now I can't understand what this is about,'' Caprio said. ``I didn't break any laws.''
However, Caprio recalled that in April 2000, he had been named a ``Vatican spy'' by a muckraking Moscow weekly, Versiya.
Catholic priests have been denied Russian visas in the past, but Caprio said his was the first case of a visa being confiscated.
About 200 foreign Catholic priests have helped the country's small Catholic minority revive its religious traditions since the collapse of the Soviet Union. During seven decades of Communist rule, few people of Catholic ancestry had any opportunity to learn about or practice their faith.
Caprio, who speaks the language fluently, leads parishes in the central Russian cities of Vladimir and Ivanovo. He also teaches theology in Moscow.
In Vladimir, people pack the pews at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary on Sundays to hear Caprio celebrate Mass in his melodically accented Russian.
Reached by telephone, parish secretary Viktoria Shubina said the community was distraught at the news of Caprio's visa problem.
``We can't imagine what this is about,'' she said. ``We believe it is a horrible mistake.''
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Honouring of obligations and commitments
by the Russian Federation
Doc. 9396
26 March 2002
Report (Excerpts)
Committee on the Honouring of Obligations and Commitments by Member States of the Council of Europe (Monitoring Committee)
Rapporteurs: Mr David Atkinson, United Kingdom, European Democratic Group, and Mr Rudolf Bindig, Germany, Socialist Group
HRWF (14.05.2002) Email info@hrwf.net - Website http://www.hrwf.net - The co-rapporteurs stress that a number of areas should be areas of priority. The first one on the list is the full implementation of fundamental freedoms (freedom of expression, of the media, and of religion).
In the draft resolution, the Parliamentary Assembly
- strongly urges the State Duma to finally adopt a law on alternative military service as foreseen in Article 59 of the Russian Constitution;
- regrets the banning of the Salvation Army and Jehovahs Witnesses in Moscow, but welcomes the decision of the Russian authorities to ensure that the problem of local discrimination and harassment of these religious communities be brought to an end.
Under the heading "Freedom of religion and discrimination against churches and other religious organisations", the report notes:
"94. The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights is presently preparing a report on the new Russian Law on religion. Pending its publication, the co-rapporteurs wish to make the following observations in respect of the implementation by Russia of its commitment to introduce a new law on freedom of religion.
95. The Russian Constitution safeguards freedom of conscience and of religion (article 28); the equality of religious associations before the law and the separation of church and state (article 14), and offers protection against discrimination based on religion (article 19). The law on freedom of religion of December 1990 has led to a considerable renewal of religious activities in Russia. According to religious organisations met in Moscow, this law has opened a new era, and led to a revitalisation of churches. It was replaced on 26 September 1997 by a new federal law on freedom of conscience and religious associations. This legislation has been criticised both at home and abroad on the grounds that it disregards the principle of equality of religions.
96. On 6 November 1997, Mr Atkinson and others presented a motion for a recommendation (Doc. 7957 which was referred to the Legal Affairs Committee by Reference 2238) in which they argued that this new legislation on freedom of conscience and religious associations contravened the European Convention on Human Rights, the Russian Constitution as well as the commitments entered into by Russia on accession. In February 2001, the Ombudsman on Human Rights, Oleg Mironov, also acknowledged that many articles of the 1997 law On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations do not meet Russias international obligations on human rights. According to him, some of its clauses have led to discrimination against different religious faiths and should therefore be amended.
97. In its preamble the law recognises "the special role of Orthodoxy in the history of Russia and in the establishment and development of its spiritual and cultural life" and respects "Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and other religions constituting an integr | 