20.02.2007
BELARUS: GOVERNMENT TO MAKE U-TURN ON CHARISMATIC CHURCH?


Belarusian authorities may be preparing to reverse their position towards
New Life Church in the capital Minsk, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. A
senior state official has stated that President Aleksandr Lukashenko was
aware of New Life's situation, regarding them as "a normal church in need
of assistance." The official then made a "strong recommendation" to New
Life's Pastor, Vyacheslav Goncharenko, that the church try another appeal
to the Higher Economic Court. New Life has now done this, but the
church's lawyer, Sergei Lukanin, stressed to Forum 18 that the
congregation will continue public protests until it has the legal return
of its land and building and the right to worship there. Previous state
promises to resolve the situation have been broken. New Life's
high-profile public protests over the past fortnight - including hunger
strikes throughout Belarus, daily services, and international support -
appear to be responsible for the president's sudden attention. New Life
has been fined for meeting, as have other churches in Belarus - such as a
Baptist church in Minsk, which was fined this month.

BELARUS: GOVERNMENT TO MAKE U-TURN ON CHARISMATIC CHURCH?

By Geraldine Fagan, Forum 18 News Service

Belarusian state authorities may be preparing to reverse their position
towards the embattled New Life Church, Forum 18 News Service has learnt.
Speaking from Minsk on 18 October, however, lawyer and church member
Sergei Lukanin stressed that the 1000-strong congregation intends to
continue various forms of public protest until its demands - the legal
return of its land and building and the right to worship there - are met.

A possible change of heart by the government became apparent on 17
October, when New Life's Pastor Vyacheslav Goncharenko was invited to see
Oleg Proleskovsky, head of the Main Ideological Department within the
Presidential Administration. During the 15-minute meeting, Lukanin told
Forum 18, the senior state official maintained that President Aleksandr
Lukashenko was aware of New Life's situation, regarding them as "a normal
church in need of assistance." Explaining that a solution was not possible
outside the court system, however, Proleskovsky then reportedly suggested
that New Life turn to Belarus' Higher Economic Court. When Pastor
Goncharenko replied that the Court had already rejected the church's
appeals, continued Lukanin, Proleskovsky repeated his "strong
recommendation" that it try again.

On 18 October, said Lukanin, New Life therefore formally asked the Higher
Economic Court to overturn Minsk City Executive Committee's 17 August 2005
decision curtailing the church's land rights and ordering the forced sale
of its building.

The church's intention to continue its protest, despite the meeting with
Oleg Proleskovsky, is due to an earlier unfulfilled promise by a senior
government representative. In September 2005 the congregation called off
plans to march to the office of the Mayor of Minsk after Belarus' Deputy
Interior Minister similarly gave "his word as an officer" that he would
help resolve the church's predicament. This did not happen, however (see
F18News 22 September 2005
).

Contacted on 19 October, a spokesperson at President Lukashenko's Press
Service was unfamiliar with the issue and directed Forum 18 to Oleg
Proleskovsky of the Main Ideological Department's secretary. Explaining
that Proleskovsky was absent, the secretary said that she did not have any
documentation referring to the 17 October meeting Forum 18 described. Asked
whether Proleskovsky could be contacted either by Forum 18 or herself, the
secretary said not, and that it would be better to speak to the
Presidential Administration official who would have organised the meeting.
Her telephone went unanswered on 20 October, however.

New Life has previously written to President Lukashenko, most recently
sending an open letter with a 2500-signature petition on 7 August 2006. A
23 September response came not from the president's office, however, but
from Minsk City Executive Committee, which claimed that it had repeatedly
offered solutions to the church's property problems. New Life rejects this
claim.

New Life's high-profile public protests over the past fortnight thus
appear to be responsible for the president's sudden attention. On 5
October the church began an indefinite fast/hunger-strike, which at the
time of writing has 156 participants in 16 locations throughout Belarus. A
core of approximately 30 hunger-strikers are protesting within the church's
threatened building, whose inner walls display banners with the
congregation's demands to Minsk City Executive Committee and a
Belarusian-language slogan: "Stop discrimination against evangelical
Christians in Belarus!" At a press conference on 6 October, Pastor
Goncharenko declared, "if the authorities continue to ignore our demands
and start acting aggressively, then we reserve the right to unsanctioned
public action."

The church is also holding services at its building every evening,
attended on 8 October by pastors from 19 other Belarusian Protestant
churches. Cited on New Life's website, one of the pastors explained his
participation thus: "I believe that this protest against the arbitrariness
of the authorities should be the principal activity of all those seeking
truth and justice in our country." By 10 October, New Life was reporting
receipt of letters of support from America, Cyprus, Finland, Germany,
Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Uganda, Ukraine and the UK, including from
several Protestant bishops. On 12 and 13 October representatives of the US
Embassy, the Organsiation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)
and the wife of imprisoned presidential opposition candidate Aleksandr
Kozulin visited the church. On 16 October Minsk City Executive Committee
granted official permission for New Life to hold a demonstration with up
to 700 participants on Bangalore Square - a major junction 4 km [2 ½
miles] north-east of Minsk city centre - at 6 pm on Saturday, 21 October.

According to New Life, state medical personnel refused to monitor the
condition of the hunger strikers in the church's building after their
first visit on 12 October. On that day one participant was admitted to a
local hospital but discharged on 13 October after taking doctors' advice
to break his fast. On 17 October the church reported that a doctor working
for the main Baptist Union's medical programme and other Christian medics
were now monitoring the hunger strikers.

So far the Minsk authorities have made no move to seize the church,
despite believing that they are legally entitled to do so (see F18News 6
October 2006 ). On 11
October a local official informed New Life that its building has now been
transferred onto the balance of Minsk's Moscow District, and asked a
church representative to sign papers confirming the forced sale. Believing
the state's action to be unlawful, New Life is refusing to comply. Also on
11 October, the church reported the first of two threatening incidents. At
approximately 9am, a truck, a bulldozer, two cars and three minibuses with
tinted windows approached the church's building. New Life's website cited
the driver of one of the cars as saying that Minsk City Executive
Committee had sent them "to level something here" and that they were
awaiting further instructions. The vehicles reportedly moved away from the
church's building some time later, however.

In the second incident, New Life reported the presence of two senior
police officers and four people in plain clothes watching the church's
building on the evening of 17 October.

In comments published by the Russian news agency Interfax on 12 October,
the vice-chairman of Minsk City Executive Committee and the city's top
religious affairs official accused New Life of violating laws on religious
activity and demonstrations. The former official, Mikhail Titenkov,
stressed that "Minsk City Executive Committee does not intend to give
permission to turn the building of the disused cowshed - a fire hazard,
moreover - into a house of worship." As she has previously maintained to
Forum 18 (see F18News 21 February 2005
), the latter official,
Alla Ryabitseva, insisted that New Life had purchased the disused cowshed
and associated plot of land without the right to alter its designated
usage: "It is not intended for religious events." She also claimed that
the church's request to reconstruct the building had been denied because
statutes of religious organisations did not provide for social or cultural
work under the 2002 Religion Law, and that the church's heating system and
electricity generator "pose extreme danger to its parishioners".

New Life denies these claims. In a 13 October statement on the Interfax
feature, the church points out that Paragraph Four of the state-registered
sale contract for its building notes the aim of acquisition to be
reconstruction of the building as a house of worship, while the church's
land-use contract stipulates that construction will take place with the
agreement of the state authorities. In 2003 and 2004 Minsk's architecture
officials twice granted such permission, New Life continues, but this was
rescinded "in view of the written opinion of the Department for Religious
and Ethnic Affairs" - which is headed by Alla Ryabitseva. The church also
insists that its building - housing a high-quality heating system rather
than a stove - is in full compliance with relevant safety standards.

Photographs of the hunger strike - clearly showing the condition of the
church's building - may be viewed at
.

Arguing that New Life's building is technically a cowshed, Minsk officials
have refused to grant the 1000-strong congregation permission to use it for
services. The state authorities simultaneously refuse to allow the church
to legalise its position by changing the building's designation to that of
a house of worship. Minsk's top religious affairs official - Alla
Ryabitseva - has claimed to Forum 18 that this is impossible due to the
city Development Plan (see F18News 21 February 2005
). However, an official
in charge of executing the Development Plan recently told a Minsk court
that it was technically possible to site a house of worship for New Life
"anywhere in the city", but that this depended upon permission from the
religious affairs department (see F18News 28 July 2006
).

New Life has been worshipping at its disused cowshed ever since being
barred from renting a local house of culture in September 2004. As church
administrator Vasili Yurevich told public prosecution officials in
December 2004, the congregation was earlier refused requests to rent other
public facilities by district administrations throughout Minsk (see F18News
16 December 2004 ). The
church's continued use of its building for services has resulted in
multiple large fines (see most recently F18News 17 August 2006
), in addition to the
authorities' decision to confiscate the building.

Other churches in Minsk have also been fined for meeting. For example,
this month a Baptist, Andrei Piskun, was prosecuted by an administrative
commission in Minsk's Soviet District for organising and holding a
religious meeting without registering its statutes (an offence under
Article 193 of the Administrative Violations Code) on Sunday 13 August.
Piskun was fined 15,550 Belarusian Roubles [48 Norwegian Kroner, 6 Euros,
or 7 US Dollars] on 4 October, according to the Baptist Council of
Churches, who refuse on principle to register with the authorities in
post-Soviet countries.

In a statement to Judge Vladimir Chvala, Piskun writes of his disagreement
with the verdict, arguing the accusation that he organised a church to be
unfounded, "as services in the church have been taking place since 1963."
He also cites guarantees of freedom of expression, religion and
association in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
Belarusian Constitution. (END)

For more background information see Forum 18's Belarus religious freedom
survey at .

A survey of the religious freedom decline in the eastern part of the
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) area is at
.