28.02.2007
BELARUS: REPORTS THAT US CITIZENS DEPORTED FOR RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY "A


Illegal religious activity is not the reason why a group of US
English-language teachers were deported from Belarus earlier this month,
Forum 18 News Service has been told. According to recent media reports,
unauthorised religious activity led to one of two police warnings that
formed the grounds for their deportation. An Interior Ministry spokesman
even told one news agency that students were found singing religious songs
and with Bibles on their desks when police raided what was supposedly a
seminar in conversational English at a Baptist church in Mogilev. The
region's religious affairs official, however, has told Forum 18 that the
Americans did not violate the 2002 Religion Law. The head of the charity
which invited the group also insisted to Forum 18 that its activity was not
religious and that teaching took place at the church simply because there
was no rental fee. Elsewhere in Mogilev region, an Israeli rabbi is trying
to overturn the state's decision not to renew his religious work permit.