16.05.2007
BELARUS: CHRISTIANS CAMPAIGN TO CHANGE HARSH RELIGION LAW


By Geraldine Fagan, Forum 18 News Service

By the evening of 16 May, more than 10,000 Belarusian citizens had signed
a national petition to change the restrictive 2002 Religion Law, reports
the campaign's spokesperson Sergei Lukanin. "This is already a serious
figure for our country, where we don't have ideal conditions to gather such
a petition," he told Forum 18 News Service from Minsk the same day.
Stressing that this is an interim figure, he pledged that signature
collection would continue. "The campaign is involving more and more
churches and non-religious organisations in thirty towns across Belarus."

Local Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants have been gathering signatures
since 22 April. As the campaign's promotional material states, "we are
defending the rights of all Christians (Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants),
all citizens of Belarus. The law violates the rights of all people, even
atheists." Petitions to change the law require at least 50,000 signatures
in order to be considered by the Constitutional Court.

Copies of campaign material received by Forum 18 explain that the rights
to life, free speech and freedom of belief are inalienable, "because we
have them from birth, they are given to us by God and not the government.
Since the government does not give us these rights, they have no right to
take them away." The petition form calls upon the Constitutional Court to
bring the 2002 Law into line with the 1994 Constitution - Article 31 of
which affirms religious freedom - and international human rights agreements
which Belarus has signed. Petitioners also express concern at the "numerous
violations of the rights of Belarusian citizens in the area of religious
freedom" over the four years since the Law's adoption.

A 12-page supplementary document details the Religion Law's
unconstitutional provisions. These include provisions that regular prayer
meetings in private homes are illegal, and the fact that people can only
meet together to worship after a complex state registration procedure has
been completed.

The campaign material also gives theological grounds for supporting
religious freedom, including that of personal responsibility for the
development of society: "We are responsible for what laws our children will
live under. God expects us to take affirmative action, as do our people."
The timing of the petition, the supplementary material explains, is due to
the fact that "since the end of 2006 it is in the interests of the
government to have good, friendly relations with the European Union (EU) as
never before, and one of the EU's conditions is improvement in the sphere
of human rights." The co-ordinators stress, however, that the campaign
"does not have political aims."

The petition is open only to Belarusian citizens, but an English-language
appeal to the world community on the website of the charismatic New Life
Church, which is based in the capital Minsk. The website appeal asks "all
people of good will to support the campaign of protection of the rights of
freedom of conscience in Belarus and write letters to the leadership of our
country" (see ).

Faith-based opposition to violations of the freedom of thought, conscience
and belief has appeared, on other issues, from a number of Belarusian
religious communities (see F18News 29 November 2006
).

Aleksei Shein, a campaign coordinator who is also co-chairman of the
organisational committee of the Belarusian Christian Democracy movement,
told Forum 18 that his request for permission to hold a small demonstration
on Freedom Square in central Minsk on 20 April in support of freedom of
conscience was refused. No explanation for the refusal was given by the
city authorities. Normally an alternative, more distant, site is offered to
demonstrators requesting a city centre location. Shein intends both to
appeal against the refusal and also to submit a similar request for a less
prominent site.

Public demonstrations require advance state permission under the relevant
2003 law (see F18News 1 September 2003
).

In addition to Christian Democracy activists, various church
representatives have been promoting the petition. New Life Church hosted a
press conference on 25 April addressed by: its pastor Vyacheslav
Goncharenko; the campaign spokesperson Sergei Lukanin (who is also lawyer
for the New Life Church); fellow Minsk Full Gospel pastor Boris Chernoglaz;
Pentecostal pastor Gennadi Kernozhitsky; and a Belarusian Orthodox priest
from Minsk's Protection of the Holy Veil parish, Fr Aleksandr Shramko. As
reported by New Life's website, Fr Aleksandr Shramko spoke of his belief
that the 2002 Law "limits one of the basic human rights and needs to be
changed. It is not right that other people are allowed to gather in
apartments and engage in their favourite activity while Christians aren't
allowed to gather at home and pray to God."

Although unable to attend the press conference, Grodno [Hrodna] Catholic
priest Fr Aleksei Shemet called upon all believers to support the petition,
in an interview published on the Belarusian Christian Democracy website on
28 April. "Its importance must be understood," he remarked. "If we don't
stand up for the rights guaranteed us by the Constitution, who knows what
could happen next."

On 26 April, the day after the press conference, Orthodox priest Fr
Alekander Shramko was invited to the office of the Plenipotentiary for
Religious and Ethnic Affairs, where staff member Aleksandr Kalinov tried to
persuade him that the 2002 Religion Law was in line with the Constitution.
On 15 May Fr Aleksandr told Forum 18 that Kalinov simply expressed
disagreement with his views - "there were no questions" - but had not been
able to change the priest's mind about the law.

Kalinov's telephone went unanswered when Forum 18 rang on 16 May.

The Belarusian Orthodox Church, which comes under the Moscow Patriarchate,
rejected all connection with the petition, in a statement issued on 27
April. It called on Orthodox Christians not to take part in any campaign
for a review of the 2002 Religion Law. Fr Aleksandr Shramko, the church
pointed out, participated in the 25 April press conference without church
permission and only expressed his personal views.

Metropolitan Filaret (Vakhromeyev) of Minsk and Slutsk, the head of the
Belarusian Orthodox Church, on 15 May supported a church court's 10 May
recommendation to ban Fr Aleksandr from serving the Divine Liturgy,
although he retains the status of priest.

Fr Aleksandr told Forum 18 on 15 May that Metropolitan Filaret's decree
"isn't final - it presumes repentance." He also confirmed that the ban was
due to the fact that his participation in the press conference was
unsanctioned by the church, "not for what I said."

The Belarusian Orthodox Church supported the 2002 Religion Law. Amongst
proposals made by the Church as the Law was being discussed were a ban on
all but irregular meetings in private homes for worship, as well as raising
the minimum number of people needed to register a religious community with
the state from ten to 20. Both these proposals were adopted. The church
proposals were published in the 2002 "White Book" on religious freedom in
Belarus, compiled by the subsequently outlawed Civic Initiative for Freedom
of Conscience.

In its 27 April 2007 statement, the Belarusian Orthodox Church maintains
that the 2002 Law "facilitates religious peace and confessional stability
in Belarus" and "draws upon international experience of legislation on
religion, especially practice in European countries."

Belarus' President, Aleksandr Lukashenko, publicly stresses the role of
Orthodoxy in the country. However, Forum 18 has found little evidence that
state support for the Moscow Patriarchate is more than nominal (see F18News
10 August 2006 ).

The Belarusian Religion Law is the most repressive in Europe. For example,
it is the only such law to demand state registration of religious
communities and to place restrictions on where within Belarus religious
activity can take place.

According to New Life Church's website, a petition co-ordinator from
Baranovichi's [Baranavichy] Salvation Pentecostal Church, Yuri Stupakov,
was "summoned for a chat" by the city Executive Committee's Ideological
Department on 27 April. This happened when information about the campaign
against the 2002 Law appeared in a local newspaper. An official was
reportedly interested to know whether the petition violated the law in any
way, but Stupakov maintained that it was in accordance with the
Constitution and no further action was taken.

Belarus is tomorrow (17 May) competing in a vote to join the United
Nations Human Rights Council. The Belarusian bid has been condemned by a
broad range of Belarusian and international human rights activists, as well
as by many democratic countries.

Belarus has flagrantly broken UN human rights
standards, and denied that it has
done this. One example amongst many is the country's refusal to give legal
status to a nationwide Hare Krishna association, despite the finding of the
previous UN Human Rights Committee that this violated the the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). One member of the Human Rights
Committee, Professor Ruth Wedgwood, noted that their are many other serious
problems raised by the Religion Law (see F18News 4 November 2005
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=682). (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
.