30.05.2007
BELARUS: RENTED PROPERTY STILL BARRED TO PROTESTANTS


By Geraldine Fagan, Forum 18 News Service

Protestants who did not manage to obtain their own property during the few
years of relative freedom of thought, conscience and belief in the 1990s
continue to find meeting for worship a challenge, Forum 18 News Service has
found. Barred from renting premises in the western city of Grodno [Hrodna],
for example, Pastor Dmitry Malyukevich told Forum 18 that his 90-strong
charismatic Living Word Church has found an alternative refuge: "Our
brother Catholics in this town are letting us meet in their church."

Grodno region's main religious affairs official maintained to Forum 18 on
28 May that he did not know anything about the problem: "If they're getting
refusals then I'm hearing it from you for the first time." Igor Popov also
insisted that premises' proprietors are the only ones to regulate rental
issues.

Pastor Malyukevich told Forum 18 that when he in fact recently raised the
issue with Igor Popov, the regional religious affairs official similarly
maintained that proprietors decide rental questions and that the state has
no objection to Living Word Church.

A registered religious organisation under the restrictive 2002 Religion
Law and member of the Belarusian Full Gospel Association, Living Word has
gathered for worship in private homes for 12 years without obstruction,
Pastor Malyukevich told Forum 18 on 22 May. "But it isn't that convenient -
neighbours might not like it - and we should be able to meet at places
available for public social events anyhow." For the past 15 months,
however, the church has searched Grodno for such premises without success.
On at least five occasions, said Pastor Malyukevich, proprietors refused as
soon as they understood that they were dealing with a Protestant
congregation. Twice the directors of houses of culture initially agreed to
rent their facilities - the 29 November 2006 signature and official stamp
of one has been viewed by Forum 18 - but backed out soon after the church
approached the local authorities for their consent.

Under the 2002 Religion Law, registered religious organisations may rent
secular premises, but only on the basis of a contract and with the approval
of the relevant local state authority. Unregistered religious communities
may not legally exist and therefore cannot rent premises.

In addition, a 2 October 2002 circular letter from Grodno Regional
Executive Committee to local cinema directors, seen by Forum 18, orders
them to terminate all contracts related to religious worship in cinemas.
The reason given is "in order to broaden and optimise the activity of
establishments offering a direct cinematic service to the public" (see
F18News 8 October 2003
).

Explaining Living Word's use of his Our Lady of Ostrobrama Church, parish
priest Fr Aleksandr Shemet remarked to the Evangelical Belarus Information
Centre in late April: "I think other Christians would support us in the
same way if the same thing happened to us." Living Word came out in support
of the Catholic parish during its recent hunger strike to demand state
permission to build a new church in Grodno (see F18News 29 November 2006
and 20 December 2006
).

Similar obstacles to the rental of publicly available premises exist in
the capital, Minsk. In a practice one local Protestant has described to
Forum 18 as "like a suitcase with a false bottom", a landlord typically
withdraws from an agreement, citing "pressure from above", soon after a
religious community submits details of the arrangement to the local
district administration (see F18News 12 May 2005
).

It was after being barred from rented public facilities by district
administrations throughout Minsk that New Life Church began to meet for
worship at its disused barn as a last resort (see F18News 16 December 2004
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=477>). The pastor of another
Full Gospel Association church unable to obtain rented premises in the
capital, Boris Chernoglaz, wrote to complain about the situation to the
Plenipotentiary for Religious and Ethnic Affairs late last year. In a 10
November 2006 reply viewed by Forum 18, however, the Plenipotentiary's
deputy, Vladimir Lameko, insists that the resolution of issues concerning
the rental of premises for worship services "lies within the competency of
the rented premises' proprietors".

Also in Minsk, Pastor Antoni Bokun of John the Baptist Pentecostal Church
was recently fined 20 times the minimum wage for leading worship at his
home without state sanction (see F18News 28 May 2007
). As Pastor Antoni
explained to the police who detained him, his congregation was forced to
meet in this way having similarly been barred from rented public facilities
in the city.

Forum 18 notes that there has been no improvement in the rented property
situation for Protestant communities over the past two years (see F18News
28 July 2005 ).

In Belarus, property problems mainly affect Protestant communities. Unlike
the other major confessions present in the country - Orthodox and Catholic
(non-Christians such as Jews and Hare Krishna devotees are present only in
small numbers) - they are much less likely to be in possession of
historical worship buildings, which are the main premises within which
religious events do not require state permission under the 2002 Religion
Law. Where Protestant communities do not have designated worship buildings,
their congregations are also more likely to be too large to meet discreetly
in a private home.

The state also tends to regard Protestant communities negatively, because
it sees them both as ideologically and spiritually damaging (see 8 August
2006 ) and as the major
source of religious-political dissent (see 29 November 2006
). Recently, Protestant
communities have been prominent in a nationwide campaign to petition to
change the Religion Law (see F18News 16 May 2007
).