Posted on 03/06/2007 12:02:13 AM PST by shpirag
SERBIA: Stalling tactics used to delay granting legal status? Thursday , 01 March 2007
Only three religious communities – the Seventh-day Adventist and United Methodist churches and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) - appear to have been given legal status under Serbia's controversial Religion Law, Forum 18 News Service has found. Only three religious communities appear to have been given legal status under Serbia's controversial Religion Law, passed by the National Assembly nearly 10 months ago, Forum 18 News Service has found. The Serbian Government is currently a caretaker government, as no new government has been formed since the January 2007 elections. Religion Minister Milan Radulovic – who was behind the Law – remains in office. Religion Minister Milan Radulovic later stated, in the Regulations governing implementation of the Law, that the Romanian Orthodox Church in the Banat would be registered under the Serbian Orthodox Church and that both the Greek and Latin-rite Catholic Churches would be registered as one church. Radulovic went on to break the Law by illegally raising the number of signatures required to gain state registration (see F18News 9 August 2006 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=825). Many smaller religious communities have had their registration applications arbitrarily stalled, and there have been strong protests about the discriminatory provisions of the Law and the Regulations governing its implementation (see F18News 4 December 2006 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=882).
Another problem faced by religious communities trying to gain legal status is that the Religion Ministry is attempting to force religious communities to register instead as an Association of Citizens with the Public Administration Ministry – which tells religious communities to go back to the Religion Ministry to register as religious communities. The Religion Ministry began to use this tactic in late 2006 against religious-based associations, which are not churches and do not conduct worship, and now appear to have expanded their use of this to avoid giving legal status to religious minority communities. This tactic poses very great practical problems for religious communities, such as the inability to run a bank account.
This "ping–pong relationship" between the two government ministries is causing increasing practical problems for members of religious communities. Pentecostal Pastor Isidor Bajic and his family from the northern town of Senta, for example, cannot either pay money into the Novi Sad Pension Fund, or pay state health insurance contributions. This is because they cannot provide proof from the Religion Ministry that Pastor Bajic's community is on the Ministry's list of religious communities.
P.S. The point is that one of the rights in the Rights of Man(?) is the right to worship.
To my knowlege the Serbs have no chance to become a EU-member in the near future.
In order to join the EU (EEEEWWW) you must fall on your knees for the moon worshiping cult!
It's surprising that Serbia, like Greece, both strictly Orthodox countries, have problematic rules which in US and elsewhere can be considered simply as violations of the basic human rights. Probably it's not a high priority in EU's agenda to deal with religious rights. Even the Montenegrin Church can not build its own churches in Serbia's territory.
As we know, some Serbs try to present the Kosovo issue as a pure religious one, but at home they seem to be the worst violators of others' religious rights.
The 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices gives more details, and Jews are also having problems there.
http://www.b92.net/eng/news/comments.php?nav_id=39400
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78837.htm
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b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association
The law provides for freedom of assembly and association, and the government usually respected it in practice. Unlike in previous years, there were no reports that authorities impeded public protests.
c. Freedom of Religion
The law provides for freedom of religion, and the government generally respected this right in practice; however, the Serbian government adopted a discriminatory law on religion and maintained a discriminatory property tax.
While there is no state religion, the majority Serbian Orthodox Church received some preferential treatment. For example, the military continued to offer only Serbian Orthodox services, although it allowed members of other faiths to attend religious services outside their posts. There were also complaints that the Serbian government continued to fund construction of a large Serbian Orthodox Church. The Serbian government subsidized salaries of Serbian Orthodox clergy in regions outside Serbia.
In April the government adopted a problematic law on religion.
It recognizes seven "traditional" religious communities: the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Slovak Evangelical Church, the Reformed Christian Church, the Evangelical Christian Church, the Islamic community, and the Jewish community. The law requires all other religious groups to reregister with the Ministry of Religion, which has the discretion to decide whether to grant approval. Many of these minority groups had been recognized officially as religions in Serbia for over 50 years, and were present in the republic for as long as 150 years.
The registration requirements, deemed invasive by the Council of Europe and the OSCE, include submitting names, identity numbers, and signatures of members; showing proof that the group meets the threshold of 0.001 percent of adult citizens of Serbia (roughly 65 persons); providing a description of the group's religious texts and a summary of its religious teachings, ceremonies, religious goals, and basic activities; and information on its sources of funding.
Serbian tax law exempts property owned by the seven recognized traditional religious groups, although a challenge to the law was pending in the Constitutional Court at the end of the reporting period. The complaint was filed on July 21 on behalf of the Union of Protestant-Evangelical Churches in Serbia.
Non-Serbian Orthodox religious organizations continued to report difficulty obtaining permission from local authorities in Serbia to build new worship facilities. The Belgrade Islamic community reported continued difficulties in acquiring land and government approval for an Islamic cemetery in the city. In August Minister of Religion Milan Radulovic stated that the Montenegrin Orthodox Church could not build churches in Serbia.
Serbian law requires students in primary and secondary schools either to attend classes of one of the seven traditional religious communities or, alternatively, to take a class in civic education. Leaders of religions groups excluded from the program continued to express their dissatisfaction at the government's narrow definition of religion.
The government enacted a law on restitution of communal property in Serbia, including religious sites seized since 1945, but took no significant action to register claims or return church property.
The Jewish community had between 2,000 and 3,000 persons. Jewish leaders in Serbia reported continued incidents of anti-Semitism, including anti-Semitic graffiti, vandalism, small circulation anti-Semitic books, and Internet postings. HCS reported in November that anti-Semitism had grown in intensity in recent years. HCS noted that in recent years, Serbia's publishing sector published various anti-Semitic books, with titles such as Jewish Ritual Murder, The Jewish Conspiracy, and Why I Admire Adolf Hitler. According to Jewish community members, the release of such publications often led to an increase in hate mail and other expressions of anti-Semitism. Several nationalist, far-right organizations identified themselves with anti-Semitic rhetoric, displaying swastikas and using hate speech. The National Front was one of the most active of these groups during the past few years, mixing anti-Semitic rhetoric with anti-Western messages. HCS noted in November that the government's response to such hate speech was often inadequate.
On February 12, graffiti appeared on a monument in Nis saying "Holocaust--the Jewish lie that governs the world," along with nationalistic slogans such as "Serbia for the Serbs."
In late August a group of skinheads reportedly wearing Nazi symbols beat two Israeli tourists. One victim reported that the group was chanting "Auschwitz, Auschwitz." At year's end, no one had been charged in connection with this beating.
In 2005 the Federation of Jewish Communities in Serbia reported receiving increased levels of hate mail saying that, "Jews should leave Serbia." In addition, a list of prominent Serbian Jews was posted on the website of a neo-Nazi organization alongside messages posted by site visitors calling for them to be killed.
Teaching of the Holocaust is incorporated into the Serbian school curriculum, and the role of the Serbian government during that period is also discussed. However, there was a tendency among some commentators to minimize and reinterpret the role of Serbian leaders during the Holocaust, casting them as victims of foreign occupiers when in fact many leaders of that time collaborated with the Nazis and began campaigns against the Jewish population even before the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia.
While government leaders publicly condemned incidents of anti-Semitism, there was no significant government effort in 2006 to prevent such intolerance and hate speech.
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