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Friday, August 19, 2005
WATCHING TRENDS IN RUSSIA (CORRECTED)
- correction and apology
By Elizabeth Kendal
World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC)
Special to ASSIST News Service
AUSTRALIA (ANS) -- This is a corrected version of the earlier posting.
Please delete the early version.
My apologies to Anneta Vyssotskaia. EK
The following posting was written for WEA RLC by Anneta Vyssotskaia. Anneta monitors religious liberty in Russia and has written both News & Analysis and Religious Liberty Prayer bulletins for WEA. An earlier WEA RLC News & Analysis piece by Anneta, entitled "SECURITY DETERIORATING FOR RUSSIA'S PROTESTANT CHURCHES" (6 May 2005) can be found on the WEA website
http://www.ea.org.au/rlc/ .
In today's posting Anneta reports further on a rising culture of intolerance, which demonstrates itself in rights violations and violent attacks against Protestants and their church property. She also reports on the positive response of Protestant pastors and leaders. A most disturbing element of Anneta's report is the news that one Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church is requiring that priests spy and report on the activities of Protestant fellowships, and on those who support or show favour to them. As she notes, this should cause alarm, as it is reminiscent of Soviet times when such spying and reporting led to accusation of sedition or treason, followed by intense persecution.
Elizabeth Kendal
rl-research@crossnet.org.au
WATCHING TRENDS IN RUSSIA
by Anneta Vyssotskaia.
INTOLERANCE ESCALATING
Monitoring conducted by the Slavic Law Centre has determined that in Russia the first 4 months of 2005 yielded more cases of religious discrimination and violation of the believers' rights than 2003 and 2004 combined. Rights violations against Christian believers were registered in such big cities as Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Tymen, Tula, Izhevsk; and the smaller cities of Podolsk, Chekhov, Balashikha; and in Krasnodarskii Region, Khanty-Mansiiskii Okrug and Voronezhskaya Oblast.
Reported cases include attempts to seize church buildings or destroy them through arson or explosions. Protestant Christians have suffered physical attacks, verbal insults and beatings, from the police and from groups of fanatics. Also it has been reported that a number of churches, some which have more than 1,000 members, are having huge problems getting permission to construct church buildings.
PROTESTANT COURAGE GROWING
As a result, a new trend is emerging, where Protestant churches are becoming more active in raising their voice to remind the authorities and the society about their constitutional rights. Protestant churches are also urging Russians to resist the constant stream of lies about Protestants emanating from mass-media, from representatives of authorities, and from the Russian Orthodox Church.
In May-July two joint protest meetings of Protestant Christians from different denominations took place – one in Moscow and one in Voronezh. Pastors and church representatives from other cities also participated in these forums. A Moscow church, Emmanual, organized regular pickets to protest against the systematic discrimination and violation of the constitutional rights of Protestant Christians.
A number of distinguished Protestant leaders openly expressed their opinion about the discrimination of Protestants in Russia. Among them were, Yuri Sipko, the Chairman of the Russian Baptist Union; Sergei Ryakhovsky, the head of the Russian Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith (Pentecostals); and the President of Western-Russian Union of Church of Seventh Day Adventists.
CONFRONTATION AND REPORTING
Meanwhile, the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP)continues the policy of confronting the activities of the "sects", to which number they include almost all Protestant churches. This confrontation takes different forms, from distributing printed materials warning the local population about the danger of the "sects", to organizing protest pickets against Christian festivals and other Protestant activities.
It must be noted there have been some good changes in the ROC MP, such as how some churches have started to pay more attention to the problems of society and to the spiritual education of their own church members. Not all sincere Orthodox believers support the position of their church leadership regarding the "sects". Some Russian Orthodox believers find such behaviour from their priests very disappointing, and are indignant.
Evidence of the seriousness of ROC MP resistance can be seen in a most striking and absurd document that was recently published on a well-trusted Christian news web-site, Portal-credo.ru. The document, which was signed by Archibishop German, was meant for "inner circulation" within Kursk-Rylskaya eparchy (ROC MP). It obliges all priests to provide a report on the activities of "totalitarian sects" in their locality once every three months (4 times a year).
Among the items the priest must report on are: name of organization ("sect"); confessional belonging; approximate membership; leaders; places of worship; approximate age percentage and growth of membership; missionary methods used by the church (house visiting, street evangelism, camps, concerts, festivals, free meals, free literature, etc); degree of activeness or aggressiveness; if there was an open confrontation to ROC MP; planned events; and your experience of confrontation to this organization (if you have such).
The most shocking element of this reporting is the order for the priests to provide information on key people in society who show favour to "sectarians": heads of city administration, directors of enterprises (like factories, etc), businessmen, mass-media people,deputy members, workers from hospitals and educational institutions.
Those at the protest forums commented that this reporting is very much like in Stalin's time when people were encouraged to spy on their neighbours and colleagues. One of the participants of the forum who introduced himself as Father Superior of an Orthodox monastery expressed his opinion that there is nothing wrong with such an order because it helps to collect the necessary information for the important part of church work - ideological confrontation of the sects. He thinks that the main task of all sectarians is to divide Russia along religious lines and for this reason there is nothing wrong with collecting such information about them.
Russia (former USSR) was once a country where millions of people perished after being labeled "enemy of the State" on the grounds of such secret "collecting of information". As such, the behaviour of the Russian Orthodox Church leadership cannot but give rise to serious concern.
The secular authorities who support the ROC MP also try to resist the activities of the "sects", even though they are, in most cases, registered organizations operating within the law. In one case, the Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights in Chelyabinsk Ekaterina Gorina, attempted to impede the Easter Festival in that city. Furthermore, as a result of a TV program organized on her initiative, a local Baptist church was set on fire on the night before Russian Easter.
The cases of such violation of the rights of Protestant Christians are numerous.
Elizabeth Kendal is the Principal Researcher and Writer for the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC) www.worldevangelical.org/rlc.html. This article was initially written for the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty News & Analysis mailing list.
Elizabeth can be contacted by e-mail at
rl-research@crossnet.org.au.
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