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http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/s05100136.htm

ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 2126, Garden Grove, CA 92842-2126 USA
Visit our web site at: www.assistnews.net -- E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

CHURCH ADMINISTRATOR AGAIN FINED FOR “UNAUTHORIZED WORSHIP”

By Jeremy Reynalds
Special Correspondent for ASSIST News Service

MINSK, BELARUS (ANS) -- The administrator of the Minsk-based (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk) charismatic New Life Church, Vasily Yurevich, has been fined a third time for leading unauthorized worship.

Forum 18 News Service reported that the latest fine was for 3,825,000 Belarusian Rubles (1,727 U.S. dollars). The average wage in Belarus is estimated to be between 100 and 150 U.S. Dollars per month.

The official text of the Oct. 7 local court decision, which Forum 18 reported has been seen by the news service, relies upon police testimony identifying him as the organizer of the congregation's Sept. 4 Sunday service “by his outward appearance.”

Yurevich had argued, Forum 18 reported, that he was on leave at the time, did not enter the church building and was present only to talk to Mayor of Minsk Mikhail Pavlov if he accepted New Life's invitation to speak at the service about the city authorities' recent decision to confiscate the church's land (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=640).

While given lesser punishments, Forum 18 reported that a number of other Protestant churches have also reported recent moves by state officials to limit their religious activity on the basis of technical violations (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=664).

Yurevich has already been given two similarly large fines for the same offence (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=480 and www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=661). Forum 18 reported this time he was found guilty of violating the procedure for conducting religious gatherings as set out in the law on demonstrations. The requirement of state permission for public meetings was extended in 1999 to religious organizations in instances where their gatherings are not held at specially designated religious buildings or sites.

In addition to being refused permission to rent public facilities by district administrations throughout Minsk, Forum 18 reported that New Life has been denied state permission to turn a disused cowshed it purchased in 2002 into a church building as well as to hold services there - on the grounds that it is technically a cowshed. Similar obstacles have not been placed by the authorities against an Orthodox community's use for worship of a disused railway carriage 500 meters (yards) away from the cowshed (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=516).

The Administrative Violations Code holds the leader and/or organizer of religious meetings responsible for failing to observe the legal procedure for holding them. In this latest case, Forum 18 reported that Judge Nadezhda Reutskaya accepted police officers' testimony that Yurevich must have been the organiser of the Sept. 4 service.

That, Forum 18 reported, because one policewoman “spoke to him as the person responsible,” “people approached him, he greeted them and invited them to enter the church” and “his outward appearance differed from church members, who were simply dressed while he wore a suit.”

Forum 18 reported that although New Life lawyer Sergei Lukanin and a church member told Minsk's Moscow District Court that Yurevich was speaking to police and journalists outside the church and did not participate in the service, Judge Reutskaya ruled that there was no contradiction between the witness statements and that they all supported his conviction.

Yurevich, who has yet to pay either fine, told Forum 18 that New Life members formally decided on Nov. 21 2004 that they attend church services on their own initiative. He is currently preparing to file an appeal against the latest fine with Minsk City Court.

Speaking to Radio Free Europe in the wake of the fine, New Life's Pastor Vyacheslav Goncharenko - who has also been fined for unsanctioned worship (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=530) - insisted that the church would continue to meet for services at its former cowshed. He also pointed out that the congregation was the first to encounter such difficulties, telling Forum 18, “We were the first to be thrown out of houses of culture. The authorities are banking upon dealing with us first in order to intimidate the rest.”

This is not the only instance of a repeat fine been handed down to a church leader. Forum 18 reported that in western Belarus, the pastor of a Pentecostal church in Kobrin (Brest region) was issued a second fine of 25,000 Belarusian roubles (11 U.S. dollars) on Oct. 17 for not having a fire extinguisher of the correct capacity.

“I was told I needed one holding 10 litres, whereas ours holds five or eight,” Forum 18 reported Nikolai Radkovich told the Evangelical Belarus Information Center. “But I believe the main reason for the visit was that our church is unregistered.” Radkovich was fined almost two years ago for leading unregistered worship but encountered no subsequent restrictions (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=212).

The Evangelical Belarus Information Center also reported, Forum 18 stated, that in western Belarus the Brest congregation belonging to the Baptist Council of Churches, whose communities refuse on principle to register with the state authorities in post-Soviet countries, prevented the private building which they have used as a prayer house since 1990 from being sealed by the local authorities on Oct.17.

Forum 18 reported that the Baptist Council of Churches said that the owner of the building, Mariya Khotynyuk, reported that she was fined the equivalent of 24 U.S. dollars on Oct. 11 after a health and safety inspector found the building to be in violation of sanitation regulations and subsequently prohibited its use.

Two Baptist Union congregations told Forum 18 about some recent improvements in their situation, however. In Brest region, a church in Orekhovsky village founded three years ago by Baptist missionaries from nearby Divin village, was finally registered by the local authorities after reportedly being refused three times on the basis that “there are already so many Protestant churches.”

Forum 18 reported that on Sept. 9, a second Baptist Union congregation was granted permission by Vitebsk city authorities in north-east Belarus to turn the private building it uses for services into a prayer house, although subsequent reconstruction plans will still have to be approved by the relevant state departments.

According to Forum 18, the restrictive 2002 religion law permits worship only by registered religious organisations in either designated places of worship or venues which have been approved by the local state authorities.

For more background information, see Forum 18's religious freedom survey at www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=478

Jeremy Reynalds is a freelance writer and the founder and director of Joy Junction, New Mexico's largest emergency homeless shelter, http://www.joyjunction.org or http://www.christianity.com/joyjunction. He has a master's degree in communication from the University of New Mexico and is a candidate for the Ph.D. in intercultural education at Biola University in Los Angeles. He is married with five children and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For more information contact: Jeremy Reynalds at jgreynalds@aol.com. Tel: (505) 877-6967 or (505) 400-7145. Note: A black and white JPEG picture of Jeremy Reynalds is available on request from Dan Wooding at danjuma1@aol.com.

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