Foreign missionaries working with Protestant communities in
Kalmykia, the Lord's Love evangelical church and the Salvation Army, have been
barred from Russia, Forum 18 News Service has learned. Citing the FSB (ex-KGB),
they have been attacked in the local state press as "western spies"
who "frequently operate within various missionary organisations, hiding
behind lofty charitable ideals." Commenting on efforts by the Salvation
Army, Christian Missionary Alliance and Mission Aviation Fellowship to overturn
entry bans, the newspaper said this "just goes to show how greatly
intelligence agencies are interested in their presence in Kalmykia."
After the article described the Salvation Army as "one of the most
powerful totalitarian sects in the world", it was banned from holding
events for children, F18News has been told. Despite this, local authorities
still seek the aid of Protestants to help needy people the authorities can't
help and to assist with anti-drug programmes.
Forum 18 has also learned that it is planned to change the way religious
communities represent their interests to local authorities, to the disadvantage
of religions communities which are not Orthodox, Muslim or Buddhist.
Two of the more active Protestant communities in Kalmykia,
the Lord's Love evangelical church and the Salvation Army, are now functioning
without the foreign religious workers who helped build them up. Within the past
few years, South Korean Paul Kim and Canadian Geoff Ryan have both been barred
from entering Russia. Members of their two communities recently maintained to
Forum 18 News Service that they now mainly experience no problems from the
local authorities. However, they also pointed to a number of defamatory
articles directed against by them by the local state press.
Drawing on information gleaned in an exclusive interview with local FSB (former
KGB) personnel, an Izvestiya Kalmykii journalist reported last December, in an
article entitled "Incursion of Soul Hunters", that "western
spies frequently operate within various missionary organisations, hiding behind
lofty charitable ideals." During 2002, states the newspaper, seven personnel
from missionary organisations representing the Salvation Army, Christian
Missionary Alliance and Mission Aviation Fellowship were refused entry to
Kalmykia. "Of course, they didn't agree with this decision and tried to
overturn it in the courts, which just goes to show how greatly intelligence
agencies are interested in their presence in Kalmykia."
"Every time we try and do something, they print a negative article,"
Pastor Vladimir Gololobov of the Lord's Love church told Forum 18 on 1 April.
In July 2001 the church tried to counter accusations published by Izvesitiya
Kalmykii that its umbrella organisation, the Evangelical Christian Missionary
Union, was a "sly and mobile enemy" engaged in espionage. While the
newspaper did print extracts from the church's subsequent letter of complaint,
it omitted key refutations.
"Incursion of Soul Hunters" also announced that "the avantgarde
detachments of one of the most powerful totalitarian sects in the world, the
Salvation Army, has reached us." It was after this article that members of
the public began to write complaints about the Salvation Army to Kalmykia's
public prosecutor, officer of the community's Elista Mission Command, Marika
Safarova, told Forum 18 on 3 April. The Salvation Army was consequently
prohibited from holding events for children, she said.
In other respects, the activity of the Salvation Army has been welcomed by the
local authorities, with the local social services sending needy people whom
they cannot help to the church, said Safarova. This is even while the Elista
Mission Command does not yet have the registration required to carry out many
of its activities. The Lord's Love Church, which is fully registered, also
reports some support from the local authorities, with the municipal Department
for Youth, Tourism and Sport recently enlisting the services of the church's
musical group for an anti-drug campaign. The local official dealing with
religious affairs, Mikhail Burninov, concurred that the Kalmyk authorities had
no problem with Protestants when interviewed by Forum 18 News on 3 April. There
are indications, however, of growing discontent with this state of affairs in
some influential quarters. In a letter published in Izvestiya Kalmykii in
response to the "Incursion of Soul Hunters" article, the leader of
the Federation of Anarchists of Kalmykia complained that it had come too late,
since the 13 Protestant organisations referred to were already legally
registered in the republic. "If totalitarian religious sects are
registered and carry out their extremist activity on a legal basis, how are we
supposed to fight against them now?" he wrote. "Close them down? Just
try it! A whole legion of human rights activists will appear!" In a
follow-up article printed by the same newspaper, dean of Elista's Kazan Cathedral,
Fr Anatoli Sklyarov, similarly complained that Russia's 1997 law had failed to
change the religious situation, since "the adoption of a law which would
really work did not take place due to western influence."
Imminent changes to the structure through which Kalmykia's religious
communities represent their interests to the local authorities, however, may go
some way to succeeding where the 1997 law failed. There are currently plans to
form two local bodies concentrating on religious affairs, Mikhail Burninov told
Forum 18. The first, the Interconfessional Council of Traditional Confessions,
would include the three leaders of the Orthodox, Muslim and main Buddhist
communities, he said, and was their initiative. The second body, the Council
for Co-operation with Religious Associations, was the initiative of the
authorities.
Both have the preliminary approval of President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, and
Burninov acknowledged that it was as yet "an open question" whether
it would be possible to include representatives of all registered religious
organisations on the second. For example, local Orthodox bishop Zosima
(Ostapenko) of Elista and Kalmykia might decline to participate if the
Jehovah's Witnesses were represented, he said, and predicted that it would consequently
take shape "at a much slower rate." The traditional confessions
council, by contrast, would be functioning by the end of the month, he said.