On the tenth anniversary of Slovakia's accession to the
Council of Europe, a bizarre provision of the country's law that renders new
religious communities with fewer than 20,000 members ineligible to gain legal
status as religious communities is under fire from minority faiths, especially
some smaller Protestant Churches, Muslims and the Hare Krishna community.
"We asked for registration this year but the religious affairs office
explained we can't have it," Pastor Ivan Zustiak, leader of the Brethren
Unity Protestant church told Forum 18 News Service on 2 July. "I think it
is wrong." Pastor Gabriel Minarik, leader of the Christian Fellowships,
agreed. "We want to register. This is not freedom," he told Forum 18
from Poprad on 2 July.
Jan Juran, director of the church affairs office at the Ministry of Culture,
insisted that his office can only uphold the law, which specifies the
20,000-member threshold. "Unregistered communities have no legal status
and cannot build places of worship," he told Forum 18 from the capital
Bratislava on 30 June. "They only have the possibility to follow their
religion alone or with others in private homes."
The Muslim community is equally adamant that it should be allowed to register
on a par with other communities. Mohamad Safwan Hasna, the Syrian-born imam who
is now a Slovak citizen, complains that the denial of registration and the
inability of the community to build mosques is "very humiliating".
"We don't have a suitable and stable place to pray, meet and explain
Islamic culture," he told Forum 18 from Bratislava on 30 June. He said the
150 or so practising Muslims in the city have to gather for prayers in rented
premises, as do the smaller communities in Martin and Kosice.
Hasna estimates that there are in total about 5,000 Muslims in Slovakia, most
of them in Bratislava. He said the community is made up of Arabs, Albanians,
Turks and Bosnians, as well as about 150 Slovak converts.
The Bratislava community, which has had to register as a charitable
organisation, has been trying to build an Islamic centre, including a prayer
hall and meeting rooms, for many years. Hasna said it bought a plot of land in
the city's Old Town three years ago, but the local mayor has denied building
permission. "They have no logical reasons to withhold permission," he
insists. "The mayor is against human rights and religious freedom."
He attributes opposition to mosques to popular sentiment. "The Slovak
people are very conservative."
Martin Huncar, assistant pastor of the Word of Life Protestant church in
Bratislava, says his church has not even tried to register as a religious
community because it knows it will be refused. "Of course we want
registration, we want our normal rights," he told Forum 18 from the city
on 2 July. "But with only about 100 members we don't have enough people."
He said the church has been forced to register with the Interior Ministry as an
organisation conducting social work and Christian work with young people.
"We cannot have the word Church in our legal documents, but this is wrong.
Spiritually we are a church."
Huncar complains that without registration the church cannot conduct
legally-valid weddings or funerals and is not allowed to work in schools or
prisons. He insisted that his church is not seeking the financial support from
the state that other approved religious communities receive. "For us it is
not a question of money."
Huncar puts the number of other Protestant churches in Bratislava that are
unable to gain legal status as religious communities at three or four.
"All new churches that have arisen since 1990, especially Pentecostal
churches, face this difficulty." However, some of those denied
registration are much older, including the Nazarene Church.
Pastor Zustiak, whose church in the northern Slovak town of Liptovsky Mikulas
faced pressure from local police and officials in 2001 and the threat that its
legal status as a civil association would be revoked, says the Culture
Ministry's church department has put a stop to this pressure. But he says the
uncertain legal position makes buying a permanent church for his 100-strong
congregation and other congregations in the country impossible. "We cannot
pay our employees either," he complained.
Ragunatha Priya (Roman Pazdika), leader of the Hare Krishna community, told
Forum 18 from the community's farm in Abranovce near Presov that it has
registration only as a civil organisation. "We tried for many years to get
registration as a religious community, but this is not possible," he
reported on 2 July. "The law is very bad." He said there are up to
about a thousand devotees in three communities.
Asked whether the denial of registration to newer religious groups did not
constitute discrimination, Juran responded: "This is one possibility, but
this is the situation. Until now it has not been criticised in the Slovak parliament
or by the Helsinki Committee." However, he insisted that the problem
"will be solved". "We will have a new law, but for that there
must be political will." Asked if that political will was there, he
declared: "I don't know. I'm not a politician. If we're told to draw up a
new law we will do so."
Juran declined to say if pressure not to allow new religious groups to register
came from the dominant Catholic Church. "We have no eyes for this. The
state is neutral."
Fifteen religious communities that had legal status during the communist era
were able to retain that status in 1991 when the religion law was adopted, even
though nine of them, including the Pentecostal Church with only 4,000 members,
would not have passed the 20,000 threshold. Only the Jehovah's Witnesses have
been able to gain legal status as a religious community since the law was
adopted.
Yet there is little wider support for the ending of these restrictions. Martin
Skamla of the Slovak Helsinki Committee, a human rights group in Bratislava,
told Forum 18 on 1 July that his committee has not dealt with this issue.
Even some Protestants oppose giving equal rights to other religious
communities. Jan Kerekety, general secretary of the Slovak Evangelical Alliance
and a Lutheran layman, told Forum 18 on 1 July that as a "Christian
state", Slovakia "doesn't need" Muslims or even the smaller
Protestant churches. "People have sixteen religious communities to choose
from." He believed Forum 18 should not write about the issue. "You
can't make things better."
Jan Lacho, bishop of the Pentecostal Church, was ambivalent about any change to
the law. "It would be wrong if we allowed these groups to register,"
he told Forum 18 on 2 July. "If we have a new registration system it would
allow all these Eastern religions to register, with all the changes in society
that would come with other religions."