Despite assertions by the Belarus government's Committee for
Religious and Ethnic Affairs that a "mass" religious meeting requiring
state approval is one with at least 100 people, a senior official has declared
that if more than 10 people gather for a religious meeting without official
permission they would be committing a crime, Keston News Service reported Dec.
13.
Belarus' senior religious affairs official, Minsk Alla Ryabitseva, made the
assertion to leaders of religious communities registered in the Frunze district
of Minsk during a Dec. 10 meeting organized by the local administration to
explain the new provisions of the European nation's controversial amended
religion law, which entered into force on Nov. 16.
Ryabitseva told the religious leaders that from now on all religious meetings
in private homes require prior permission from the local administration. She
said private homes are not places designated for holding of religious meetings
and therefore such permission is obligatory.
Reached by Keston on Dec. 13, Ryabitseva said so far she had held only the
meeting with religious leaders in the Frunze district. She said additional
meetings to explain the new provisions of the law will be held with
administration leaders in other districts of the city "and if necessary
with religious leaders."
Asked why she had declared home meetings illegal without prior permission, Ryabitseva
declared: "You have to read the law." She then put the phone down.
Dina Shavtsova, a Minsk-based lawyer who has been involved in religious liberty
cases, declared on Dec. 12, "The uncertainty surrounding the norms of the
religion law allows local officials to give their own interpretation of the
law, which in certain situations leads to the direct limitation of the rights
of citizens."
Shavtsova noted that Protestant leaders had pointed out that Article 25 of the
law would allow local officials to restrict believers' rights to meet for
worship arbitrarily. "They persuaded us then that nothing like this would
happen, that this was an invented problem," she said. "However,
Ryabitseva's words testify that such fears were justified."
Shavtsova pointed out that the restrictions on religious meetings in private
homes violate Article 31 of the nation's constitution, which sets out the right
to confess a faith individually or with others. "Home groups represent one
form of the joint confession of religion," she said.
"Thanks to Ryabitseva's efforts, a whole range of evangelical churches
which don't have their own church buildings have been deprived of the right to
rent halls in Minsk," Shavtsova noted. "They can now only meet in
home groups, though even this possibility is now dependent on the whims of one
or another bureaucrat."
Georgi Vyazovsky, pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Minsk, told Keston Dec.
13 that in the nearby towns of Gatovo and Krupki officials of the regional
religious affairs committee had summoned local religious leaders individually
to explain the impact of the new law. He said that during the meeting in Krupki
officials had shown a colleague a copy of "V nachale," a magazine his
church had finished a few weeks earlier examining the history of the Orthodox
Church and criticizing its views on icons. "We have not even sent out the
copies yet, so they must have got them from the printing house," Vyazovsky
told Keston. "You see they have all our activity under control." He
said officials had asked his colleague why they are so strongly against the
Orthodox Church.
Asked whether the new law had yet had any other impact, Vyazovsky said,
"Not yet, though we don't know what will follow." He said his church
continues to hold meetings in private homes.
Bishop Sergei Khomich, head of the Pentecostal Union which has more than 490
registered communities in the country, told Keston Dec. 13 that none of his
pastors has been summoned to such meetings with religious affairs officials.
"We have no registered communities in Minsk's Frunze district, so none of
our people was at the Dec. 10 meeting." He said he had heard that
Pentecostal leaders would be invited in future, although he had been unable to
learn if this was to be on a local or national level.
Keston contacted religious leaders in a number of other cities but did not
learn that any similar meetings had been held in local administrations.
"Nothing has changed here so far," Greek Catholic priest Igor
Kandraceu told Keston from the western town of Brest Dec. 13. "Despite the
new law, God remains the same and we will continue to worship him."
Khomich reported that religious affairs committee officials had told him that
the decree outlining the re-registration procedure that all registered
communities will have to undergo within the next two years is still being drawn
up. It will then have to be approved by the Justice Ministry before being
issued. "They promised us it will be issued by the end of this year,"
he told Keston. "We are eager to get moving in re-registering our
communities."
The Orthodox Church has continued to express its support for the restrictive
new law. At the "traditional" meeting between Belarusian President
Alyaksandr Lukashenka and the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in Minsk on
Dec. 12, the leader of the Orthodox Church in Belarus, the Russian-born
Metropolitan Filaret, praised the new law. The church also put forward a
proposal for a separate agreement between the Orthodox Church and the state.
"It is a very interesting proposal and I do support the initiative to sign
an agreement between the state and the church," Lukashenka responded in
remarks shown on Belarusian television the same day. "This agreement will
set forth the forms, methods and areas of our activities and the spheres where
we will cooperate. I believe that we should pass a set of programs as a
follow-up to this agreement."