Russia;Uzbekistan;

FORUM 18 NEWS SERVICE, Oslo, Norway http://www.forum18.org/

The right to believe, to worship and witness The right to change one’s belief or religion The right to join together and express one’s belief

23 July 2003 AZERBAIJAN: “WE’RE NOT CRIMINALS,” FINED BAPTISTS INSIST http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=109 Police and local officials raided a Baptist Sunday service on 13 July in a private flat in Gyanja, interrupting the sermon and declaring the service “illegal”. They confiscated all the religious literature they could find before singling out the two ethnic Azeris – Zaur Ismailov and Magomet Musayev – to be fined. “They’re not criminals, so they have told the authorities they will not pay,” Pastor Pavel Byakov, who leads a church in Sumgait, told Forum 18 News Service. “They didn’t have registration so their service was illegal,” Firdovsi Karimov, head of the local department of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations, told Forum 18.

21 July 2003 BULGARIA: CONTROVERSIAL RELIGION LAW SURVIVES CONSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGE http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=108 The controversial religion law adopted last December that allows religious communities to be suspended, banned or fined has survived a constitutional court challenge. “It is the first time in history that six judges have been against the law and only five in favour, but the law was gone through anyway,” Lachezar Popov of the Rule of Law Institute, who represented the opposition parliamentary deputies who brought the case, told Forum 18 News Service. “I would say the problems of small religions and the ‘alternative’ Orthodox Synod have only just begun,” Hare Krishna devotee Radha Vinoda dasa told Forum 18.

24 July 2003 MACEDONIA: SERBIAN BISHOP SENTENCED TO SOLITARY CONFINEMENT http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=113 Serbian Orthodox Bishop Jovan was arrested in Macedonia, on Sunday, for attempting to perform a baptism in a Macedonian Orthodox Church and was sentenced to five days soliatary confinement in prison. The Macedonian government has claimed to Forum 18 News Service that it “has no links with this arrest, it is an issue of public peace and order”. Serbian prime minister Zoran Zivkovic has stated that the Serbian and Montenegrin ministers of Foreign and of Religious affairs will protest to the Macedonian authorities about both this sentence and the ban on Serbian Orthodox priests entering Macedonia in their vestments. * See full article below. *

23 July 2003 RUSSIA: LAST OF 31 COURT CASES FOR KOMI BAPTISTS? http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=110 For the past six years the local administration of Komi in north-east European Russia has banned completion of both Russia’s largest Baptist Church and a nearby centre for the physically disabled. Forum 18 News Service has discovered that the Baptist’s problems started after a visit by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Aleksi II. The latest obstacle placed by authorities in the way of completion of the church is a sales tax demand for three million roubles (approximately 100,000 US dollars, 730,000 Norwegian Kroner or 88,000 Euros) – even though the church has never been sold. Although local authorities are also preventing completion of the centre for the physically disabled, which the Baptists have now decided to give to the local authority, the local religious affairs adviser had high praise for the Baptists’ charitable work.

24 July 2003 RUSSIA: KOMI BREAKAWAY ORTHODOX FIGHT TO RETAIN CHURCH BUILDING http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=111 An Orthodox monastery and parishioners have been harassed by local state authorities since they broke from the local Moscow Patriarchate diocese of Syktyvkar and Vorkuta to join the US-based Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Forum 18 News Service has seen a video of the local Moscow Patriarchate bishop trying with a police escort to go to the monstery, and of the bishop accusing the breakaway clergy of theft and of being “American fascists”. Both the patriarchal diocese and local state authorities then launched failed law suits against the monastery, aimed at seizing a wooden church built after the breakaway took place.

24 July 2003 RUSSIA: STATE INTERROGATIONS OF KOMI BREAKAWAY ORTHODOX http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=112 State interrogations of members of the breakaway Orthodox community at Komi and those associated with them are claimed to have continued, Forum 18 News Service has learnt, including attempts to intimidate teenage school children, as well as municipal employees, who attend services at the monastery. This has taken place even after an apparently conclusive court ruling in the monastery’s favour.

25 July 2003 UZBEKISTAN: HARE KRISHNA’S THE LATEST TARGET OF ANTI-RELIGIOUS MINORITIES CAMPAIGN http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=114 In Uzbekistan’s campaign against religious minorities regarded as trying to convert Muslims, Uzbek-language Hare Krishna leaflets have been confiscated, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. This is even though the leaflets are not illegal under Uzbek law and this action violates Uzbekistan’s international commitments. Other victims of this campaign have been Jehovah’s Witnesses and Protestant Christians. Uzbek officials privately justify their actions to Forum 18 by claiming that in the difficult economic situation, the conversion of Muslims to Christianity or other faiths could provoke riots

24 July 2003 MACEDONIA: SERBIAN BISHOP SENTENCED TO SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=113 By Branko Bjelajac, Balkans Correspondent, Forum 18 News Service

Metropolitan Jovan (Vranisskovski) of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) has been arrested in Bitolj, Macedonia on Sunday 20 July 2003. He was trying to baptize a grandchild of his sister in a Macedonian Orthodox Church (MOC), the Church of the Great Martyr Dimitrije, was prevented from doing so and then arrested and sentenced to five days solitary confinement.

Metropolitan Jovan left the Macedonian Orthodox Church (MOC) last year after a Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) invitation to end a 35 years long schism between the SOC and MOC, and was installed as the SOC bishop and patriarchal egzarh for all of the dioceses of the Ohrid archbishopric only ten days ago,

“Relatives of the Bishop Jovan stated that he is in prison in Bitolj, in solitary confinement,” reported KIM Radio service on 21 July. “No one is allowed to see him or to talk to him.” Relatives and co-workers of Bishop Jovan are concerned about his medical condition, because they claim that he was brutally arrested and physically molested afterwards.

The Macedonian Orthodox Church claimed on 22 July that the Metropolitan “violated the MOC and has endangered its spiritual and material values, violating the sanctity, order and peace of the Temple as well as the safety of the priests and believers.

“The Ministry of Interior or the Macedonian government has no links with the church canonical issues or disputes in this regard,” Ms. Mirjana Konteska of the Macedonian Ministry of the Interior told Forum 18 on 22 July. “To our knowledge, Mr. Jovan Vranisskovski, was defrocked from the Macedonian Orthodox Church three weeks ago and thus has no legal rights to perform religious rites in religious sites. He has made an attempt to baptize a child in the church of St. Dimitrije in Bitolj, an active church of the MOC. He was not allowed to do so by the priests in the church, the police were called by them, on charges of disturbing public peace and order regulation. He resisted an officer, and after arrest he, and his party, were brought before a magistrate judge, who sentenced him to five days in prison for disturbance of public peace and order and resisting a police officer. Again, this has no links with the government or Interior ministry, it was all done locally, according to public order regulations. Mr. Vranisskovski party was released after an informative questioning in the police station. The investigating judge will decide whether there is a place for criminal charges.”

KIM Radio and the Info-service of the Raska and Prizren Diocese, who first reported on this incident, stated that “Bishop Jovan who accepted the SOC invitation to leave the MOC… was lately under specially strong pressure of hierarchs of MOC, local media and the Macedonian police.”

Since renewed disputes between SOC and MOC after negotiations broke in June 2002, several incidents have been reported. In the last two weeks, Macedonian border police prevented SOC monks, priests and bishops, from entering Macedonia in their priestly vestments. In May, four Greek Orthodox priests were turned back from the border for the same reasons. However, this is a part of wider governmental policy that affects priests and clerics of the SOC travelling to Macedonia.

Fr. Sava (Janjic), deputy abot of the SOC Decani Monastery, told Forum 18 on 24 July that in 1994 he and other priests were prevented from entering Macedonia on their way to Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain, in Greece because they were wearing priestly vestments. “We had to travel through Bulgaria. It seemed that this measure was not implemented in all cases, but selectively. There were instances where we passed the border with no problems, so my impression is that every officer could decide whether to implement it or not. This was used frequently to humiliate the clerics of the SOC, who had to wait a long time for “consultations with Skopje”, only to hear that they had to take off their vestments. My personal opinion is that one of the reasons for this ‘measure’ is an attempt to prevent Serbian priests from ministering to Serbian nationals, believers in northern Macedonia who wanted church services in their language and without the interference of ‘macedonian national ideology’ via the Church.”

The Mascedonian state news agency reported on 10 July that “The MOC will request state institutions to ban Vranisskovski from wearing the priest’s wardrobe, as he was discharged and because a Serbian priest is not allowed to perform religious services in Macedonia.” MOC Bishop Timotej stated that the “Macedonian Church will urge the relevant authorities to make sure that Zoran Vranisskovski never wears the insignia of a priest or bishop,” adding that Vranisskovski does not have the right to the post of Serbian vicar in Macedonia. “According to the Holy Orthodox [Christian] canons, Zoran can not switch to any other Orthodox Church unless his mother church, i.e. the Macedonian Orthodox Church, agrees to it.” The Macedonian Orthodox Church is not recognised by any other Orthodox Church.

The SOC told Forum 18 on 21 July that “all indications . are that this is all according to an earlier prepared scenario, in order for the SOC, its hierarchy and the faithful people to be prevented from performing their world wide recognised religious rights.”

Serbian Prime minister Zoran Zivkovic stated on 22 July 2003 that “There is no reason to deny to representatives of any church or religious community the fundamental human right to the freedom of movement if they have valid travel documents,” noting that this might be a political act, rather than an act of customs or police offices. The Serbian and Montenegrin Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Serbian Minister of Religion will protest to the Macedonian authorities about the ban on SOC representatives entering Macedonia in their clerical vestments.” (END)

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