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

22 September 2004 CHINA: WILL ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS SOON BE ALLOWED PRIESTS? http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=416 China's estimated 3,000 scattered Orthodox Christians may soon be able to have their own priests once again. Since 2003, 15 Chinese Orthodox have been studying in Orthodox seminaries in Russia with the permission of China's State Administration of Religious Affairs. "Now they are happy for Chinese to become priests," an Orthodox source from Shanghai told Forum 18 News Service. But Hong Kong-based Russian Orthodox priest Fr Dionisy Pozdnyayev told Forum 18 it has yet to be decided whether these seminarians will be allowed to become priests in China when they complete their theological education. Fr Dionisy can minister only to foreign citizens in Beijing and Shenzhen, but a Russian priest spent two weeks in June ministering to local Orthodox in Harbin with official permission.

23 September 2004 MACEDONIA: SERBIAN ORTHODOX "WILL NEVER GET REGISTRATION" http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=418 The Serbian Orthodox Church in Macedonia has again submitted a registration application, but this is unlikely to succeed. Such communities "will never get registration", Cane Mojanovski, head of the government's committee for relations with religious communities, told Forum 18 News Service, as only the Macedonian Orthodox Church can exist in the country. He said the law allows only one organisation for any one faith. He could not explain why Orthodox Christians could not freely choose their faith. Metropolitan Jovan (Vranisskovski), who heads the Serbian Church in the country, has been convicted of inciting religious hatred, while religious sites have been raided. He complains the state is "in league" with the rival Macedonian Church. "They do not let us perform services, they harass me with these trials, and they do not let foreign Orthodox priests enter or travel through Macedonia," he told Forum 18. An interior ministry blacklist reportedly lists more than 20 Serbian Orthodox bishops banned from entering Macedonia.

22 September 2004 RUSSIA: SUSPICIOUS FIRE GUTS BAPTIST CHURCH AFTER AUTHORITIES BREAK UP MEETING http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=417 As Baptists were putting up a tent on privately-rented land in a village near Moscow on 20 August, administration officials demanded they provide advance notice of their two-day meeting. The Baptists refused, arguing that they did not need to for a non-political event. Several hundred armed police and secret police officers, "prepared as if for a terrorist attack" as Pastor Gennadi Dudenkov told Forum 18 News Service, invaded the site after the local administration banned the event. Workers pulled down the tent, but 4,000 Baptists went ahead with the meeting under police surveillance. On 10 September, local Baptist Yelena Kareyev told Forum 18, her teenage sons saw one of the officers involved in the raid lurking in woods behind their church. Three days later the building went up in flames and Kareyev saw men running away. She said the fire brigade was in no hurry to put out the fire. * See full article below. *

21 September 2004 VIETNAM: IMPLEMENTATION WILL TEST NEW RELIGIOUS ORDINANCE http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=415 Believers have responded warily to the new religious ordinance which codifies the state's policies on religious affairs, though implementation will test if it makes religious practice easier or more difficult. The ordinance, adopted by the National Assembly's standing committee in June, comes into force on 15 November. Officials have already met religious representatives to discuss the content. The ordinance lays greater stress on believers "abiding by law" rather than needing specific permission for many activities, but still reflects official suspicion of religious groups. Registered groups will need annual permission to hold regular meetings in their own buildings, while conferences in other premises will require specific permission. Unclear is whether home meetings are allowed. Religious activities and even beliefs can be banned. Prisoners are banned from religious activity, while former prisoners need permission. Local officials must approve assignment of clergy, while religious groups' contacts with abroad remain under official control. The ordinance does not mention the return of confiscated places of worship. Three Catholic priests described the ordinance as "a tool of the state to oppress people of faith".

20 September 2004 XINJIANG: RELIGIOUS FREEDOM SURVEY SEPTEMBER 2004 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=414 In its survey analysis of the religious freedom situation in the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region of north-western China (previously known as Eastern Turkestan), Forum 18 News Service reports on the pervasive state control over the religious life of native Muslims, who make up about half the local population, and religious minorities, enacted through national-religious committees. These committees, part of the administration of every city, enforce compulsory registration and approve the appointment of all religious leaders, who must come to committee meetings. Forum 18 learnt that at such a meeting in Ghulja in August, officials threatened to dismiss a Patriotic Catholic priest if he preached again against abortion. Children under 18 are officially banned from attending places of worship, though Forum 18 observed that this rule is widely ignored. "We believe that children need to finish their education and develop their personalities before they can make an informed decision as to whether they are believers or atheists," an official of Urumqi's national-religious committee told Forum 18. Contact with fellow-believers abroad remains restricted, leaving smaller religious communities isolated.

22 September 2004 RUSSIA: SUSPICIOUS FIRE GUTS BAPTIST CHURCH AFTER AUTHORITIES BREAK UP MEETING

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=417 By Geraldine Fagan, Moscow Correspondent, Forum 18 News Service

Three weeks after hundreds of armed law enforcement personnel attempted to break up their religious gathering in a privately-rented field, Baptists in Moscow region have claimed to Forum 18 News Service that one of the men involved in the raid had been seen loitering near their village prayer house just days before it was destroyed by fire.

According to a 27 August statement received by Forum 18 from the International Union of Baptist Churches, problems began on 20 August, when some 70 church members in the village of Lyubuchany (Chekhov district, Moscow region) were erecting a tent on a field rented by one of their number, Viktor Chekanov, in preparation for a two-day religious meeting. Local administration officials approached the group and requested advance notification of the event in accordance with Russia's demonstrations law, claims the statement, but the Baptists refused to comply, arguing that their 21-22 August meeting was "an exclusively religious event ...on private territory... bearing no relation to mass meetings or demonstrations".

Forum 18 notes that under the 1997 religion law, an unregistered religious group - such as those affiliated to the International Union of Baptist Churches - may freely conduct its activities on premises "provided for the use of the group by its participants" (Article 7). Under the June 2004 demonstrations law, organisers of a public event, gathering or mass meeting - whose aim is the free expression or formation of opinions and/or demands relating to political or social issues - must inform the state authorities in advance about their plans (Article 4).

Moscow Pastor Gennadi Dudenkov described to Forum 18 in Lyubuchany on 18 September how up to 200 law enforcement personnel - including police, FSB (secret police), riot police and officers of the organised crime squad - arrived in the village later on 20 August "prepared as if for a terrorist attack". According to the Baptists' statement, personnel wearing camouflage, helmets, gas masks and machine guns cordoned off the field and proceeded to comb it with dogs. When one Baptist tried to photograph what was happening, claims the statement, an officer from the organised crime squad dislocated his finger as he made a grab for the camera.

Dudenkov told Forum 18 that when the Baptists refused to remove their tent, benches and other property from the site, a team of some 30 Uzbek migrant labourers carried out this order, "some very reluctantly". The Baptists' property was later returned, he said, albeit with some damage.

When the Baptists' approximately 4,000 guests arrived from all over central European Russia for the gathering on the morning of 21 August, continued Dudenkov, they found access to the field blocked, while the bus which usually serves Lyubuchany did not stop in the village on that day. According to the Baptists' statement, only persons with local residence registration were allowed through police checkpoints on approach roads to the village. Dudenkov told Forum 18 that all but approximately 200 guests managed to reach the field on foot, however, despite rough and threatening behaviour from the law enforcement officers.

On being denied access to the Baptists' tent, for example, local pensioner and several times prisoner-of-conscience Vasili Ryzhuk explained that he wanted to pray there, recalled Dudenkov. "You will not pray to God here!" a law enforcement official reportedly replied, and when Ryzhuk nevertheless started to pray he was put in an armlock, hustled into a car and taken to a nearby police station, Dudenkov reported. Ryzhuk was swiftly released when his heart condition started to worsen.

According to the Baptists' statement, the whole operation was conducted in accordance with a 20 August local instruction issued by the acting head of Chekhov administration, Anatoli Chibeskov, of which Forum 18 has seen a copy. Entitled "On Measures to Prevent Events of a Religious Nature Taking Place in Lyubuchany Village," it prohibits "unsanctioned events of a religious nature" in the village during the period 20-31 August, charges local police and "relevant services" with the task of preventing such events and specifies the evacuation of participants if necessary.

In fact, the Baptists reported, the religious gathering did go ahead while observed and filmed by law enforcement officers, even though the water supply to the tent was cut, all but one of the village shops closed and the electricity supply to the village shut down - until it was realised that the Baptists had their own generator. Showing Forum 18 the field on 18 September - which is within sight of, but not close to, the nearest houses and bears no traces of the August event except for several tent post holes - Dudenkov maintained that the only disturbance to residents was a single car alarm.

However, an assistant head of Chekhov administration insisted to Forum 18 that the authorities had acted in response to complaints from local citizens about "disturbance" caused by the Baptists' event. Sergei Yudin also confirmed that his superior had issued the local instruction to prevent the event in accordance with a 20 August decision by Chekhov's Council of Deputies, and maintained that even if the gathering was religious and held on a privately rented field, as "an event of a mass nature" it still required advance notification by law.

"There were about 5,000 participants," Yudin told Forum 18 on 21 September. "Someone has to take responsibility for an event like that, but their faith exempts them from notifying the authorities, apparently." Asked why the authorities had chosen to stop the event from taking place in the manner reported by the Baptists rather than bringing charges against any individual in response to a specific alleged violation, Yudin was at first unable to respond but then remarked that "it is not our function as the executive branch to bring charges".

While in Lyubuchany on 18 September, Forum 18 also spoke with another member of the Baptist congregation, Yelena Kareyev. She described how, on the evening of 10 September, her teenage sons again saw the man who dislocated the finger of the young Baptist during the August events. According to Kareyev, he was loitering with another man in the birch forest at the back of the private building on the Kareyevs' land which serves as the Baptists' prayer house. While the two men moved away when they realised they had been seen, she said, they were later spotted observing the prayer house from a different angle.

Three days later, on the night of 13-14 September, Yelena Kareyev told Forum 18 that she woke up at approximately 4am to the sound of breaking glass and saw several people running away from the prayer house, which was engulfed in smoke. When flames swept the building following an explosion soon afterwards, Kareyev continued, she rang the emergencies number and said that the prayer house was on fire. "So what?" the person on the other end of the telephone reportedly replied. Only after Kareyev explained that nearby houses might catch fire did the person assure her that the incident was being recorded. Fire brigades from Lyubuchany and Chekhov arrived after 30 and 40 minutes respectively, she maintained, but did not hurry to extinguish the fire, which destroyed the entire building except for parts of the outside walls.

Both Kareyev and Pastor Dudenkov insisted to Forum 18 that the Lyubuchany Baptist community had encountered no previous interference of any kind, either to the 1994 construction of the prayer house and the worship services subsequently held there, or to previous religious gatherings held on the field rented by the Chekanovs.

Chekhov's fire chief Aleksandr Alekhin told Lawrence Uzzell of the US-based International Religious Freedom Watch on 21 September that a report on the Lyubuchany fire is currently being compiled and will be submitted on 23 September to the local police department, where a criminal investigation is to be opened since every witness believes that the fire was arson.

Forum 18 notes that a similar large-scale event held by the International Union of Baptist Churches in January 2004 in Tula, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Chekhov, was disrupted when two powerful explosions ripped through the interior of the local congregation's prayer house the evening before (see F18News 11 February 2004 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=251 ).

Forum 18 also notes that there have been a number of previous arson attacks on churches in Chekhov. On 17 April 2001, bottles filled with petrol were thrown into Grace of Christ Pentecostal church in the town a week after its pastor, Petr Barankevich, received an anonymous telephone call warning him to stop ministering in the town or else face serious problems. On 4 November 2001, a storage building and two cars at the construction site of a Presbyterian church in the town were set on fire. When Pastor Aleksandr Kepkalov and several other members of the church visited the site two days later, a group of four men reportedly told them that if they did not stop building the church they would be killed and buried there.

For more background information see Forum 18's Russia religious freedom survey at http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=116

A printer-friendly map of Russia is available at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/index.html?Parent=europe&Rootmap=russi (END)

© Forum 18 News Service. All rights reserved.

You may reproduce or quote this article provided that credit is given to F18News http://www.forum18.org/

Past and current Forum 18 information can be found at http://www.forum18.org/

SUBSCRIBE here: http://www.forum18.org/Subscribe.php and enter your e-mail address for either the full or the weekly edition.

- Or send an e-mail to (for the full edition):

(for the weekly edition):

with the following text in the subject or body of the email:

subscribe

If you need to contact F18News, please email us at: