MINELRES: Keston News Service summary: Russia, Uzbekistan & Bulgaria

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KESTON INSTITUTE, OXFORD, UK
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KESTON NEWS SERVICE � SUMMARY   20-24 May   2002

Summaries of recent reporting on violations of religious liberty and
on religion in communist and post-communist lands.
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KESTON NEWS SERVICE SPECIAL REPORT
RUSSIA: ANTI-CATHOLIC FEELING ON THE WANE? (20 May) Could the current
wave of anti-Catholic feeling in Russia be on the wane? Keston
Institute investigates the latest developments, revealing a mixed
picture. Although hostility remains evident in some areas of public
life, it seems to have little resonance with the general populace.
However, although there has been an upturn in the situation of some
foreign Catholic clergy, there is still no progress in the case of the
expelled Polish bishop Jerzy Mazur.

UZBEKISTAN: CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AGAINST BUKHARA JEHOVAH�S WITNESS?
(21 May) A Jehovah�s Witness from the town of Bukhara in Uzbekistan
could face up to five years in prison if prosecutors decide to bring a
criminal charge against him for leading an �illegal� religious group.
Erken Khabibov, the head of an unregistered Jehovah�s Witness centre
in the Bukhara region, told Keston News Service that this is the
latest in a long series of state actions against his community.
Although a local procuracy investigator failed to find �anything
criminal� in Khabibov�s actions, the Jehovah�s Witnesses have yet to
receive official notification that he will not be charged.

KESTON NEWS SERVICE SPECIAL REPORT
UZBEKISTAN: GOVERNMENT BACKS SUFISM TO COUNTER WAHHABISM (24 May) In
an attempt to counter the influence of independent Muslims, the Uzbek
authorities are giving support and backing to the local Sufi
Naqshbandi order of Islam, Keston News Service learnt in the wake of a
visit to the city of Bukhara in Uzbekistan. The Uzbek government is
primarily afraid of supporters of fundamentalist Islam, which has been
imported from Arab countries and which calls for religion to be
purified of regional and local customs. Sufism, which in Central Asia
has close links with local customs, appears at present to be the Uzbek
authorities� preferred alternative.

KESTON NEWS SERVICE SPECIAL REPORT
BULGARIA: RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AHEAD OF PAPAL VISIT

by Felix Corley, Keston News Service

The head of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II, arrives in
Bulgaria in the evening of Thursday 23 May after visiting Azerbaijan
on his 96th papal visit outside Italy. As the world's attention will
focus on the religious situation in Bulgaria, it remains unclear
whether the pope will raise any religious liberty concerns with the
authorities.

Identified by local believers and human rights activists as one of the
main religious liberty concerns is the longstanding failure to adopt a
new law on religion to replace the 1949 Denominations Act that remains
in force. Several attempts have been made to adopt a new law - some of
which would have severely restricted religious rights for minority
faiths - but all have been unsuccessful. Three drafts are currently in
contention. On a local level, municipal authorities have severely
restricted some religious communities they dislike, banning them from
meeting or handing out religious literature in the street or refusing
to grant them local registration. Some believers who feel their rights
have been infringed have been forced to take their cases to the
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (ECHR).

According to the official programme for the "apostolic visit" released
by the Vatican on 30 April, on arrival Pope John Paul will attend a
welcome ceremony in St. Alexander Nevski Square in the capital Sofia.
The next day, 24 May, he will visit President Petar Stoyanov in the
morning in the presidential palace, then go to the Orthodox cathedral
of St. Alexander Nevski in Sofia to celebrate the feast of Sts. Cyril
and Methodius, evangelisers of the Slavs. He will then be received by
Patriarch Maksim and the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church
in the patriarchal palace. After dining in the apostolic nunciature
with Bulgaria's Catholic bishops, the pope will meet Jewish
representatives, before meeting cultural and scientific figures.

On Saturday morning, John Paul II will go to the Monastery of St. John
of Rila, where he will have a private meeting with Prime Minister
Simeon Saxecoburggotski, former king of Bulgaria. The pope will return
to Sofia for dinner, after which he will meet the Chief Mufti and
representatives of the Muslim community, as well as representatives of
the Evangelical churches. He will then visit St. Joseph Catholic
Cathedral of Latin rite in Sofia and the Catholic Cathedral of
Byzantine-Slavic rite dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin Mary.
On 26 May, the pope will travel to Plovdiv in central Bulgaria to
celebrate the beatification of the martyrs of Communism in the city's
main square. After dining with the Catholic bishops, the pope will
meet young people in the cathedral. He will leave Bulgaria from
Plovdiv airport that evening. An official Catholic website,
www.popeinbulgaria.com, has been set up to publish coverage of the
visit.

Ahead of the visit, Pope John Paul declared that dialogue with the
Orthodox Church would form a key part of his meetings. "Although my
visit to your country has a pastoral purpose, to confirm my Catholic
brothers and sisters in the faith," he told visiting Bulgarian Foreign
Minister Solomon Passy at a Vatican meeting on 11 May also attended by
Metropolitan Kalinik (Aleksandrov) of Vratsa, "my fervent desire is
also to strengthen the bonds of Christian communion between the
Catholic Church and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church."

One of the main problems delaying the visit has been the split in the
Orthodox Church between those who alleged that Patriarch Maksim's 1971
election had been swayed by the communist authorities and those who
retained loyalty to the patriarch. The worldwide Orthodox community
has maintained its backing of Patriarch Maksim, and the Catholic
Church has followed suit. While the earlier government of the
anticommunist Union of Democratic Forces backed the rival Synod, now
headed by Bishop Inokenti (Petrov), the current government under Prime
Minister Saxecoburggotski resolutely supports Patriarch Maksim.

Bulgaria has made some progress in recent years in improving religious
rights. On 29 January of this year, the government finally recognised
the Church of the Nazarene after an eight-year battle. "My opinion is
that the reason for the long delay is that there are many different
powerful groups within Bulgaria that do not want any outside groups to
come into the country, especially evangelical groups from the West,"
Rev. Jay Sunberg, the church's superintendent in Bulgaria, told Keston
News Service. "If Bulgaria was not seeking entrance into the European
Union, there would have been no chance for registration." He describes
the rights his Church has finally achieved: "We can function more
openly, we can print literature in our own name, we have a possibility
of becoming junior members of the Bulgarian Evangelical Alliance, we
can rent halls and purchase property more easily, we have more
credibility and legitimacy, we can put our name on the door, and we
can start new works much more easily."

However, not all groups that have applied for registered status on a
national level have achieved it. Two independent Protestant churches,
a Roma church in the north-western town of Lom and a church in Krichim
near Plovdiv are preparing to challenge denial of registration at the
ECHR in Strasbourg (to whose jurisdiction Bulgaria is subject as a
member of the Council of Europe).

On a local level, administrations have often violated national law by
refusing to register individual communities. The city council in the
Black Sea port of Burgas had for example refused to register the
Jehovah's Witness congregation in the city on such grounds. "Local
authorities don't have the right to refuse," Tsanko Mitev, a pastor of
the Adventist church who also chairs a religious liberty group, told
Keston from Sofia. "Religious communities only have to notify the
authorities of their existence - that is all. But the local
authorities have often broken the law." He says two Adventist village
churches were refused such local registration in the past year.
However, he says the Adventists managed to persuade the local
authorities to revoke their refusal. "We don't like to challenge these
decisions in court, as it sets the local authorities against us. We
prefer to use persuasion." Governors of a number of regions last year
suspended a requirement imposed by some local administrations that
local registration was required, but believers of a number of faiths
say local authorities still intervene arbitrarily against groups they
dislike.

Pastor Mitev reports other local restrictions. In a complaint echoed
by other communities, he says local mayors have denied the Adventists
permission to conduct evangelistic campaigns in some small towns. "We
have had three or four such incidents this year." Emil Cohen, chairman
of the Sofia-based Tolerance Foundation, a religious freedom watchdog,
reports numerous similar incidents. Speaking to Keston from Sofia, he
complained that in Burgas, city authorities demand a permit before
religious groups can sell religious literature on the streets. In the
northern town of Pleven religious communities have to hand copies of
their full budget to the local authorities. "These are all in
contradiction with current law," he notes.

The Tolerance Foundation complained last year of the failure of the
police to intervene to protect members of the United Church of God who
had organised an evangelistic film show in the village of Ravnogor, in
the Bratsigovo municipality, which was attacked on 21 June 2001 by
"fanaticised crowds of Orthodox Christians". It reported of similar
cases in April 2001 when local municipal authorities obstructed the
Agape Association from showing the "Jesus" film at the Students'
Municipal Association in Sofia and in Nova Zagora.

But by far the most important issue is the new draft law. "We need a
new law because the old law dates from the communist period," says
Mitev. "It has many of the old ideas in it." Cohen agrees. "Religion
is still governed by the old and very bad communist-era law," he told
Keston. "I hope the process of adopting a new law will be finished
with good results." He reports that three drafts are currently being
considered in parliament: one by a deputy of the ruling party Borislav
Tsekov, which he complains is "very bad" and restricts the rights of
the non-Orthodox; one by the mainly ethnic Turkish party, the Movement
of Rights and Freedoms, which he described as "very  good"; and a new
draft presented at the end of April by the ruling party deputy Kiril
Milchev.

Cohen says a new law is unlikely to be adopted by the end of the
current parliamentary session. "The earliest a new law could be
adopted is the autumn."

International organisations have taken the government to task for its
religious policy. An earlier "unified draft" of the religion bill,
uniting elements of three separate drafts, was severely criticised in
March 2001 by the Council of Europe in a report that the then
government tried to suppress. And in an important decision, the
European Court of Human Rights ruled in October 2000 that the
government had meddled in the right of the Muslim community to choose
their own leadership freely by rejecting the validly-elected leader
and accepting in his place a rival leader (see KNS 7 November 2000).
Other cases pending before the ECHR include that of two Jehovah's
Witnesses, Nikolay Arabadjiev and Kostadin Stavrev, who complained
that their right to freedom of assembly, expression and worship had
been violated by a mob attack - in which the city's mayor reportedly
took part - on a Jehovah's Witness place of worship in Plovdiv on 4
May 1998. Court officials have told Keston that the case was
registered at the court on 13 November 2001 (case number 7380/02).

Cohen believes the Bulgarian government does pay attention to what
international organisations say. "We're a small country and our rulers
are accustomed to listen to advice from those places," he declares. He
hopes international bodies will criticise Tsekov's draft of the
religion law if it proceeds any further. In a view shared by Mitev,
Cohen says he believes the Saxecoburggotski government is more "open"
to adopting a liberal religion law than its predecessor. "However,
there is one big exception: it wants to preserve and continue the
leading position of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church - and to give
preference to one wing of the Church, that ruled by Maksim. From the
point of view of human rights, that is not a good intention."

Some minority religious leaders are optimistic the papal visit will
raise the status of minority faiths in the Orthodox-dominated country
and bring greater religious freedom. "The pope's visit will, I
believe, change the opinion of the majority of the population, as most
think we have to have only one Church, one state and one nation,"
Pastor Mitev told Keston. "Now they will see it does not cause any
problems having the Catholic Church, that it has a place in our
history and traditions and that the Protestant Churches have had the
same position in our history." (END) 

Copyright (c) 2002 Keston Institute. All rights reserved.
 
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