one of the most restrictive religious laws in any former Soviet republic, a news agency said Monday July 1.
If signed by the president, the new law would introduce compulsory prior censorship for all religious literature, while publishing education and charitable activity would be restricted to faiths that had ten registered communities in 1982.
In addition there would be a ban on all but occasional, small religious meetings in private homes. But Keston News Service (KNS), which monitors religious persecution in especially former Communist nations, said that the upper house failed to agree on the text of the bill already adopted by the parliament’s lower house.
LAST MINUTE PROBLEMS
Earlier reports indicated that the Belarus parliament had adopted the law. But Anatoli Novikov, an official of the upper chamber’s Commission for Social Questions, said there were last minute problems. He told KNS that it will now be considered in the autumn session, which begins on October 2, "unless there is the need to call an extraordinary session".
The development was expected to be welcomed as a miracle by Protestant Christians who had prayed and fasted against the new religion law.
But in an open letter to President Aleksandr Lukashenko released Monday July 1, leaders of the Baptists, the Pentecostals, the Full Gospel Church and the Adventists expressed their bewilderment at the hasty adoption of the bill by the lower house.
CONFLICTS AND DISPUTES
"The impression is being created that someone wants to adopt this law – which would lead only to conflicts and disputes – without serious and balanced discussion," wrote Bishop Nikolai Sinkovets of the Baptist Union, Bishop Sergei Khomich of the Pentecostal Union, Aleksandr Sakovich of the Full Gospel Association and Moisei Ostrovsky of the Adventist Church.
The church leaders added that these legal steps are taken "without taking into account the reality of the religious situation in our country." However the Belarusian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate – the biggest denomination in Belarus with more than 1,200 registered parishes – continues to back the bill.
"We hoped the law would be adopted in this session," spokesman for Metropolitan Filaret (Vakhromeyev), Andrei Petrashkevich, told KNS by telephone from the capital Minsk on Monday July 1.
WIDER POLICY
Human rights workers said the law is part of a wider policy of supporting the Orthodox Church in an effort to strengthen Slavic identity and unity in the region.
"President Aleksandr Lukashenko has already granted special financial and tax advantages to the Orthodox Church and declared that the preservation and development of this denomination is a moral necessity," said the International Coalition for Religious Freedom (ICRF) in a recent report.
