authorities apparently pressured a public library to cancel its rental agreement, the Forum 18 News Service (F18News) reported Thursday, March 13.
Baptist Pastor Aleksei Kalyashin told F18News that "pressure from above" was the only explanation given for the termination of the congregation’s verbal rental agreement with the Ushinsky Library, which is located near famous Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery.
He said the library’s administration "unexpectedly" informed the Baptists that they could no longer use the premises and returned an advance rental payment. The closure was a major set-back for the growing Baptist community, which had been meeting in the library premises after opening hours for the last 6 years.
LEGAL ENTITIES
A city official defended the decision saying that "only legal entities can rent public facilities for religious services" F18News reported. However Pastor Kalyashin said the Moscow Baptists are now being told that public premises may be rented only to legal persons according to an unspecified municipal decree.
He suggested the situation resembled the last days of Communism under Perestroika in the late 1980s when "the congregation is currently forced to meet at up to seven different private flats at a time," F18News reported.
Kalyashin said the Baptists were expelled because, as an unregistered religious group, they do not have the status of a legal person according to Russia’s controversial 1997 law on religion.
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL
The Baptist congregation is a member of the International Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians/Baptists, which broke away from the mainstream Baptist Union over issues of co-operation with the atheist Soviet state in 1961.
As it continues to adhere to a rigid principle of separation of church and state none of its current 3,705 congregations throughout the former Soviet Union are registered.
Local officials have said however that "plenty of religious organizations" rented cinemas and other public premises in Moscow without hindrance.
Some human rights activists say the difficulties of Baptists and other denominations are linked to pressure on non Orthodox groups, which gained in strength since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, at the expense of Russia’s old Orthodox Church.
FORUM 18
Forum 18, the Oslo based religious rights organization, said it observed what turned out to be one of the Baptists’ last meetings at the library in January when "there was standing room only for two visiting Dutch preachers."
News about the Baptists was one of the first stories transmitted via the Internet by F18News, which was officially launched Thursday March 13, as a media flagship of Forum 18. Founded in 1998, Forum 18 investigates (religion) violations of Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
"At the moment (F18News) covers the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe, but we aim to broaden our coverage to include China and other parts of the world," said its editor Felix Corley in a statement to BosNewsLife.
