reports that Catholic priests have been ordered to leave Belarus while Baptist and other Christian groups were raided in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Religious rights group Forum 18 said two Catholic priests from Poland who served in Belarus for over a decade were ordered to leave the country by year’s end "as their religious visas have not been renewed."
Robert Krzywicki, priest of the Descent of the Holy Spirit parish in Borisov near the capital Minsk, told the Forum 18 News Service (F18News) his expulsion was a punishment for his "work with young people, both Catholic and non-Catholic," and his active role "in ecumenical and charitable events in the town."
He said the scheduled expulsions make it difficult for the Catholic Church "to provide clergy who understand" their parishioners. "It takes about five years for a foreign priest to learn the language, the culture and the situation," he was qouted as saying. "When a new priest arrives from abroad he doesn’t understand these."
"LAST DICTATORSHIP"
The United States has described Belarus as the "last dictatorship of Europe," charges president Aleksander Lukashenko has strongly denied. He has however stressed there will be no people’s revolutions, whether "rose, orange or banana", in his country, a reference to popular protests in Georgia and Ukraine which saw the opposition rise to power.
"Although the country’s top religious affairs official has rejected recent US allegations that Belarus restricts religious freedom, some religious communities continue to be fined or warned for worshipping in private homes," Forum 18 noted. "A new amendment to the Criminal Code allows the state to imprison participants in unregistered or liquidated religious organizations for up to two years," the group said.
Ahead of the 2006 presidential elections, the government has reportedly been seeking religious organizations’ support by exempting their land and property from tax. However one of the largest evangelical churches in the country, the New Life Church, has already suggested this development comes to late as its property is due to be confiscated by
the state authorities.
PRESSURE MOUNTS
Pressure on Christians also mounts in other former Soviet republics such as Turkmenistan where a prayer meeting of the Turkmen-speaking registered Baptist church in the town of Deynau, in the north-eastern Lebap region, was raided, F18News quoted Protestant sources as saying.
On Saturday, December 17, seven church members were holding a house group meeting when security forces and a local Imam called raided the house of a new convert to Protestant Christianity, identified only as Oguldurdy, F18News reported. One secret police officer and prosecutor reportedly started shouting and threatening the Christians while searching the house without a required search warrant for religious literature. Two Christians apparently had their personal Bibles confiscated.
Police officials were not immediately available for comment. At the same time a Jehovah’s Witness, A. B. Soyegov, is being held in a psychiatric hospital in Turkmenistan because of his refusal on religious grounds to undertake military service, Forum 18 said.
CHRISTIANS "TRAITORS"
Later, the seven Baptists were taken to the Public Prosecutor’s Office where they were allegedly told that local authorities should hold public meetings in villages, "where Christians should be personally named and denounced as traitors." One woman was threatened with expulsion from her rented flat, while all the detained Baptists were forced to justify their actions in writing to the authorities, before being released, Forum 18 claimed.
Regional authorities reportedly refused to accept the registration of local Baptists and threatened with more attacks. Officials in Turkmenistan have however denied that registration of nationally registered religious organizations applies throughout the country
Elsewhere in the region, in Uzbekistan, Ulugbek Taishmatov of the Andijan regional Department of Internal Affairs, has denied pressuring Protestant pastor Bakhtier Tuichiev, despite interrogating him daily over four days and banning his church’s activity, F18News said. He told the news agency that "no-one has been questioning [the pastor]. We simply chatted to him as friends. We don’t have any intention of making trouble for him."
NOT REASSURED
Pastor Tuichiev is not reassured and reportedly said that "he didn’t talk to me in a friendly way at all. I remain very concerned for my safety."
Tuichiev claimed he was questioned personally by Taishmatov from 9 am till 6 pm over four days, and said the official forced him to write a statement that church members would not meet for religious gatherings. "I was afraid that if I did not write it, I would simply be arrested."
Violating "international human rights standards" Uzbekistan as made unregistered religious activity illegal, Forum 18 commented. Human rights experts have linked the pressure on active churches to concern among authorities to lose control over spreading Christianity which they allegedly see as a threat to their powerbase. (With reports from the region and BosNewsLife Research).
