to welcome them following the recent adoption of a law on the legal status of foreigners, reports suggested Tuesday, December 10.
"The law regulates relations that previously were not subject to regulation," Vladimir Ryakhovsky, co-director of the Moscow-based Slavic Centre for Law and Justice, told Keston News Service.
"But in the law religious activity is put on the same level as working activity, and that is incorrect," he said about the new legislation which was adopted on November 1.
"A special procedure must be established, defining the manner in which a religious organization should invite foreign citizens," Ryakhovsky added. Several foreign Catholic and Protestant Christians, including priests, pastors and other missionary workers, have already been expelled or refused entry this year, even before the law became official.
FOREIGN PRIEST
Andrei Sebentsov, a government official dealing with issues affecting religious associations, was quoted as saying that the need for a religious organization to receive permission for a foreign priest to work depends on the relationship they have.
"If this is unpaid work then there is not an issue," he said according KNS. "But if he is working for money, for example, the Old Believer organization keeps a work log for priests. The Russian Orthodox Church reacted negatively to drawing up a contract with priests. They say they are their priests, not hired hands," he noted.
Catholic officials told KNS that this has lead to "complete confusion," among church workers arriving from countries as far as Congo.
IMMIGRATION CARDS
"We were told that all foreigners must be issued with immigration cards at the visa and registration offices at their place of registration before the end of the year," Fr Igor Kovalevsky, secretary of the Russian Catholic bishops’ conference told KNS.
He said there were especially problems with immigration cards which ask "the aim of your visit to Russia" for which various responses are provided such as ‘work’ or ‘business trip’.
"Both ‘work’ and ‘business trip’ could apply to us," said Fr. Igor. "But a business trip is just a short visit, while for work you have to receive prior permission…"
The difficulties in Russia come amid concern among non Orthodox churches that the authorities throughout the former Soviet Union are increasingly putting pressure on them.
UZBEKISTAN BAPTISTS
On Tuesday, December 10, reports said that in the ex-Soviet republic of Uzbekistan a Baptist leader was found guilty and fined for organizing "unregistered" gatherings and showing "unlicensed" religious videos in a private home in Gulistan, 120 kilometres (75 miles) south west of the capital Tashkent.
KNS said a local court fined Boris Akrachkov 6,000 soms, about $7, a huge amount in this largely impoverished, mainly Islamic, nation.
"We are being blamed for the fact that the church in Gulistan is unregistered," the press-officer of the Baptist Union, Dmitri Pitirimov, was reported as saying by KNS. "We have tried several times to register since 1998, but have been refused on the basis that a church must have 100 members in order to gain registration."
Human rights organizations continue to put pressure on the international community not to forget suffering Christians in the troubled region, as world attention seems focused on Iraq and the war against terrorism.
