RUSSIA: New Constraints on ‘Religious Extremism’

By Kester Kenn Klomegah Reprint | | Print |

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Nov 28 2005 (IPS) - The Russian parliament is preparing new legislation to restrict missionary work suspected of sparking religious extremism.

“The increasing tendency towards religious extremism is due above all to the growth of foreign religious expansion,” member of the Duma (parliament) committee on social and religious organisations Vladimir Kulitchesky told IPS. The number of foreign religious organisations registered in Russia has risen from 20 to 69 over the past ten years, he said. The justice ministry is considering radical measures to strengthen control over religious organisations, the Vedomosti daily reported. Visa rules for missionaries will be toughened, and winding up religious centres will be made easier, the newspaper said.

Draft legislation presented by the Duma committee last month said Russia is exposed to “foreign religious expansion.” The draft builds on an official document prepared in January 2000 that drew a connection between foreign espionage and foreign religions.

In a statement then, President Vladimir Putin warned of “the negative influence of foreign religious organisations and missionaries” and of “cultural-religious expansion into Russian territory.” Since then many religious activists have been expelled from Russia. They have included Mormons, Buddhists, and members of Jewish organisations, Jehovah’s Witnesses, evangelical churches and other western missionary groups. But religious and human rights organisations say such measures violate citizens’ freedom of peaceful association and freedom of religious practice guaranteed by the constitution. The Church of the Latter Day Saints is one group facing pressure. Officials have voiced apprehensions about missionaries from this group who are active in most regions across Russia. It began its work in 1989, and has recorded a steady growth in its following.

“The authorities could not directly limit our activities because we are legally registered, and our work relates to spiritually distressed people, and we provide them with social values,” Church of the Latter Day Saints spokesman Andrey Filimonov told IPS.. The International Buddhist Fellowship (IBF) which has about a million members says such legislative moves will destroy the moral fabric of society.

“In that situation both we and civil society would be affected,” IBF leader Sanjay Lama Balgerof told IPS. “It’s unnecessary to introduce such restrictions in a modern democratic country such as Russia.” He said there was a need to take religious minorities into account when guaranteeing religious freedom. A United States government report to Congress has said that Russia’s federal and local authorities have introduced laws or policies that discriminate against minority religions. Russia rejected the U.S. State Department report. “The Russian foreign ministry is bewildered by the persistence with which the U.S. State Department is trying to label this country as a nation allegedly having problems with guaranteeing religious freedoms,” foreign ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said.

“Our stance on the issue is well-known,” he said. “Several times we have given explanations to our American colleagues at different levels about the biased criticism of the Russian Federation expressed year after year in State Department reports on religious issues.”

The U.S. report is not, however, completely dismissive of religious rights in Russia.

“I have become thoroughly acquainted with this report and I have to say that, although its conclusions raise serious doubts for me, I believe the analytic part of this document deserves a very positive mark,” Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar said.

The report acknowledges that freedom of religion in Russia is improving and “this is clearly written in regards to all traditional religions – Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism – as well as regarding an array of other religious groups and communities,” he said.

The report says that legal regulations permitting a ban on religious organisations are applied extremely rarely, even with churches and sects that have been in conflict with local authorities. The report also underlines positive changes over the restitution of property to religious communities in Russia.

“Nevertheless, I am surprised at the conclusions deduced from this analysis,” the rabbi said. “If the dynamics are so positive and if, in a period of 15 years, Russia has grown from a dictatorship of aggressive atheism to become a state that realises the need to restore religious spirituality and provide thousands of religious communities with religious freedom, then it is hard to understand why, in its analysis, the U.S. State Department depicts our country as unfavorable.”

But with new legislation being considered, the situation may swing again towards tighter control.