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Contrary to John Helmer's overwrought comment in JRL #7227, I did not assert that Baptist student Andrew Okhotin's current ordeal is necessarily a case of religious persecution. I think it's more likely just business as usual at Sheremetevo Airport, i.e. corruption. If the target of opportunity had been a journalist or a secular charity worker rather than a religious activist, I think the behavior of the Russian officials would have been essentially the same. But in that case I doubt that Mr. Helmer would have written such an unbalanced article, giving all the benefit of the doubt to the Russian bureaucrats and none to their victim. I also doubt that he would have played on our emotions with irrelevant jabs at "fanatics" and asides about George W. Bush's foreign policies, tarring the victim with guilt by association.
I repeat: the threat of religious persecution continues to hang over Mr. Okhotin's fellow "initsiativniki" Baptists in Russia. If I had been in Mr. Okhotin's position, I too would have declined to specify just who would be receiving the donations from America. To treat this as suspicious behavior is to play right into the hands of the enemies of a genuinely free and pluralistic society--enemies who lately have been gaining strength in Russia.
Mr. Helmer seems to have more faith than many of us in the Russian legal process--at least in cases where Russian bureaucrats are harassing people whom Mr. Helmer dislikes such as religious believers. If he himself should ever experience such harassment, I hope that supporters of freedom of the press will not "wait for the Russian legal process to reach its end" before speaking up in his behalf.
Mr. Helmer also raises the issue of so-called "proselytism." Most western journalists insist (correctly) that advocates of secular belief systems--feminists, environmentalists, libertarians, socialists--should be free to try to convince Russians to accept their ideas. Religious believers such as Mr. Okhotin have the same moral and legal right, ostensibly guaranteed by Russia's own constitution. Unfortunately Russian officials often infringe on that right in practice, and such infringements receive too little attention because too many western observers are not interested in the rights of people whose religious beliefs they do not share. The next time Mr. Helmer writes about church-state relations in Russia, I hope he will keep a better grip on his prejudices. (from Johnson's Russia List, #7228, posted 19 June 2003)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
In the middle of last week several Internet sites and news agencies disseminated information to the effect that at Sheremetevo-2 airport an American citizen, Andrew Okhotin, was arrested "with 48,000 contraband dollars." For example, the NEWSru.com site reported literally the following: "According to information from MID [Ministry of Foreign Affairs], American citizen Andrew Okhotin was arrested upon his proceeding down the 'green corridor' in the customs area of the airport with a large sum of currency which had not been entered into his declaration. RIA Novosti was told at the information and press department of MID of RF that Okhotin thereby violated existing Russian rules for customs and currency regulation and will be punished."
MID's statement evokes amazement and bewilderment. First, it is not clear what sources of information MID is using. The criminal case file contains the customs declaration that Mr. Okhotin personally filled out on which the entire sum that incriminates him is reported and which he filled out at the proper time before crossing the customs barrier and gave to the customs inspector when he was first required to. Second, MID does not have at this time any basis for stating the Mr. Okhotin will be punished. According to the constitution of the Russian federation, "every person accused of committing a crime is considered innocent until his guilt is proven according to procedures provided by federal law and given legal force by sentence of a court." As of the morning of 16 June, Okhotin still had not even been given an indictment. The statement of employees of the information and press department of MID is evidence of clear disregard for Russian laws and human rights and could be considered either incompetence or intentional disinformation.
In reality, Andrew Okhotin's mistake was that he, out of ignorance, walked through the "green" rather than the "red" customs corridor (in USA there is no such division of the corridor into "green" and "red"). However, Mr. Okhotin's carelessness does not constitute a crime, since he had no intention to commit a crime, there was no mercenary motive, and he posed no danger to society. According to currency legislation, there is no limitation on bringing foreign currency into Russia and there is no requirement for permission from the customs agency for its transport.
So what is it that MID does not want to see and what is it keeping quiet about? First, the investigation of this essentially elementary case has been delayed for almost three months, and from 19 April until 5 June not a single investigative action was taken. Second, back in the middle of May Mr. Okhotin reported in a letter to the president of the Russian federation and the prosecutor general of RF that 15,000 US dollars had been extorted from him by customs agents, which certainly requires investigation. Third, Mr. Okhotin, while awaiting the resolution of his fate, has been forced to spend an extended period of time in Moscow without a definite place of residence and work, suspending his studies at Harvard University. Fourth, as a sign of protest against such "justice" the young man has been on a hunger strike for more than 20 days. Fifth, many well known American public and political figures have already come to the defense of Okhotin's rights, sending to various Russian offices petitions and requests for an attentive and just approach to the resolution of this case. It is obvious that these petitions have been the catalyst for the hasty and nonobjective report by MID. This cannot evoke anything other than profound regret. (tr. by PDS, posted 18 June 2003)
From: Lawrence Uzzell <Lauzzell@aol.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003
Subject: re 7222-Helmer
John Helmer's commentary in the June 13 DJL on a Baptist Harvard student's difficulties with Russian customs officials omits some essential context. First, if one reads the more balanced accounts in the Boston Globe and elsewhere, it is clear that the Russian authorities have not just been trying to enforce customs regulations but to confiscate the entire $48,000 sum that Andrew Okhotin was carrying-or, failing in that, to extract a substantial bribe through the lawyer whom they "recommended" to Okhotin. As one U.S. Embassy official familiar with the case put it, "It was a scam. He (the lawyer) was trying to get money. There was really no way to prove that it was customs officials directly asking for a bribe. We know that this has happened before, and it's the same lawyer." (See the Cnsnews.com account at http://www.crosswalk.com/news/religiontoday/1204100.html.) Such tactics are of course well-known to all of us who have lived for any length of time in post-Soviet Russia.
Second, contrary to Helmer's insinuations, the "initsiativniki" Evangelical Christian Baptists are not a branch of some wealthy, politically powerful group of American Protestant fanatics that dictates George W. Bush's foreign policies, but an indigenous Russian body whose American supporters are mostly Russian emigres. The largest American Protestant organizations, such as the Southern Baptist Convention or the Slavic Gospel Association, have no relations with the "initsiativniki"; they prefer to work through the better-connected, semi-establishment Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, which in a sense is the Protestant counterpart of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow.
Of all the Protestant groups in today's Russia, the "initsiativniki" deserve the most sympathy from human-rights advocates of all religious (or non-religious) beliefs. It was they who split off from the mainstream Union of Evangelical-Christians Baptists in the early 1960s because they rejected the Soviet regime's demands that they compromise their own convictions, e.g. that they refrain from teaching religion even to the children of their own members. They paid a heavy price for their refusal to collaborate with the regime-not just in labor-camp sentences for their leaders, but in systematic discrimination in employment and education. The threat of persecution continues to hang over them today: Russia's harsh 1997 religion law (which fortunately has not been systematically enforced) denies them freedoms granted to more tractable religious entities, such as the right to engage in publishing and educational activities. Police harassment of "initsiativniki" attempting to distribute religious tracts and the like has become increasingly frequent since the mid-1990s. If your readers want to keep track of such events and of other religious-freedom issues, I recommend that they look at the website of the Forum Eighteen News Service, http://www.forum18.org/.
It is clear from Helmer's commentary that he has a visceral dislike
for fundamentalist Christians. Fortunately, there are other journalists
who acknowledge that even people whom one dislikes have basic human rights.
(from Johnson's Russia List, #7226, posted 18 June 2003)
From: "John Helmer" <helmer@online.ru>
Subject: SLIP-UP ON THE CHURCH ROAD
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003
SLIP-UP ON THE CHURCH ROAD
by John Helmer in Moscow
The church is near but the road is all ice, Russian peasants used to say. The tavern is far, but I'll walk very carefully.
According to a story just published in the Boston Globe, Andrew Okhotin is a well-meaning young American churchman with Russian origins, who was on his way to deliver donations to a group of Russian fundamentalist Christians known as the Evangelical Christian Baptists. He slipped up at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, the Globe reports, in a dispute with Russian Customs officers over $48,000 in cash which Okhotin was carrying. Okhotin's version is that he made a mistake walking down the green corridor, when he meant to choose the red. The Customs version is that he was trying to smuggle the cash without declaring it legally.
Apparently, all sorts of Americans are praying to God about this matter, and at the same time calling their congressmen to stop the religious persecution. In the words of one of the US congressmen, Henry Hyde of Illinois, this may be a case of "religious bias on some level inside the Russian government." Hyde and five other congressmen have written a letter to the Kremlin demanding justice for Okhotin.
The Boston Globe has taken an interest in the case, apparently because Okhotin is a student at the Harvard Divinity School; Harvard, you understand, is to the Globe, what God is to the Divinity School - a voice you automatically genuflect to, before you have time to think. And time to think is not a practice encouraged by the members of the faith, especially not the Evangelical Christian Baptists of the Russian Evangelist Ministry, a California-based group to which Okhotin and his donations reportedly belong, and which Okhotin's father reportedly founded, after he escaped from being persecuted by the KGB. Naturally, knowing the relief provided from taxes by the US tax code, Okhotin senior registered his outfit as non-profit. But according to Okhotin junior, who says he told Russian Customs the same thing, he didn't declare the $48,000 to the US authorities as he left Logan Airport in Boston, headed for Russia. He may not have known it, but his organization should have known that that's a violation of US law. Okhotin junior slipped, not once, but twice.
Now don't get me wrong. The constitutions of Russia and the United States protect the rights of all believers to believe what they will, enjoying such tax relief on earth as they are entitled to, plus investment credit for an eternity; and to market that investment advice in emerging markets like Russia's, however dubious may the prospectus. Not for us is the example of some countries, where it is judged criminal to attempt to push one belief down the throats of non-believers. In Greece, Israel and Saudi Arabia, for example - states where Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are the state religions - proselytism is a serious crime, punishable by a spell in prison. In Russia, the attitude towards missionaries has been a little more tolerant, if ambiguously so, as the Roman Catholic Church has been discovering when some of its priests have had their entry visas cancelled.
In the US lately, however, fundamentalist believers of both Christian and Jewish types have openly preached in favour of the conversion of the Moslems, on the ground, as some have put it, that the third faith is a wicked one. The American holy war against these infidels has been supporting Israel against the Palestinians for many years now. It has even been preached by Harvard professors. But it kicked into spiritual overdrive after the attacks of September 11, 2001, with the US roundup of thousands of suspected domestic infidels; the invasion of Afghanistan; and a few weeks ago, the invasion of Iraq. By the way, it's a pity the Bush Administration chose to rely on a pack of provable lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, when it could have proceeded on the basis of those tenets of faith that brook no argument. Did the fanatics, sorry the faithful really mean to convince the skeptics with facts? Or did they believe the faithful have as much right to use deceit when fighting against non-believers, as against infidels?
When Okhotin junior (his name in Russian means "son of the hunter") landed at Sheremetyevo, he had no obligation to disclose what appeals his father had made to obtain the $48,000 in donations; nor what beliefs persuaded the donors to subscribe. Nor does Russian law allow customs officers to interrogate visitors regarding the purposes for which such large sums are to be spent in Russia. The money would be welcome, most customs officers would agree, if it were to be spent on the taverns and casinos that lie between the airport and the city center. But it would matter if the money were obtained with the intent to promote crimes against the Russian state, or such social crimes as incitement to racial and ethnic hatred. That's a prosecutable offence in Russia, and even if enforcement has been lacking, the kind of anti-moslem fanaticism that characterizes American public discourse at present is an offence in Russia.
So what exactly was the Okhotin money for? He says there was no mention of Islam in the appeals that produced the money he was intending to distribute. Such funds as had been raised over ten years of his church's ministry in Russia had been transferred by banks in the past, but Okhotin isn't sure how much that may have totaled. Why cash this time? Okhotin cannot explain, nor is he able to estimate how many recipients he intended to meet on his rounds. The number would be "sizeable", he suggests; in addition to assisting individuals, the funds were also intended for congregations and buildings. As for proselytism, that isn't something Okhotin and his church do in Russia. They "bear witness" to their faith, he says. If the witnesses are persuaded, they are doing no more than their constitution allows them to do with their beliefs, including changing them.
Now the publicity that has been stirred up in the US could multiply severalfold the $48,000 Okhotin has almost certainly now lost - if not to the Russian authorities, then to the US ones - if the faithful are convinced that a wrong has been done to their churchman and their church. On that point, Okhotin says the publicity has just started, and he doesn't know if fresh donations are rolling in. But he does know - he says with conviction - that a wrong has been done by the Russian authorities. And he believes that wrong has nothing to do with the money, or the slip-up at the airport; and everything to do with religious freedom and Russian persecution. Asked what evidence he has to substantiate that, Okhotin says it is that the Federal Security Service (FSB) has made contact with his lawyer. Asked if the counterpart US authorities were to pursue him for his violation of US rules, he would interpret that as a case of religious freedom and persecution, he is not so sure.
A Russian decision is expected shortly on whether to prosecute Okhotin on a criminal charge of smuggling; to impose a $19,000 fine for an administrative violation; or to release him and return his money. In the meantime, here's a lesson for all holy warriors, wherever they walk. When the road is covered with ice, you can almost never retrace your steps. (from Johnson's Russia List, #7222, posted 18 June 2003)
HARVARD STUDENT SEEKS RUSSIAN JUSTICE
SMUGGLING CHARGES PROVOKE OUTCRY FROM LEGISLATORS
by David Filipov, Globe Staff, and Catherine Dunn, Globe Correspondent
The Boston Globe, 8 June 2003
One morning in March, Andrew Okhotin, a Harvard Divinity School student carrying $48,000 in donations he says were intended for Russian churches, chose the wrong line at Moscow's international airport.
It was an innocent mistake, says Okhotin, 28, but one that changed his life profoundly.
Now he is accused of a crime he says he did not commit. He says Russian officials tried to extort money from him, threatened him with imprisonment or worse to try to extract a confession, and fabricated testimony against him after he refused to pay them off. Since May 21, Okhotin has been on a hunger strike to protest the charges against him.
Russian authorities say this is a case of attempted contraband, which carries a maximum five-year prison sentence.
Okhotin has become the subject of prayer vigils in the United States and has sparked a firestorm of criticism over the state of due process in Russia led by senior members of Congress, who have written to President Vladimir V. Putin.
Looking gaunt, Okhotin, a student in Harvard's Master of Theological Studies program who had taken a semester off, sipped on bottled water outside a central Moscow coffeehouse last week and tried to explain how he ended up in his situation.
"It has taken on a life of its own," he said, smiling wanly.
Okhotin says he had come to Russia to deliver donations collected in the United States by the Russian Evangelist Ministry, a San Diego-based nonprofit group founded by his father, Vladimir, a former Soviet religious dissident who brought his family to the United States in 1989. Andrew Okhotin says the funds were intended for Evangelical Christian Baptists here - a group that was repressed under Soviet rule but that has been generally tolerated in post-communist Russia.
Okhotin arrived at the Sheremetyevo-2 airport on the morning of March 29 on an overnight flight from New York. After entering passport control, he says he filled out a customs form declaring the money. But at customs, he took the "green" corridor, intended for passengers with nothing to declare. A customs official asked Okhotin whether he was carrying foreign currency and whether he had filled out a declaration.
Okhotin said he answered "yes" to both questions. But instead of directing him to the proper "red" corridor, Okhotin said, the customs officers detained him and he was interrogated for 12 hours. He said officials declined his request to notify the US Embassy.
Okhotin said one official, Major Irina Kondratskaya, told him he could go free if he paid $10,000. When he refused, she told him customs would confiscate the $48,000 and launch a criminal case against him for attempted smuggling. "She said: 'You are going to jail. We have bad jails; bad things will happen to you there,' " Okhotin said. Then she offered to let him go for $5,000.
When Okhotin again refused to pay, officials released him into the custody of his brother, David, who lives in Moscow, on the condition that he not leave the city. They also gave him the phone number of a lawyer; Okhotin says that when he met with the man the next day, he told him to pay $15,000 if he wanted to see his money again.
Kondratskaya's report, a copy of which was made available to the Globe, says that once Okhotin entered the green corridor, he was guilty of smuggling under Russia's Criminal Code. The report also says Okhotin initially declared only $10, and voluntarily produced the full sum only after officers began a strip search and an inspection of his belongings.
The lawyer Okhotin decided to retain, Anatoli Pchelentsev, said the criminal investigator for the case, Olga Pugacheva, reported she did not see grounds for a criminal trial. But Pchelentsev said Pugacheva added she was under pressure from her superiors to obtain a conviction. Kondratskaya and Pugacheva declined interview requests.
The customs agent who detained him initially wrote in his report that Okhotin had voluntarily showed the declaration. But later the agent changed his statement to say Okhotin had tried to smuggle in the money.
Pchelentsev said he has been contacted by the Federal Security Service, the domestic successor of KGB, the Soviet secret police, who in 1984 imprisoned Okhotin's father for "anti-Soviet activities."
"There is concern that this case may represent further evidence of religious bias on some level inside the Russian government," said Sam Stratman, a spokesman for US Representative Henry J. Hyde, Republican of Illinois, who is chairman of the House International Relations Committee.
Hyde and five other congressmen wrote a letter to Putin demanding justice for Okhotin and suggesting that Russian authorities "may be manufacturing accusations against Mr. Okhotin in order to extort the charitable donations."
One of the authors of the letter, Representative Joseph R. Pitts, Republican of Pennsylvania, said the case showed "the massive corruption in Russia."
Prokofi Tvaltvadze, head of investigations in Sheremetyevo-2 airport, said he is convinced of Okhotin's guilt. "If we detained someone on smuggling charges, that means he was trying to smuggle in contraband," he said.
Even if investigators drop the criminal charges against Okhotin, Pchelentsev said, customs still could still fine him $19,000, a sum Okhotin said he would refuse to pay. "I'm not going to stop the hunger strike until they dismiss the case," he said.
He lost 22 pounds in the first four days after he stopped eating food. He said he gets tired easily, has difficulty concentrating, and spends much of his time in bed.
"We've been praying all this time," said his sister, Helena, 24, who lives in San Diego with their parents. (Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company, posted 18 June 2003)
From: "John Helmer" <helmer@online.ru>
Subject: Reply to Lawrence Uzell JRL 7226
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003
Believers versus liars
If he wants to substantiate his claim that Mr. Okhotin's trouble with the Russian authorities is a case of religious persecution, Mr Uzell should do better than read newspapers, and quote selectively from them. He might try interviewing Mr. Okhotin himself for the more than two hours I took in two separate conversations. Mr. Okhotin cannot provide evidence substantiating that his trouble with the Russian authorities has involved religious persecution, except for the fact that the Federal Security Service interviewed his lawyer. That's not enough. Nor can Mr. Okhotin answer such questions as why he was carrying $48,000 in cash, when he admits he had never done so before; and when he concedes that in the past transfers between his US-based group and its Russian contacts went by bank transfer. Mr. Okhotin is less than believable too when he fudges his answers to questions relating to what the money was for, and to whom he planned on distributing it. As to the charge of Russian corruption, Mr. Uzell, like Mr. Okhotin, appears to be unfamiliar with the Anglo-American jurisprudential doctrine of "clean hands". Roughly speaking, it means that if one is in commission of a crime, one cannot be believed when one accuses someone else of committing a crime. In Mr.Okhotin's case, he says he did not declare to the US authorities that he was taking $48,000 out of the US, and he does not claim that his organization did so either. He says he didn't know it was unlawful for him to exit with the money without declaring it. But he also told me that on his arrival, the Russian authorities asked him whether he had declared the money to the US authorities, and he says he told them he had not. Thus, the Russian authorities knew that Mr. Okhotin was in violation of US law when the slip-up occurred at Sheremetyevo. Maybe there has been a Russian attempt to extort a bribe, maybe not. But the one person who cannot substantiate that claim is Mr. Okhotin. Mr. Uzzell won't do either. Before he jumps to too many more unwarranted, legally feeble conclusions, Mr. Uzzell would do well to wait for the Russian legal process to reach its end, and issue a determination of whether Mr. Okhotin's action was a legal violation that should be tried in court; an administrative violation that should attract a fine; or the harmless mistake Mr. Okhotin claims. Finally, Mr. Uzzell distorts the section of my report regarding the doctrines of groups like Mr. Okhotin's. I asked Mr. Okhotin whether the funds he was carrying were raised by appeals that included any reference to Islam in Russia. His answer was that this was "probably not mentioned". Unconvincing. I asked Mr. Okhotin whether the money might be spent on activities relating to prosyletizing non-believers. He replied with a distinction between that and "bearing witness". Unconvincing again. Mr. Uzzell is right about just one thing. I have a visceral dislike, but of liars, not of fundamentalist believers. I'm not sure what, in the context of this case, the human rights of liars should be, but the righteous Mr. Uzzell isn't any help. And so let's see if he has better answers to the questions Mr. Okhotin couldn't or wouldn't give. And let's also see how the Russian investigation turns out. (from Johnson's Russia List, #7227, posted 18 June 2003)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
The press center of the patriarchate of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church (UAPTs) distributed a statement on 17 June which reports the development of a conflict between two leaders of this church, the primate Metropolitan Mefody Kudriakov and the chancellor Archbishop Igor Isichenko. According to the report of "Sedmitsa.ru," the press center that is controlled by Archbishop Igor expressed a negative reaction to documents over the signature of Metropolitan Mefody, according to which the archbishop is declared to be excluded from the hierarchs of UAPTs, removed from all offices, and placed on leave.
The statement of the UAPTs press center calls attention of the adherents of this church "to the fact that the protocol of the joint session of the bishops' council and the patriarchal council of UAPTs, that was conducted on 9 April 2003, was sent for signature by the participants of the session only a month later than it was held and it contained changes and additions that did not appear in the original version of the protocol."
The press center of the patriarchate of UAPTs confirms that officially neither the protocol referred to, nor the decisions of the joint session of the bishops' council and the patriarchal council of 9 April 2003, nor the decree of Metropolitan Mefody of 15 May 2003 were sent either to the patriarchate of UAPTs or the consistory of the Kharkov-Poltava diocese of UAPTs, which Archbishop Igor rules, or to him personally.
The statement of the UAPTs press center says that the decision of the council of 9 April, by which Archbishop Igor was required to repent before the feast of Pascha (27 April 2003), is of a provocative nature. The statement also notes that Archbishop Igor was selected chancellor of the patriarchate by a local council of UAPTs in 2000 for the period up to the All-Ukrainian Orthodox local council, and thus he will continue to fulfill his duties while concurrently heading the Kharkov-Poltava diocese of UAPTs.
In the conclusion of his letter Archbishop Igor maintains that Metropolitan Mefody is supported by "the state and the Moscow patriarchate," and he categorically refuses to have fellowship with his supporters. (tr. by PDS, posted 18 June 2003)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
In the half-destroyed "Chaika" stadium on the outskirts of Voronezh, under the open sky, the "Jehovah's Witnesses" conducted their annual summer provincial congress with 5,500 participants representing over fifty local associations (in their terminology, "meetings") from Voronezh, Belgorod, Lipetsk, and Tambov provinces, a "Portal-credo.ru" correspondent reports.
About a third of the participants represented Belgorod province, from where local Jehovists regularly go to Voronezh to conduct mass demonstrations, since the Belgorod authorities are preventing this organization from leasing premises and also are not permitting them to construct houses of worship.
It has become the practice to hold thematic congresses for the purposes of interpreting biblical texts for the greatest number of fellow believers twice a year, with the largest being in the summer. On all summer weekends in various places in Russia and the world, district congresses are held, which are attended by representatives of congregations who live in the surrounding territories. (Hence the congresses have gotten their name as "provincial.")
At the Voronezh congress, 141 persons received baptism in accordance with the Jehovah's Witnesses ritual. In previous years the Jehovah's Witnesses' congresses in Voronezh have drawn about 5,000 participants, and the number of those receiving baptism was twice as great, although the event was held for five provinces, Voronezh, Belgorod, Lipetsk, Tambov, and Kursk.
This year local authorities did not raise any problems for the congress' organizers or the management of the stadium, and according to the organizers the police provided security at the location. In one of the previous years the city administration made an attempt to open up an administrative case against the management of the stadium, which had concluded a lease agreement with the Jehovists, and the police refused to provide security for the stadium without sanction from the city authorities.
In 1998, the Jehovah's Witnesses' congress that was held in the central sports arena of the city was attended by the incumbent governor, Ivan Shabanov. Since then, the better venues of the city have turned out to be closed to this organization.
Jehovah's Witnesses are the most dynamically growing denomination of the provinces in the Russian Black Earth region. (In just recent times they have begun facing competition from Pentecostals.) At the very end of the 1980s, there existed here only small underground congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses.
At the present time, according to expert estimates, the largest congregation in the five provinces of the Black Earth region is in Voronezh province, numbering on the order of 6,000-7,000 members of the Jehovah's Witnesses community. (tr. by PDS, posted 17 June 2003)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
The priest Vasily Mkalavishvili, who was excommunicated from the Georgian Orthodox church and heads the current "independent Gldani diocese," has been threatened with a prison term of from four to eight years, "Blagovest-info" reports, citing the "Akhali Taoba" newspaper. Yesterday the Tbilisi district court left in force the decision of the Vake-Saburtalo court sentencing Mkalavishvili to three months in prison on the charge of causing damage to others' property. The Tbilisi district court took account of Vasily Mkalavishvili's hiding from the investigation.
The court's decision evoked dismay from those present in the court. Representatives of the flock declared that they would conduct a protest demonstration in front of the chancellery. The priest's attorney Kartlos Garibashvili called the flock "not to get into a conflict with the police but to go to the Gldani diocese and draw up a plan of action there." Garibashvili himself stated that he was declaring "the beginning of civil war." Police put Vasily Mkalavishvili's flock into busses and took them to Gldani.
Last year Vasily Mkalavishvili demanded that the authorities take measures for putting an end to the activity of the religious associations of Jehovah's Witnesses and Baptists. The former priest said that if the law enforcement agencies did not take decisive measures for prohibiting the "subversive activity of the sectarians," then he and his adherents "will continue the struggle with them by customary methods." (tr. by PDS, posted 17 June 2003)
See related reports at Forum 18 (16 June 2003)
GEORGIA: "We'll
be back," mob warns Pentecostals
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Orthodox arsonists destroy Baptist church?
Russia Religion News Current News Items