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Censored news site resumes work

PORTAL-CREDO.RU RESTORED
Credo Rating's Journal, 30 January 2009

The independent informational analytical Internet publication about religion "Portal-credo.ru" resumed its work in full at the basic address www.portal-credo.ru. As previously, all 65,000 articles of the portal that were published in the almost seven years of our uninterrupted work are accessible on our site.

The restoration of the portal after the unprecedented attack that made our site inaccessible right on the eve of the start of the process of election of the new patriarch of RPTsMP, on 23 January, was the result of the self-sacrificing days-long work of the team of editors and programmers. The incident that occurred a week ago has become the basis for a gradual transfer of the host of the portal and, possibly, a slight change in its web address.

The editorship expresses its sincere, most profound gratitude to the hundreds of people who supported the portal in these difficult days and who devoted their energies to restoration of its work. The editorship is especially grateful to news media that published information about the forcible curtailment of access to this basic resource of independent information and analysis about religion in Russia, and to rights defenders and to public and religious societies that expressed their concern about this perfidious act of clerical censorship.

What happened will in no way lead to a change in editorial policy; the format and ideology of the portal remains as before. . . . (tr. by PDS, posted 30 January 2009)


DOCUMENT: Censorship from the Church and government has blocked "Portal-Credo.ru" on the eve of the Council of Bishops and Local Council of the ROC MP

A press release from the editorial board of the independent news-analytical

Internet website on religion "Portal-Credo.ru" (www.Portal-Credo.ru)

(Temporary website address on Live Journal Ð http://credo-rating.livejournal.com/)

On the evening of January 23, 2009, access to our Portal was blocked by unknown forces.We were unable to restore access after trying for 16 hours after that.It seems to be a massive DOS-attack, which can also lead to the erasure of all the content of the Portal.

The editorial board believes it is connected to the forthcoming Council of Bishops and Local Council of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, which will take place January 25-30, 2009, and at which a new Patriarch of this church will be elected.On the eve of these Councils, a number of church organizations (including the "Union of Orthodox Citizens," a group dear to the patriarchal locum tenens, Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyaev)) have organized a campaign targeting our Portal, which is one of the more well-known sources of independent information on religious and societal life in Russia.The reason for this targeting has been the regular publication of information and analyses on the Portal about the candidates for patriarch and developments in the election campaign.In publishing such information, the editors maintained strict adherence to professional practices and did not allow any agitation, or the distribution of uncorroborated information, or defamation, and carefully observed all Russian laws.

Even though no official accusations were made against our Portal, the patriarchal locum tenens and representatives of his immediate circle stated on numerous occasions that they would prefer that this mass media outlet be stopped.On the eve of the election of the Patriarch, security agencies of the Russian Federation took it upon themselves to "provide for its security."The Portal learned of discussions between workers of the FSB of the RF with representatives of the clergy and church organizations regarding their preference of one of the candidates for Patriarch.A number of other opposition church Internet sites, including the Russian Autonomous Orthodox Church website and forums in support of Bishop Diomid (Dzyuban) of Chukotsk, have also been shut down.Unprecedented security measures have been taken around the Church of Our Savior, where the Councils will be held.Moscow authorities have announced the formation of a special Headquarters for the Councils "with the participation of all the involved parties," while the Moscow Chief Directorate of Internal Affairs has assigned 12,000 members of the Special Police Force (OMON) and internal units to the church.

This is not the first time that a campaign of targeting and gossip has been undertaken against the Portal, which simply tries to discuss various aspects of church life in our country.Its professionalism and trustworthiness is demonstrated in that not a single accusation against it has ever led to a court case.In this instance, the public figures of the ROC MP and their supporters in the government have shown their fear of truthful information and have turned to coarse bullying instead of an honest and open dialogue.

The editorial board asks other sources of mass media, institutions of secular society, and its readers to demonstrate forcefully against the censorship of the church-government forces and to make all effort to restore the activity of the Portal.

During the time when the Portal will remain blocked, its information can be read in the Live Journal at http://credo-rating.livejournal.com/.We also expect other similar sites and sources of mass media to distribute our information and analyses.Censorship Ð is our common enemy.

Chief Editor

"Portal-Credo.ru"

Alexander Soldatov

Moscow, January 24, 2009

Posted on Portal-credo.ru 30 January 2009

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Patriarchate handmaiden of Kremlin

MOSCOW EMBRACES
RPTsMP participated in decision to block access to Portal-credo.ru
by Vadim Yarmolinets
Portal-credo.ru, 29 January 2009

[Editor's note: Portal-credo.ru came back on-line 30 January 2009]

When I left the former Soviet Union twenty years ago, I said to myself that the door is closed and that old life has no more relationship to me. In USA I found my own Russia, a linguistic and cultural context, and my own church, ROCOR. USSR collapsed, the new authority, new freedoms, a new Putin censorship seemed like a distant ruckus. Up until that historic moment when Putin appeared in New York and met with the bishops of ROCOR and its first hierarch Metropolitan Laurus. The unification process initiated, financed, and directed by the Moscow patriarchate and its Kremlin trustees led to a painful schism in ROCOR, division of parishes and families of priests and a disruption of simply human relations among people who for decades had communed out of a single chalice. Suddenly political passions of the far-off motherland intruded into American life.

The leadership of MP did not deal with the wounds it inflicted on ROCOR. Its chief goal was to conduct a routine pompous event and check off its fulfillment of the orders of the government, of which it had become the new party. Russian authorities could not find a better ideological fellow traveler. The promise of the communists to construct paradise on earth turned out to be unfulfillable; the promise of attaining heavenly wellbeing at the end of earthly life represented the ideal form of agreement for obedience without taking upon one's self one of the sides of some kind of obligation.

The main point in support for the reunification for the followers of the late Metropolitan Laurus came down to the fact that now Russia is a free country and persecution of the church has come to an end. This is partially true. There is no persecution of RPTsMP because the new leadership of Russia has made it a participant in its commercial enterprises and its partner. Gazeta.ru reported:  "In the election of the patriarch, as is characteristic of all elections in contemporary Russia, the candidate won whom the Kremlin supported."

Hence the question: if the choice for the new patriarch, Kirill, was predetermined and the second and third candidates were called to the stage only to demonstrate the democratic nature of the council, then what was the sense of silencing the opposition? The story of the Portal-credo.ru site is instructive. The new government showed itself to be a full fledged successor of the old. What is more, it even is the old governmentÑthe fearsome Cerberus with the habits of the evildoer. Portal-credo.ru was never one of the most visited religious sites of Russia and considering how few Russians have access to the Internet, its influence on their minds was minimal. And nevertheless it was blocked and not even given any official explanations for this arbitrariness. And what about the laws regarding news media? What about court decisions? Don't ask. One moment there was Portal-credo.ru and the next there wasn't.

The Moscow patriarchate knew about the suppression of Credo.ru and, as editor Alexander Soldatov maintains, it participated in the decision to block it. This mutual support of the church and the state, which declares itself a state of law but acts with bandits' methods characterizes the partners more accurately than the correspondents of Credo.ru, who try to maintain journalistic objectivity, characterized them. And the unconcern of the Russian press over this affair (the only exceptions with Grani.ru, Civitas.ru, and CIVITAS, Herald of civil society) only confirms that this press is such a girlfriend and handmaiden of the government as well as the church of the Moscow patriarchate. We have arrived; get off; "Soviet Union" station.

Oh how one would wish that this story would be a lesson for the bishops of ROCOR(MP). That they would understand, finally, that they, who grew up in the warm and naïve West, have been wound around their fingers like provincial rubes and that they have reunited not with the mother church but with the Putin-Medvedev state structure of which they are now a part and whose tasks they fulfill under the pretense of spiritual nourishment of the flock. And what's the difference who is elected patriarch if the real head of RPTsMP today wears not patriarchal vestments but a uniform jacket with a necktie.  (tr. by PDS, posted 30 January 2009)

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