RELIGION SCHOLAR: GOVERNMENT EXAMINES BELIEVERS BECAUSE IT DOES NOT TRUST THEM
Government agencies in Russia are trying to create ever more legal occasions for checking up on religious associations because they do not trust believers, the chief academic fellow of the Center for the Study of Problems of Religion and Society of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academic of Sciences, Roman Lunkin, told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.
Commenting on a draft law that provides the Russian Ministry of Justice and its territorial agencies the right to conduct inspections of the financial and economic activity of religious organization in the event that they receive foreign financing, Lunkin said: "The presence of such drafts and laws is evidence of the fact that the government does not trust the public—believers—and it is afraid of their independence."
The State Duma Committee for Affairs of Public Associations and Religious Organizations on Tuesday recommended the adopting on 30 June on first reading of the government's draft of a law on religious organizations with foreign financing.
"The draft law substantially expands the grounds for conducting inspections of societies, and the main thing, for interpreting these grounds and occasions for these inspections," the expert emphasized. He said that it is still not clear how personnel of the Russian Ministry of Justice and other government agencies will interpret "the work of public organizations in churches and societies if these organizations have foreign income."
"Judging from the reaction of religious leaders, many do not imagine how the law will be applied," Lunkin said. In his opinion, "they will search for 'agents' among Muslims and protestant churches, and for resources from the Middle East and America, respectively.
"Believers who have suffered over the course of the whole history of Russia, and especially in the soviet period, do not deserve such treatment of themselves," the expert added. (tr. by PDS, posted 20 June 2015)
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