RUSSIA RELIGION NEWS


Pentecostal believer punished on testimony of spy

NEW FINE AND NEW CASE REGARDING ILLEGAL EVANGELISM, THIS TIME IN KEMEROVO

SOVA Center for News and Analysis, 29 September 2016

 

In late September 2016 it was learned that in Kemerovo province a Ukrainian citizen was fined for illegal evangelism. She visited several protestant congregations and an administrative case was initiated against the pastor of one of these congregations.

 

In August, the leader of the Family and Women's Ministry in the movement of the New Generation in Pershotravensk and Kharkov, Irina Tishchenko, visited groups of this movement in Novokuznetsk and Leninsk-Kuznetsky. At a meeting in Novokuznetsk, believers noticed several outsiders who were taking videos of the meeting using telephones and so I. Tishchenko decided not to speak at this meeting. In Leninsk-Kuznetsky people were observing believers near the building of the church.

 

After I. Tishchenko spoke at a worship service in the Kemerovo church of the New Generation and greeted Pastor Andrei Matiuzhov's spouse on her birthday, the Ukrainian citizen was arrested by police officers. The pastor did not permit them to enter the church during the service and therefore the woman was detained at a traffic checkpoint late in the night, when she was already returning to Ukraine. She was indicted on the basis of part 5 of article 5.26 of the Code on Administrative Violations of Law (conduct of missionary activity with the violation of the requirements of legislation on freedom of conscience and freedom of religious confession and on religious associations by a foreign citizen or person with citizenship).

 

On 14 September, the Zavod district court of Kemerovo sentenced I. Tishchenko, in absentia, to a fine. The court's decision says that I. Tishchenko did not have permission from the church of the New Generation to conduct missionary activity.  However, the church is not registered as a religious organization and had not notified authorities about its existence as a group, that is, it was not able to issue such permission. In issuing its decision, the court cited the testimony of a witness who is not a member of the group who made a video of the meeting. He said that he attended the meeting out of curiosity and that he considered what happened at the meeting as an attempt to draw him into the religious association. On 27 September, a case was opened against Pastor Andrei Matiuzhov on the basis of part 4 of article 5.26 of the Code on Administrative Violations of Law (conduct of missionary activity with violation of the requirements of legislation on freedom of conscience and freedom of religious confession and on religious associations). (tr. by PDS, posted 29 September 2016)


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