HE READ THE BIBLE FROM A TABLET
For what are Russian authorities prosecuting Evangelical
Christians-Baptists?
by Andrei Koshik
Radio Svoboda, 23 April 2019
This week, there is supposed to be a trial in the case
of a pastor of a
church of Evangelical Christians-Baptists in the village of
Verkhnebakansky in
Novorossiisk, Yury Kornienko. He is charged under article 5.26
of the Code of
Administrative Violations of Law ("Violation of legislation on
freedom
of conscience and
freedom of
religious confession and on religious associations"). And before
this, a
group of personnel of security structures and cossacks tried to
break up a
worship service of Baptists in a rural house of worship, without
providing any
accusations. Believers consider the application of the "Yarovaya
Package" regarding illegal missionary activity to be arbitrary.
This congregation is officially registered and the house
of worship in
Verkhnebakansky has existed since before the Great Patriotic
War.
"On 7 April there was a Sunday worship service devoted
to the
feast of the Annunciation. For Evangelical Christians-Baptists,
the first
Sunday of each month is a special day, because communion in the
Lord's Supper
is conducted. For this service, those who share our religious
confession gather
and there are no outsiders there. This is not a closed service,
but as a rule
only members of the congregation attend," Evgeny Kokora, the
presbyter of
the local religious organizations of Evangelical
Christians-Baptists, told
Radio Liberty.
At approximately twenty minutes after the start of the
worship service,
a group of ten men burst into the building: a couple of police
in uniform, cossacks,
FSB officers, representatives of city hall of Novorossiisk, and
a photo
correspondent. At that time the believers were singing "Jesus is
my
beacon," and an MVD officer approached the stage and signaled
with crossed
arms demanding to turn off the music and to be silent.
"The one in charge of the meeting addressed the
intruder: it is
our feast day, the Lord's Supper; what are you doing here? And
he urged the
church to sing the song again and at that time he himself
conversed with the
security forces," Kokora explained. "Then after about a half
hour a
protocol was drawn up concerning the operational investigative
activities. What
they had to do with our congregation is unclear; the intruders
were not even
able to explain clearly what they wanted. When the service
ended, they also
left without explanations."
The next day, Kokora and the pastor of the rural church,
Yury
Kornienko, went to the prosecutor's office of Novorossiisk, but
they were told
there that they could be received by the city prosecutor, Igor
Stukonog, only
three weeks later. Then they went to the local department of the
FSB. The duty
officer listened to the clergymen, but he was not able to
explain anything clearly.
On 9 April the pastor was first telephoned and then was sent an
official
summons to appear at the prosecutor's office in order to give an
explanation.
In parallel, believers wrote a complaint against the actions of
officials who
had tried to break up the worship service and invaded a private
home.
And only after eleven days (according to law from the
moment of the
commission of a violation of law until composition of a protocol
there is a
two-day maximum) was an administrative protocol regarding the
pastor of the
church in Verkhnebakansky drawn up on the basis of article 5.26
of the Code of
Administrative Violations of Law.
"Russian President Vladimir Putin has given the order to
look into
the notorious Yarovaya Package and to look into the prosecution
of Jehovah's
Witnesses, but such a legal outrage occurs here. Originally I
thought that this
is a policy of the state and the FSB. Not at all. Most likely
this is simply an
attempt of petty bureaucrats from the Novorossiisk
administration who want to
curry favor," Evgeny Kokora thinks.
The so-called Yarovaya Package, which comprises two
draft laws, was
adopted in the summer of 2016. It required service providers to
preserve calls
and communications of subscribers for three years, introduced
criminal responsibility
for not reporting terrorist and extremist crimes, and also
prohibited
conducting religious proclamation without the official
permission of a
registered religious organization.
"Our congregation is registered and Yury Kornienko was
appointed
its pastor. Where there is a violation I am unable to
understand," Evgeny
Kokora throws up his hands. "On the phone they said that the
trial will be
this week. So perhaps we will find out why they drew up this
protocol and who
is making the confrontation."
The pastor noted that in the past year, relations
between Baptist
congregations in Novorossiisk (there are eight of them here) and
local
authorities have become extremely tense. Originally the clergy
were phoned
every week and required to report what the recent worship
service was about and
how many believers attended it. About a year ago, after one of
the visits to
the house of worship in Verkhnebakansky by an employee of the
administration,
they tried to demolish it: the building was designated for
individual residence
and therefore the employees of the administration considered it
to be a
violation to conduct worship services here. But after talking
with the head of
the city the pastors were able to settle this issue.
"Recently they demolished the Pentecostals' house of
worship.
Formally the authorities were correct, because it was
unauthorized
construction, but they could have applied an 'amnesty,' as is
done for other
religious organizations in such circumstances. I heard that they
forbade the
Seventh-Day Adventists to meet. Apparently they wanted to close
our
congregation in Verkhnebakansky in this way, but we will fight
in the legal
field to the end," Kokora says.
The history of the Baptist congregation of Novorossiisk began back in tsarist times. Under the bolsheviks, churches were frequently taken from believers, like throughout the U.S.S.R., and clergy were arrested. The Novorossiisk Baptists continued to meet secretly, and by the end of the 1940s, when their activity was officially permitted, the congregation numbered several hundred persons. About twenty years ago the believers acquired the building in Verkhnebakinsky and services have been attended regularly by about 50 Evangelical Christians.
All eight Novorossiisk churches actively conduct social activity: rehabilitation centers for drug addicts were opened, a small charity house operates for elderly folk who have been left without a roof over their head. Believers participate in city workdays, regularly distribute food to the needy, and recently reroofed at their expense the house of a housekeeper in a hospital who is the mother of several children and who is not a parishioner of their church; they simply learned about the problem and helped.
This is not the first case of holding religious groups administratively accountable, says Alexander Popokov, a lawyer for the international rights advocacy group "Agora." Now the European Court of Human Rights is considering the case of a pastor of an unregistered group of "Community of Christians," Aleksei Koliasnikov, who was brought to justice under article20.2 of the Code of Administrative Violations of Law ("Violation of established procedure for conducting a public event") for reading the Bible in a closed cafe. The chief of the service of the FSB in Sochi, General Major Alexander Rodionov, among other things, accused the pastor of, "in violation of the rules of the canons of Christianity," reading to believers not a printed Bible but the text of Sacred Scripture from a tablet.
In 2017, in Sochi, a local resident was fined for illegal missionary activity. He was a teacher of the "International Academy of Kabbala," who conducted classes in Vaishnavism on a beach in Sochi. In 2018 a Pentecostal believer was fined for preaching without a "license." This year in Novorossiisk, volunteers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from the U.S.A. were arrested. They were charged that besides missionary activity the men "tweaked" the English of fellow believers by conducting classes with them. Among those who turned up as targets of the special services in Kuban there also was a Lutheran pastor, an adherent of the Chinese movement of Falun Gong, and Adygai who gathered at a prayer tree. (tr. by PDS, posted 27 April 2019)
Russian original posted on site of Credo.Press, 23 April
2019
Background articles:
Local official regrets arrest of
protestant preacher
April 19, 2019
Americans prosecuted for participating in
church service
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