When the Soviet Union sank, human liberty dramatically increased.
The great totalitarian tyranny that had consumed millions of its
own apparatchiks and tens of millions of its other citizens was
gone.
However, the initial years of chaotic liberty have been
replaced by ever more stifling authoritarianism. The negative
impact has been most obviously felt in the political realm.
According to last year’s State Department human rights assessment:
“There were numerous reports of governmental and societal human
rights problems and abuses during the year.” The list of examples
is long and distressing.
Freedom House rates Moscow as “not free.”
The country holds elections but, says Freedom House, “is
not an electoral democracy.” Freedom House offers a similar list
of human rights abuses, including restrictions on the media,
pervasive corruption, limits on freedom of assembly and
association, and a subservient judiciary.
Unfortunately, religious liberty also is coming under
pressure. The Russian constitution formally protects religious
freedom and equality, but, noted the State Department last fall,
“the government did not always respect those provisions.” There
long have been some limits to this most basic
freedom.
Freedom House explained:
Freedom of religion is respected unevenly. A 1997 law on
religion gives the state extensive control and makes it
difficult for new or independent congregations to operate.
Orthodox Christianity has a privileged position, and in 2009
the president authorized religious instruction in the public
schools. Regional authorities continue to harass nontraditional
groups, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. In February
2009, the Justice Ministry empowered an Expert Religious
Studies Council to investigate religious organizations for
extremism and other possible offenses.
The State Department made many of the same points. It
explained that there was “generally free practice of religion for
most of the population,” but some religious minorities found
their rights to be restricted. State also pointed to the 1997
legislation “On Freedom of Conscience and Association,” warning
that its provisions “continued to seriously disadvantage some
religious groups viewed as non-traditional.” The Federal Security
Service (FSS), which has replaced the FBI, increasingly has
viewed some faiths as threats to Russian security.
Moreover, the government is increasingly using the
Extremism Law passed in June 2002 to persecute nontraditional
religions. A group of U.S. religious leaders recently raised the
alarm about this dangerous trend in a letter to the president.
Undoubtedly, examples of dangerous extremism exist in
Russia. However, the legislation bans far more than violent
groups. For instance, the definition of extremism includes
“public defamation of any person on duty holding a public office
in the Russian Federation” and “infringement on life of a public
official or community leader committed with a view of termination
of his public or other political activity.”
In March a court in the city of Surgut upheld the seizure
of Scientology books and materials as “extremist.” It was an ex
parte hearing, at which the church was not represented. The
Church of Scientology had previously been denied the right to
register under the 1997 law, which requires groups with more than
15 years in the country to sign up as religious
organizations.
The Scientologists are not the only victims of the law. The
federal list of Extremist Materials to which their publications
were added includes nearly 600 publications.
Muslim literature has been denounced as “extremist” because
it “propagandizes the idea of the superiority of Islam — and
therefore Muslims — over other religions and the people who
adhere to them.” Last fall the Russian Supreme Court upheld a
government ban on publications of the Jehovah’s Witnesses as
extremist. The local organization was ordered liquidated and its
property was seized.
Unfortunately, these are merely the tip of an iceberg of
growing repression. The American religious leaders explained to
President Obama:
In 2007, the first bans on religious literature were
implemented, and the Federal List of Extremist Materials was
initiated. Then, in 2008-2009, the Justice Ministry
reconstituted its Expert Religious Studies Council and gave it
wide-ranging powers to investigate the activity, doctrines,
literature and worship of religious organizations and then
recommend measures. The appointment of renowned “anti-cultists”
and controversial scholars to the Council provoked an
unprecedented outcry from many religious representatives and
human rights defenders.
The result is what the letter-writers call “an increasingly
hostile environment” for non-traditional faiths, resulting “in
investigations, armed raids, nation-wide bans on certain
religious literature that had been published and read worldwide
for decades, and even dissolutions and liquidations of religious
organizations.” An incredible 2,000 religious organizations were
subject to liquidation for failing to reregister after the year
2000. Moreover, churches have increasingly cited increased
bureaucratic oversight and regulation. The State Department noted
that “Many non-traditional denominations frequently complained
that they were unable to obtain venues for worship.”
Finally, attacks on individual faiths and congregations
have been escalating. The Oslo-based Forum 18 News Service
explained: “The formation of Russia’s policy towards one
particular form of extremism — religious extremism — may have
begun hesitantly.” However, passage of the 2002 legislation
“eventually led to a wide-ranging crackdown on religious
literature the authorities deemed ‘extremist’.” Religious
organizations increasingly have come under attack in other ways
as well.
Forum 18 compiled
a long list of disturbing incidents beginning in mid-2007:
• Baptists meeting in a movie theatre were
arrested. Police claimed it was a “harmful sect.”
• The prayer hall of a Pentecostal Church was
demolished.
• A Pentecostal Bible Centre was dissolved for
carrying out unlicensed educational activity.
• A Methodist church was dissolved for failing to
filing the required activities report.
• The moderate Islamic work The Personality of a
Muslim was added to the list of banned books.
• A yeshiva, or Jewish school, was ordered
dissolved.
• The public prosecutor threatened a Baptist pastor
with a warning about unspecified extremist activities.
• A Lutheran congregation was raided for “extremist
literature.”
• Two Baptist churches lost their legal status and
another was forced from its prayer house.
• Two Baptist ministers were fined after their
congregation engaged in public evangelism.
• Under government pressure, the Presbyterian
Christian Theological Academy and Institute of Contemporary
Judaism dissolved.
• Two yeshivas were denied an educational
license.
• The Krishna Conscience Society was declared to be a
“dangerous totalitarian sect.”
• Works by Muslim theologian Said Nursi were
seized.
• Charges were brought against members of a Nursi
reading group.
• A local Jehovah’s Witnesses group was
liquidated.
• The Islamic organization Nurjular was banned.
• The Islamic organization Tablighi Jamaat was
outlawed.
• The Russian Supreme Court upheld the prohibition of
numerous Jehovah’s Witnesses publications.
• A local Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation was banned
and its meeting hall was seized.
• An investigation was opened against the Church of
Scientology over the charge of extremism.
• A city court ruled that Scientology literature was
extremist.
• The Russian Justice Ministry targeted 56 religious
groups for liquidation for allegedly failing to file official
reports. The faiths included: Armenian Apostolic, Buddhist,
Catholic, Muslim, Nestorian, and Protestant.
It’s an imposing list. But there are more examples. Many
religions and individual congregations have suffered from a raid,
prosecution, banning, dissolution, arrest, penalty, restriction,
seizure, investigation, confiscation, detention, or other attack
from the state authorities. Non-traditional, proselytizing faiths
have suffered the most.
The European Court of Human Rights has become the final
resort for some desperate Russians. In October 2006 the justices
ruled for the Salvation Army. A year later the ECHR supported the
Church of Scientology. Last October it again ruled against Russia
and in favor of the Scientologists. In June the ECHR held that a
2004 ban on the Moscow’s Jehovah’s Witnesses violated articles on
freedom of thought, conscience, worship, and assembly of the
European Convention on Human Rights, which has been ratified by
Russia.
In the latter case the court stated
that “the Moscow authorities did not act in good faith and
neglected their duty of neutrality and impartiality.” Moreover,
the government had interfered with “the religious organization’s
right to freedom of association and also with its right to
freedom of religion.”
Unfortunately, Russia does not treat decisions of the ECHR
as authoritative.
Not every religion is disabled to the same degree. The
Orthodox Church enjoys privileged status, which it has used
against other faiths. In June the United States Commission on
International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)
warned “that the de facto favored status of the Moscow
Patriarchate Russian Orthodox Church results in difficulties for
minority religious communities, particularly those officially
deemed non-traditional.”
Moreover, the Orthodox Church recently used its
preferential status to encourage a blasphemy prosecution against
a contemporary art exhibition entitled “Forbidden Art” held at
the Sakharov museum. The government is seeking a three year jail
term for organizers, a haunting throwback to Soviet restrictions
on contemporary art.
In June the USCIRF warned that “Many Russian officials also
proclaim that certain religious and ethnic groups are alien to
Russian culture and society, thereby contributing to a climate of
intolerance. In general, the Russian government has failed to
address consistently or effectively the severe and chronic
problem of violent and sometimes lethal hate crimes and
anti-Semitism. Numerous acts of vandalism against synagogues,
churches, and mosques also go largely unpunished or are
attributed to hooliganism.”
Obviously, Washington’s influence over Moscow’s internal
policies is limited. Nevertheless, U.S. government officials,
religious leaders, and human rights activists can offer the same
simple message as the religious leaders who wrote the president:
“The Russian Government should make good on Russian guarantees of
freedom of religion and association for every individual and
religious community, and it should honor its international human
rights obligations and commitments.”
The Moscow authorities have demonstrated that they don’t
care much what foreigners, or even most Russians, think. But the
controversy could embarrass the Putin/Medvedev government,
tarnishing the regime’s image. Since religious restrictions — in
contrast to political repression — don’t strengthen Vladimir
Putin’s hold on power, maybe even he would come to see the value
of offering religious believers a little more space.
Mr. Bandow is a Senior Fellow in International
Religious Persecution at the Institute on Religion and Public
Policy.
