|PIC1|Minority Christian leaders in Russia fear the government's re-establishment of a Ministry of Justice council could signal a return to Soviet era persecution against Christians.

Recently, Russia reconstituted the Ministry of Justice Council for Conducting State Religious Expert Analysis, which includes a new chairman who described the faith of some Christians as as “a crude, magical-occult system with elements of psychological manipulation”.

According to the Norway-based Forum 18 News Service, the appointment of renowned "anti-cultists" and controversial scholars of Islam to a government body granted sweeping powers to investigate religious organisations has provoked an unprecedented outcry from many religious representatives and human rights defenders.

The Council is chaired by Alexander Dvorkin, Russia’s most prominent “anti-cult” activist, who has described the faith of some Protestants as “a crude, magical-occult system with elements of psychological manipulation”, it added.

The powers of the Council were recently widened allowing it to investigate the activity, doctrines, leadership decisions, literature, and worship of any registered religious organisation and to recommend action to the Ministry of Justice.

Orders signed by Russia's Justice Minister Aleksandr Konovalov on 18 February and 3 March 2009 appointed 24 members – all but one new – to the Ministry's Council for Conducting State Religious Expert Analysis.

They also greatly expanded the Council's powers, allowing it to investigate the activity, doctrines, leadership decisions, literature and worship of any registered religious organisation and recommend action to the Ministry.

Opposition has come from all quarters including Union of Old Believer theologians, a group not directly impacted. The developments are "a direct threat to the constitutional rights of the citizens of Russia to freedom of confession [which] could serve as a dangerous catalyst for inter-confessional strife, a prologue to the beginning of struggle against religious dissent, oppression of believers, the restoration of religious censorship and inquisition", they state.

However, the state's position is not unanimously supportive of the Council. Andrei Sebentsov, head of the Russian government's Department for Relations with Religious Associations, remarked to the Portal-Credo religious affairs website on 9 April that the appointments of Aleksandr Dvorkin – "not a religious-studies scholar and de facto representing the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)" - and Silantyev were "a very strange fact which could have far-reaching consequences".

So far there has been no public move by a state representative to counter the changes to the Council.

In addition to the Old Believers, there have been unusually strong responses to the Council from many religious representatives and human rights defenders over the past few weeks, as reported by Interfax, Portal-Credo and the Moscow-based Slavic Centre for Law and Justice.

The head of the Baptist Union, Yuri Sipko maintained that the changes to the Council sought to reduce religious freedom to a level at which "everything is controlled and subordinate to a single ideology and freedom itself is banned".

"This only underscores the helplessness of our state authorities, who, instead of following constitutional principles of freedom - including religious freedom – constantly feel the urge to curb these freedoms," he added.

In a later statement on his Union's website, Sipko claimed that whereas President Dmitry Medvedev criticised "legal nihilism", he had appointed a Justice Minister "who clearly doesn't understand the essence of law".

Non-Orthodox Christians fear that if the Council is given free rein, it is likely to recommend harsh measures against certain religious organisations, especially Christian groups. In the Council’s first meeting, Dvorkin named the Russian Bible Society as a possible target for investigation.

Meanwhile, the Forum 18 News service reported that the Russian Orthodox Church has expressed support for the Council. Fr Vsevolod Chaplin, who heads the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for Relations between Church and Society, has defended the new Council, claiming that it obviously now contains "specialists at a serious level, active, well-known in society".