Baptist leaders fined for street evangelism in Russia

|PIC1|Norway-based Forum 18 News service reported that the two preachers - Mikhail Alentyev and Aleksandr Legotin were fined on 25 September by magistrate at Gusev Municipal court for holding a public demonstration.

Legotin insisted that because the Baptists had held a religious service and not a demonstration, the legal requirement to notify the authorities in advance should not have applied. “We follow the law very carefully,” he told Forum 18.

“And under the Universal Declaration [of Human Rights] we have the right to freedom of conscience – the law should be doing the opposite, protecting us from such arbitrariness,” he said.

All public gatherings – whether political or religious – must be sanctioned by the municipal authorities in advance, a Kaliningrad police source speaking on condition of anonymity told Forum 18 on 1 October.

“But they didn't have permission and they had no intention of getting it!” he remarked, clearly irritated by the Baptists' actions, while admitting they had not disturbed public order.

Asked why permission is necessary, the source replied, “That's the law in Russia!” and pointed to Article 20.2 of the Administrative Violations Code. Forum 18 said the policeman declined to comment further.

Mr Alentyev commented to Forum 18 that his 30-strong Gusev congregation “knows from experience” that the local authorities will block its public evangelism even if they do submit advance notification.

The community belongs to the Baptist Council of Churches, which broke away from the Soviet-recognised Baptist Union in 1961 in protest at regulations preventing missionary activity and religious instruction to children. Its communities refuse on principle to register with the authorities in post-Soviet countries.

As the Gusev Baptists preached, sang, played musical instruments and handed out gospels in the town's centre during their end of August evangelism week, they were disrupted by police four times.

"They said, 'What right do you have to do this? Permission? No? Then down to the police station!'" recalled Alentyev, who was detained there for an hour on 3 September.

When likewise detained, Legotin tried to point to religious freedom guarantees in international and national law, as well as the 1993 Russian Constitution, he told Forum 18, but one police officer retorted, "You have the law, we have instructions!" He also said that police accused the Baptists of being extremists.

According to an 18 September Council of Churches report, police officers shouted at and ridiculed the Gusev preachers, and threatened to shut them in a cellar when they refused to sign statements.

Legotin and Alentyev both told Forum 18 this is the first year they have been obstructed by the Kaliningrad authorities. According to the Council of Churches report, police detained and interrogated preachers in Polessk in July. Ten days later, Legotin and a second preacher were summoned to the municipal public prosecutor's office and told they were banned from conducting religious activity in the district without state registration.

In January, police disrupted evangelisation by some 25 Baptists, including Legotin, in Domnovo village (Pravdinsk District). All were detained by police, who took their names, home and work addresses, and interviewed minors without their parents. They also accused the Baptists of receiving funds from abroad and "parasitism" ["tuneyadstvo"], an allegation commonly levelled at religious believers and dissidents during the Soviet period.

Legotin rejects this charge. "I have two jobs," he told Forum 18. "We all work."

Council of Churches communities consistently encounter state opposition when they conduct public religious activity. According to their 23 May report, a female police officer in civilian clothes and several unidentified men broke up evangelisation at Losevo village market in Voronezh Region on 20 May, warning that if the Baptists did not leave they would be beaten. The preachers later received death threats from locals, and one of their cars was set alight.

Forum 18 said similar attacks have taken place in other regions in previous years, targeting the Baptists and other Churches not recognised by the Russian authorities.

Earlier this year, Russia’s Ministry of Justice established a new body called the Expert Council on Religious Studies that is said to have “unprecedented powers” to suggest policies to control religious groups, according to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

USCIRF chair Leonard Leo believed the chair of the Expert Council, Aleksandr Dvorkin, is said to be Russia’s most prominent “anti-cult” activists; and under the leadership by Dvorkin, he said some fear that the Council will close registered organizations, such as the Evangelical Protestant community, and unregistered minority religious communities like the Council of Churches Baptists.

The move prompted USCIRF to add Russia to its watch list for the first time despite having monitored the country’s religious freedom for ten years.