Religious Freedom Activists Arrested in Belarus
by Jeremy Reynalds
July 11, 2007
BELARUS (ANS) -- Police arrested 19 Christian activists over two days demonstrating to change Belarus' 2002 Religion Law.The arrests happened after signatures were collected at a prominent Catholic pilgrimage site, Budslav, and the Belarusian capital of Minsk.
Belarus is in Eastern Europe, east of Poland.
Speaking to Forum 18 News Service from Minsk's Frunze District Police Station, Sergei Lukanin said that he and five other activists had been held there for four hours.
He told Forum 18, "We're sitting in an office with three policemen who refuse to allow us to leave or to explain why we are here."
Forum 18 also reported that officers confiscated a large amount of literature related to the campaign for freedom of thought, conscience and belief, which so far has over 25,000 signatures.
The six were finally released at about 7.30 p.m. on July 3, Lukanin, a lawyer and member of the charismatic New Life Church told Forum 18 the following day.
"They didn't charge us - and they didn't apologize either," Lukanin said. "Nor did they issue any documentation supporting our detention or the confiscation of our literature."
Contacted by Forum 18, a spokesman at Frunze District Police Station refused to provide any information to the news service by telephone.
Forum 18 reported that according to Lukanin, he and Aleksei Shein, a petition coordinator who is also co-chairman of the organizational committee of the Belarusian Christian Democracy movement, visited a Minsk apartment rented by Denis Sadovsky on the afternoon of July 3. They had heard that police had detained Sadovsky, who is a Minsk Pentecostal and secretary of the Belarusian Christian Democracy movement.
Once at the apartment, Lukanin told Forum 18, two police officers - one in uniform and one in plain clothes - arrived and ordered himself and Shein to go under escort to Frunze District Police Station. Police threatened to use force when Lukanian and Shein initially refused. There they met
Sadovsky, detained at the same apartment an hour earlier by one uniformed and four plain-clothes police officers -and Tatyana Usinovich, a 22-year-old member of New Life Church.
According to Lukanin, the plain-clothes police officers who detained Sadovsky also searched his apartment and confiscated about 7,000 newsletters introducing the campaign against the 2002 Religion Law. They also took 500 copies of a booklet, "Monitoring Violations of the Rights of Christians in Belarus in 2006." None of this material has been returned, Forum 18 reported.
According to Forum 18, "Monitoring Violations of the Rights of Christians in Belarus in 2006" is an 80-page booklet detailing religious freedom violations in Belarus as reported by a number of independent media sources within Belarus, as well as by Forum 18 News Service.
At about 4 p.m. on July 3, continued Lukanin, two members of New Life Church, 16-year-old Feodora Andreyevskaya and 14-year-old Yuliya Kosheleva, called at the same apartment for additional copies of petition forms for the religious freedom campaign. They were also arrested and taken to Frunze District Police Station.
On July 2, 14 out of a group of 50 Christian activists - including Lukanin - were arrested by district police after collecting over 2,300 signatures against the 2002 Religion Law at the annual Catholic pilgrimage to Budslav.
The 14 were released without charge after three hours. Lukanin told Forum 18 that a document drawn up against him, as petition organizer, alleged that he had distributed literature without publication details. For this he was warned to expect prosecution in Minsk, he said, but no one has contacted him so far.
In Belarus, Forum 18 reported, a person may legally distribute up to 300 copies of a piece of literature without publication details. While police confiscated 650 copies of the booklet "Monitoring Violations of the Rights of Christians in Belarus in 2006," Lukanin pointed out that its 14 distributors were carrying fewer than 50 copies each. The booklets have not been returned.
A spokesman at Myadel District Police refused to comment about the detention or the confiscated materials when contacted by Forum 18. He would say only that none of the petitioners was still being held and that no criminal case had been opened.
Forum 18 reported that many thousands of Catholics from Belarus and beyond congregate in Budslav each July 2 for the feast day of the seventeenth-century Budslav Icon of the Mother of God. The icon was brought to Budslav from Rome in 1613, and is housed in a local church where Catholics reported a vision of the Virgin Mary in the sixteenth century.
Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants across Belarus have been gathering signatures to change the 2002 Religion Law since April 22 2007. The campaign's promotional material states, "We are defending the rights of all Christians (Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants), all citizens of Belarus. The law violates the rights of all people, even atheists."
Petitions to change the law require at least 50,000 signatures in order to be considered by the Constitutional Court.
According to Forum 18, after exhausting other methods of negotiation with the state authorities, some Belarusian religious believers are adopting tactics more usually associated with secular political activism in their pursuit of freedom of thought, conscience and belief. Mainstream opposition activists are in their turn drawing on religious ideas.
© 2007 ASSIST News Service, used with permission.
