Russian curbs on religious bodies

MOSCOW, June 25: The Communist-dominated State Duma, the lower House of Russian Parliament, passed a tough bill on religious organisations ...

MOSCOW, June 25: The Communist-dominated State Duma, the lower House of Russian Parliament, passed a tough bill on religious organisations before it went into its summer recess on Tuesday, severely restricting the activities of non-traditional and foreign religious groups in Russia.

The bill “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations,” overwhelmingly passed on a third and final reading, gives official status to only Russian Orthodox Church, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, discriminating against hundreds of other faiths, barring them for a trial period of 15 years from their basic activities.

Under the bill, such religious faiths would not be allowed to own property, worship publicly in temples or other places of worship, publish literature or conduct educational activities.

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Now the bill will go to the Federation Council, the upper House, where it is expected a smooth sailing. President Boris Yeltsin has not yet indicated whether he will sign the bill into a law. Given the strong influence of Russian Orthodox Church on Kremlin, and the current political situation, it is far from certain that Yeltsin will veto the bill.

The bill clamps restrictions on many new religious groups, foreign as well as Russian, that came into existence in mid-1980s during the heady days of Gorbachev’s liberalisation in the erstwhile Soviet Union, and after the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991 in Russia. In fact, it dramatically reverses the liberal legislation adopted in 1990.

It will also make life harder for groups that broke away from central bodies of major religions, such as Orthodox Christians who don’t recognise the all-powerful Moscow Patriarchate.

Representatives of the non-traditional religious groups and human rights advocates in Moscow have sharply condemned the bill as violation of constitutional guarantee of freedom of conscience. “The Bill was passed as a result of an unholy alliance between Communist and the Russian Orthodox Church,” they say.