Authorities Target Baptist Churches in Lipetsk, Russia

By Jeremy Reynalds
Correspondent for ASSIST News Service

LIPETSK, RUSSIA  (ANS) – In what they believe is targeted state action against them, two Baptist congregations in the regional center of Lipetsk (approximately 400km south-east of Moscow) have lost their legal status and a third has lost its rented prayer house.

The news was reported in a story by Geraldine Fagan on the Forum 18 News Service.

“There’s been nothing like this in Lipetsk for 20 years,” Vladimir Boyev, pastor of one of the congregations, told Forum 18. “They’re taking the last of what we have!”

The state’s methods may not be those of the Soviet period, when religious believers could end up in prison, Boyev admitted. “But they have found a different way – a bureaucratic way – to put our Church in a terrible position,” he pointed out to Forum 18. “We are defenseless!”

Lipetsk’s regional religious affairs official, Olga Fyodorova, defended the state’s recent treatment of the Baptists to Forum 18. They have been offered a number of solutions to their situation over the past decade, she claimed, “but they refuse to accept them on purpose, in order to aggravate the situation.”

Currently, Lipetsk’s 200-strong first Baptist congregation is still able to meet at the former Orthodox church it was allocated by the local authorities in 1989.

“But the situation is very tense right now,” Boyev told Forum 18. Vandals broke 28 of the building’s windows in the wake of this year’s Nov. 4 National Unity Day celebrations, he pointed out.

Introduced in 2005, National Unity Day is a state holiday commemorating Russia’s 1612 expulsion of invading Polish-Lithuanian forces. Forum 18 said it has become a focus for public demonstrations by nationalist and far-right activists.

Forum 18 reported that Lipetsk Regional Arbitration Court has begun hearing a suit for control of the former Orthodox church, filed three months ago by the Orthodox diocese of Lipetsk and Yelets, added Boyev. The Baptists are prepared to vacate the building, he told Forum 18, but want another as compensation for their substantial renovation work.

Instead, he said, the local authorities have offered what he described as “semi-ruins” and responded to the Baptists’ objections with the words “Let the Americans help you!.

The church has no wealthy foreign sponsors, however, Boyev told Forum 18. “We’re Russian people, just like them!”

The Baptist congregation worshiping at the former Orthodox church is now without legal status. The tax authorities removed it from the Single State Register of Legal Personalities in June 2007 for failing to file its annual tax return on time, Boyev told Forum 18.

Under Article 21.1 of the 2001 Law on the State Registration of Legal Personalities and Individual Entrepreneurs, an organization may be removed from the State Register without any court proceedings if it fails to file a tax return or use its bank account in the course of a year.

Forum 18 said that a Baptist church in the Black Sea port of Tuapse managed to overturn a similar decision in May 2008 on the grounds that it did not take into account the fact that the aims and functions of a religious organization differ from commercial legal personalities.

In Lipetsk, meanwhile, the case to determine who has use of the former Orthodox church was adjourned when the judge realized that the Baptist congregation has no legal personality, Boyev told Forum 18. The Baptists responded by filing a separate suit with the same court in an attempt to restore their legal status and so continue their defense. The latest hearing in this case took place on Nov. 26.

Asked about the pressure on the Baptist congregation at the former Orthodox church, Olga Fyodorova, the religious affairs official, told Forum 18 that they were “sitting there, doing nothing” while the building had “essentially” already been given to an Orthodox parish. She then admitted that she did not know whether a court had decided the issue.

Fyodorova also said she did not know how the Baptists would defend themselves in court after losing their legal status. She told Forum 18, “That’s their problem!”

Asked about compensation, she maintained they “could find another place, or build using donations.”

Forum 18 said that a second Lipetsk Baptist organization – Good Shepherd Mission – was also removed from the State Register in Sept. 2007 for failing to file its tax return on time and correctly. Boyev insisted to Forum 18 that both organizations filed their tax returns on time as in earlier years, and had never had problems with the tax authorities previously.

“We supposedly needed more documents for the Good Shepherd Mission, but they didn’t warn us – they should have explained to us what they wanted,” he told Forum 18. “They told us we should have looked on the internet, or in some journal or other, but we’re God’s people, not a business, we don’t know how to do this.”

Forum 18 reached an official in the relevant tax office on Nov. 28, but she refused to give any information by telephone.

The authorities also took issue with the de-registered Baptist organizations because neither kept a bank account, Boyev told Forum 18. “But we spend any money as soon as it comes in,” on church activities, bills and building materials, he explained.

Olga Fyodorova told Forum 18 that the Baptists had been de-registered because they “didn’t pay tax – not a single kopeck – and you know how every state in the world is scrupulous about tax.” They claim not to have any income as a cover for not paying tax, she suggested.

Led by Boyev, Lipetsk’s second 200-strong Baptist congregation, Holy Trinity, retains its legal status, but the land and building where it worships come under Good Shepherd Mission, he told Forum 18.

The Lipetsk authorities closed the Good Shepherd Mission building for several months in early 2007 on the grounds that it had not been formally declared fit for use, and also fined Boyev.

A third Baptist congregation, the 60-strong Golgotha, has rented a traditional wooden house in central Lipetsk since 1989 and carried out substantial repairs to the building, Boyev told Forum 18. The city authorities are gradually replacing the living accommodation, and the owner was recently allocated a new apartment as compensation, he said.

On Sept. 11, the state’s confiscation of the building was upheld when no one representing Golgotha appeared at Lipetsk’s Soviet District Court. “They said they sent us a summons,” Boyev told Forum 18. “But we didn’t get one.”

Fyodorova directed all further questions to Larisa Loshkareva, a regional official dealing specifically with the Baptists’ situation. On Nov. 27 Loshkareva asked Forum 18 to seek permission for this from her departmental director on Nov. 28. His telephone went unanswered, however, Forum 18 said.

In another long-running struggle by Protestants to retain control of their worship premises, Pastor Albert Ratkin told Forum 18 that for the last six months the local authorities have not troubled his Pentecostal Word of Life Church in Kaluga (150km south-west of Moscow). The current financial crisis “probably means they aren’t getting round to dealing with us,” he joked.

Word of Life Church has come under pressure from Kaluga’s municipal authorities – including numerous bureaucratic inspections and threats to cut off its power supplies – because the building and land it bought for worship in 2002 are now situated in the middle of a shopping mall construction site.

Forum 18 said that various Russian Protestant web sites highlighted an Oct. 15 public hearing in Kaluga’s municipal Architecture and Town-planning Department, which discussed a possible change of use for land owned by Word of Life Church. At the meeting, a local representative of the Swedish firm behind the shopping mall development reportedly suggested that sales of alcohol from the mall might result in drunken violence against church members if the Pentecostals remained at their current site.

Protestants in particular – but also Orthodox, Catholics and Muslims – point to an unusually high level of state interest in the fire safety and other technical aspects of worship buildings in recent years, resulting in fines, temporary closures or demolition threats

Glorification Pentecostal Church in the southern Siberian city of Abakan (Khakassia Republic) was forced to demolish its prayer hall in 2007.

Forum 18 reported that the Justice Ministry has also recently begun to initiate the court liquidation of various religious organizations, claiming that they failed to file annual accounts correctly or that they conduct professional religious education without a licence. Most have either managed to retain their legal personality status by providing missing documents or were defunct.

Several, however – such as the Pentecostal Bible Center of Chuvashia – have challenged such action as a deliberate attempt to limit their religious freedom.

For more background, see Forum 18′s Russia religious freedom survey at www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1196.

Editor’s note. By way of clarification, ANS has received written permission from Forum 18 New Service to re-work any of their stories so they may reach an even wider audience.