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Russia Harassing, Expelling Missionaries
NewsMax.com
Monday, July 24, 2000
The crackdown on foreign missionaries under way since the
collapse of the
Soviet Union has worsened since Russian President Vladimir Putin
came to
power, a series of new reports reveals.
The reports from Britain's prestigious Keston Institute, which
are based on
several months' research throughout Russia, suggest that a
decline in
freedoms for religious minorities has accelerated sharply under
Putin, a
practicing Orthodox Christian and former KGB agent.
According to the Keston Institute, the FSB - the Russian
security agency that
replaced the brutal KGB - is harassing missionaries by
obstructing them from
carrying out their work and even driving them out of the
country, possibly
because under a new defense doctrine signed by President Putin in
December they are viewed as a potential threat to the national
security.
The report, one of a series by the Oxford-based institute that
has been
monitoring the state of religious freedom in Russia since the
Cold War, cites a
number of incidents that reveal the extent of Russia's hostility
to foreign
missionaries.
According to Britain's Times newspaper, the institute cited such
cases as the
expulsion of 11 American missionaries from the autonomous Muslim
republic
of Bashkortostan. The missionaries were accused of activities
"incompatible"
with their humanitarian aid visas.
The seven Protestant missionaries, along with four children,
were reportedly
ordered to leave by June 1 after the republic's President
Rakhimov was
infuriated when he learned the missionaries had translated St.
Luke's Gospel
into the Bashkiri language.
The group's leader, who, like many missionaries, did not want to
be named,
accused Mr. Rakhimov of using the FSB "as his police force, to
intimidate
people into submission."
The missionaries were warned that "proselytism, or forcible
conversion" was
illegal.
In another instance of harassment, a U.S. missionary was
expelled from the
southern city of Volgograd. A local newspaper quoted the FSB as
saying,
"Practically all American religious organizations working abroad
are in some
way connected with the U.S. security services."
Observers note that this is exactly the line taken by the old
Soviet state, which
viewed all missionaries as spies and, in 1998, even denounced
the Keston
Institute as a cover for Western intelligence agencies.
In February, a letter two officials attached to the presidential
administration
sent to Russia's State Committee on Affairs of the North warned
that the United
States plans on "wresting away from Russia all of the Far East."
They cited
"the religious invasion of a huge number of American Protestant
preachers "
as being part of the alleged plot.
A little-noticed aspect of the new defense doctrine was its
mention of such
religious minorities "as a potential threat to Russia in terms
we have not seen
in public documents since the end of communism," Lawrence
Uzzell, the
director of the Keston Institute, told the Times
"It may be that we're seeing a darkening of the atmosphere under
this regime,"
Mr. Uzzell added. "The National Security Concept is not an
instruction, but it
seems to have been a signal to local bureaucrats that it's now
open season on
religious minorities."
The official policy echoes the attitude of the Russian Orthodox
Church, which
has a centuries-long history of hostility to Western
Christianity, even though it
has not been directly linked to the new wave of persecution.
"We do not welcome American missionaries because they do
proselytizing
work," a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox church said. "We
cannot have a
common mission and we don't agree with theirs."
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