Tuesday 11 May UKRAINIAN BAPTISTS DETAINED AS EVANGELISTIC MEETINGS KICK OFF by Felix Corley, Keston News Service Three preachers of the Baptist Church in Ukraine have been detained and imprisoned for a ten-day period, the US-based Russian Evangelistic Ministries reports. `Following the rehabilitation of Christian prisoners in the late 1980s, this is the first instance of imprisonment solely for Christian activity in Ukraine,' the mission adds. The three, PAVEL SITKOVSKY, NIKOLAI BURLAKA and GRIGORI SAFRONOV, were arrested in the town of Kegichevka in eastern Ukraine's Kharkov region on 4 May as an evangelistic 'tent mission' was beginning. All three were then reportedly sentenced to ten days' imprisonment, presumably under the Ukrainian Administrative Code, although it remains unclear on what charge. The men's relatives have been denied access to them and are therefore unable to ascertain the reason for their arrest and imprisonment, or whether they have also been fined. However, it is known that the three have gone on hunger strike. The authorities are reportedly waiting for an Orthodox priest to speak with the prisoners. Two of the three are ministers and one is a layman; all belong to Baptist Churches that rejected state registration during the Soviet period. Sitkovsky is pastor of the church in Krasnograd, while Burlaka is pastor in Merefa, both in Kharkov region of eastern Ukraine. Safronov is a lay preacher. These arrests are the first that the Baptists have suffered in Ukraine since the end of the persecution of the congregations belonging to the unregistered Council of Churches during the rule of MIKHAIL GORBACHEV. Baptists in Ukraine are reported to be concerned that this might be a response to the start of the evangelistic campaign, which begins in tent missions in the spring as warmer weather arrives. `Overall, there have been no problems in the area,' Russian Evangelistic Ministries told Keston. `What troubles evangelists is that this was done at the beginning of the evangelistic season.' (END) Tuesday 11 May CHECHEN RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS OFFICIAL KIDNAPPED by Felix Corley and Lawrence Uzzell, Keston News Service In the night of 28 to 29 April, ABUZAR SUMBULATOV, the Chairman of the Ministry for the Affairs of Religions and Confessions of the Chechen Republic, was abducted from his apartment in Grozny, sources in the North Caucasus region told Keston News Service. Sumbulatov was the leading religious affairs official in Chechnya; his office, though the successor to the Soviet-era Council for Religious Affairs, was instrumental in trying to promote harmony between different faiths and in channelling humanitarian aid into the secessionist republic. A practising Muslim, Sumbulatov was also chairman of the Berkat non-governmental charity. Keston News Service had interviewed Sumbulatov in his Grozny office during a 1995 trip to Chechnya, when the capital of the rebellious province was under the precarious control of a pro-Moscow government - to be overthrown in 1996 when the anti-Moscow rebels captured Grozny. Strikingly, the victorious rebels allowed the widely respected Sumbulatoov to continue serving in thereligious-affairs post in which he had already been serving under the pro-Moscow government. In that 1995 interview, when the rebels' later victory was still far from certain, Sumbulatov told Keston on the record that the government in which he was then serving was a 'puppet' regime; he had equally harsh things to say about Chechnya's anti-Moscow extremists. By training and profession Sumbulatov was not a clergyman or politician but a professor of Russian literature at Grozny University. `He is a highly educated person,' a local source told Keston after the recent kidnapping. `He has collected a big private library including also over 150 Christian books. It must be especially underlined that he was always well disposed to Christians.' Sumbulatov's private library played an especially important role, he told Keston in the 1995 interview, because the library at Grozny University had been totally destroyed by Russia's air raids. For months his students at the university had to take their courses without textbooks. In his opinion Moscow had deliberately targeted cultural monuments such as Chechnya's archives: 'What was done was very similar to genocide.' But Sumbulatov was equally critical of Chechnya's anti-Moscow JOKHAR DUDAYEV government, which he accused of deliberately allowing the province's ethnic Russians to be subjected to rape and pillage by Chechen extremists. When Dudayev was in power, he said, Grozny radio was used to spread a warped version of Islam which included the constant playing of martial songs in order to create a 'background' for political agitation. As the province's chief official for religious affairs, Sumbulatov told Keston that he had once received a visit from one of his retired predecessors from the Soviet era, a KGB officer. According to Sumbulatov's account, this 'Chekist' offered to share with him confidential information from his old files: compromising material on various religious leaders which would be 'useful' in Sumbulatov's new job. The KGB veteran was astonished at his refusal, he said. Sumbulatov told Keston that the study of religion had begun 'almost as a hobby' for him. Paradoxically, he said, he became a serious Muslim under the influence of the Russian literature he so loved. Among those who have been in continuing contact with Sumbulatov is the North Ossetian Mission of Christian Compassion, based in the North Ossetian capital Vladikavkaz. `For many years he is a closee friend of ours and the only connecting link providing an official base for our work on evangelical and humanitarian projects in Chechnya and official contacts to the Chechen Government up to the moment he was abducted,' the Mission reported on 8 May. `Thanks to his unremitting efforts a great amount of Christian literature - also in the Chechen language - and humanitarian aid was delivered into Chechnya and distributed as far back as before the war there. Children's Bibles and a Christian magazine for children were distributed to schools. In 1997, Chechen children were handed one thousand Christmas presents from American children. This March, we received a thank-you letter from the Chechen vice-prime minister for medicines and medical supplies delivered into the Chechen Republic via our mission through Abuzar Sumbulatov.' Another Christian who spoke highly of Sumbulatov was FR ANATOLI CHISTOUSOV of Grozny's Russian Orthodox parish, who strongly recommended the religion minister to Keston in 1995. Fr Anatoli was himself later kidnapped and murdered. Sumbulatov's own abduction has come amid a fresh spate of kidnappings of Christians in and around Chechnya. In summer 1997, three members of the Baptist church in Grozny were subjected to maltreatment for distributing Christian literature. The literature was confiscated and burnt. In May 1998, the driver of the North Ossetian Mission EDUARD TOMAYEV was kidnapped in Vladikavkaz, and nothing has been heard of him since. In October 1998 an Orthodox priest Father ISSIKHY was kidnapped, though he was later released. Also kidnapped in October 1998 was the pastor of the Baptist Church in Grozny ALEKSEI SITNIKOV, and nothing has been heard from him since. There are fears he has been murdered. Last February his successor as pastor ALEKSANDR KULAKOV was kidnapped and two weeks later found beheaded. In March, a Baptist youth worker VOLODYA KARGIYEV was kidnapped in Vladikavkaz and taken to Chechnya. His family recently received a video of him in which he begs them to find the money for his ransom. Also in March, two Orthodox priests, Father PYOTR MARKOV and Father PYOTR SUKHONOSOV, were kidnapped in neighbouring Ingushetia and taken across the border into Chechnya. In April another Orthodox priest, Father SERGI POTAPOV, was kidnapped in Ingushetia. Although Chechnya has been plagued with lawlessness since the end of the brutal war with Russia, it seems that Christians are now being specifically targeted. It is not clear if this is connected with growing Islamic awareness at a time when Chechnya is moving rapidly to become an Islamic state or whether it is because the overwhelming majority of the Christians that remain in Chechnya are ethnic Russians. The Russian Baptist Union advised all its members to leave Chechnya last year; few now remain. Keston's current sources say that they do not know whether the kidnapping of Sumbulatov is connected with his work. But many who have been in contact with him in recent years, Muslims and Christians alike, have appealed for prayer and support for his release. (END) Tuesday 11 May RUSSIAN JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES FINALLY RE-REGISTERED Tatyana Titova, Keston News Service The religious organisation of Jehovah's Witnesses was finally registered in Russia - on 29 April, one day before the expiry of the six-month period stipulated by the 1997 law on religion within which a decision must be reached. �Now the question arises of re- registration on a local level�, says ARTUR LEONTEV, the lawyer who prepared the documents for registration. The Expert Council of the Ministry of Justice , which decides whether to issue a registration, delayed the decision five times. The head of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia, VASSILI KALIN, was asked questions like �Does your organisation force its members to refuse blood transfusions?� or �Does the organisation press its members not to serve in the armed forces?� Each time he had to give written answers. The deliberate dragging out of the registration process seemed to have a specific, though unspoken, explanation. The Moscow Golovinsky court is still hearing a case against the local Jehovah's Witness community initiated by a Committee for the Salvation of Youth . This Committee demands that a stop be put to Jehovah's Witness activities as harmful to young people. The hearing has been adjourned for the gathering of expert opinions. Kalin claims that local Jehovah�s Witness communities have received refusals to register them in twenty cases - all because of the Moscow court case. However, the Ministry of Justice Expert Council could not postpone its decision further because of six months' rule and finally considered the Jehovah�s Witness registration. It was granted. But the Ministry itself demanded that certain amendments had to be introduced into the charter of Jehovah' Witnesses Russian organisation. The main demand was to exclude preaching at the doorstep. The law on religion of 1997 says nothing specific against this activity but the Ministry officials insist that as this method of preaching was not mentioned in the law, it should not be in the charter either. The lawyer representing the Jehovah�s Witnesses was told that the Ministry receives telephone complaints from members of the public who object to Jehovah's Witnesses calling at their doors as �arousing displeasure�. Another demand was that the Jehovah�s Whitnesses Administrative Centre draw up contracts with its voluntary workers. The Centre was against this because it might be interpreted as hiring workers commercially. SERGEI VASSILEV, one of the leaders of the Moscow Jehovah�s Witness community , told Keston that in his opinion the Ministry was trying to establish a mechanism for applying pressure on Jehovah's Witnesses in the future. Keston�s Moscow representative interviewed a highly-placed Ministry official and was assured that the disagreements would be discussed with Jehovah's Witnesses in search of a compromise. And indeed Vassily Kalin soon reported that all the problems have been resolved. For example, asa far as preaching is concerned the words �home to home� have been replaced with �on domestic premises�. The leaders of Russian Jehovah's Witnesses hope that the registration of their Administrative Centre in Saint-Petersburg will have a positive effect on the general standing of the organisation and its local communities. It may even influence the outcome of the Moscow court case since a decision to ban Jehovah�s Witness activities in the capital of Russia would fly in the face of their recent registration nationwide. But Kalin is not overly optimistic. He told Keston: � The Russian media wage a campaign of hatred against us. Last year, there were some 600 hostile reports in the press, on radio and television. In the first four months of this year we spotted more than 200 such slanderous reports. These include the most absurd charges. A man allegedly beat up his wife and children because they did not want to attend the Jehovah's Witness meeting. We checked this out - this man has never been a Witness. Or, in a town where several Jehovah's Witnesses work at the nuclear power station, the local paper warned: �Beware! The Jehovah's Witnesses have access to nuclear weapons!� In a broadcast of one of the national TV networks, an allegation was made that Jehovah's Witnesses collaborated with Hitler; in fact, the Nazis severely persecuted the Jehovah's Witnesses. But our attempts to refute such slanderous inventions are usually met with evasive replies like �your article is not in accord with our editorial policy�. One day after the registration, on 30 April, the newspaper Segodnya published an account of the remarks made by GENRIKH MIKHAILOV, the secretary of the Russian government's commission for liaison with religious associations. He spoke of an activisation of 'all sorts of religious sects' ahead of parliamentary elections due later this year .Jehovah's Witnesses, said Mikhailov, were conducting a campaign �of an openly aggressive character' and were even trying to get their representatives into legislative bodies. Strangely, during the Moscow court case the Jehovah's Witnesses were accused of just the opposite - of refusal to recognise the state and the authorities. (END) CORRECTION: In the article '"Hooligan" Orthodox Priest Disrupts Adventist Meeting� (31 March) Keston News Service reported the sequence of events described by Anna Ilyash as follows: Two of Fr Iosif's sons and his deacon attended the Adventist meeting despite attempts to prevent them, Fr Iosif arrived at the meeting and started shouting, Anna Ilyash was hit over the head and had her clothes torn, the main protagonists were taken to the police station where the police found scissors in the pockets of the deacon and the elder son. This should have been as follows: Two of Fr Iosif's sons and his deacon attended the Adventist meeting despite attempts to prevent them, they started shouting, Anna Ilyash was hit over head and had her clothes torn, the three were taken to a local police station where the police found scissors in the pockets of the deacon and the elder son, Fr Iosif arrived at the police station and began shouting. (END)