I. WHICH ARE RUSSIA'S MOST REPRESSIVE PROVINCES? Two experts agree freedom is shrinking, but disagree where. II. ARMENIAN CHURCH IN TURKMENISTAN WILL PROVE INTERESTING TEST CASE. Baptists have not been reregistered since the 1996 law on religion went into effect. Will the Ambassador of Armenia have better success reopening the pre-Soviet church? Friday 22 January WHICH ARE RUSSIA'S MOST REPRESSIVE PROVINCES? By Roman Lunkin, Keston News Service Which provinces in Russia are the least hospitable to religious freedom? According to the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, LYUDMILA ALEKSEYEVA, the worst offenders include Ulyanovsk, Voronezh, Krasnodar and Mordovia. She also included the city of Moscow on her list - a judgment disputed by another specialist on church-state relations in Russia, the Moscow historian SERGEI FILATOV. 'The way is being paved for renewed pressure on and control over social and religious organisations�, Lyudmila Alekseyeva told Keston News Service. 'There is a real trend towards a hardening of the 1997 law on religion and a danger of returning to the norms of the Soviet era. People shouldn't wait for their organisation to be banned but act when they see others being oppressed.' As an example of this trend in Moscow, she cited the current court case against the Jehovah's Witnesses (See Tatyana Titova and Lawrence A. Uzzell, MOSCOW COURT SAID TO TILT TOWARD OPPONENTS OF JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES, Keston News Service, 20 November 1998). VASILI KALIN, head of the Administrative Centre of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia, told Keston that some secular officials and Orthodox clergy still wished to restore the Soviet regime's oppressive policies towards his confession. Kalin described how he and his parents had been deported from Ukraine to Irkutsk in the 1940s. Soviet oppression of Jehovah's Witnesses continued until 1986, when six people from Khabarovsk were the last to receive sentences. But the same Jehovah's Witnesses whom the Russian government rehabilitated in 1991 now face the threat that the government may again forbid them to profess their faith. SERGEI FILATOV, a specialist on the history and sociology of religion at Moscow State University, agreed with most but not all of Lyudmila Alekseyeva's observations. In his opinion the official attitude towards religious freedom did not depend upon the political orientation of the government, however paradoxical that might seem. For example, he has found that the Communists in Krasnodar and the democrats in Arkhangelsk are displaying equal tolerance towards all confessions. There are pro-freedom democrats and pro-freedom Communists, he said - and there are democrats who are antiwestern and who are strongly sympathetic towards Orthodoxy. In his view the regions where violations of freedom of conscience are occurring most frequently include Belgorod, Tula, Tyumen, Khabarovsky krai, Adygea, Khakassia, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Karachay-Cherkess Republic, Omsk and Orel. Filatov would not put Moscow even among the worst ten provinces: he said that violations of religious freedom there were no more frequent than average for Russia. (END) Friday 22 January ARMENIAN CHURCH IN TURKMENISTAN WILL PROVE INTERESTING TEST CASE by Felix Corley, Keston News Service In what seems set to become an interesting test case of Turkmenistan's attitude to religious minorities, the Armenian community in the port city of Turkmenbashi (formerly Krasnovodsk) is seeking to regain its church confiscated during the Soviet era and to reopen it as a place of worship. Since the adoption of a revised law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organisations in 1996 and subsequent compulsory reregistration, all religious groups except the Muslims and the Russian Orthodox have been denied registration by Turkmenistan's state authorities. Much of the impetus for reopening the Turkmenbashi church, the only surviving Armenian church in Turkmenistan, has come from the Armenian ambassador to Turkmenistan, ARAM GRIGORYAN. He met the mayor of Turkmenbashi, CHARI VOVEZKLICHEV, last September to discuss the restoration of the church and the resumption of its activities. Vovezklichev told Grigoryan that the restoration would be possible only if the Armenian side allocated all necessary funds. The resumption of the church's activities was a more complicated task, he told the ambassador, and was connected with the registration of the church community. In October, thanks to assistance from Armenia, an Armenian Sunday school opened in Turkmenbashi, although this appears to be a cultural more than a religious venture. Ambassador Grigoryan told Keston from the Turkmen capital Ashkhabad about the history of the church, built `to meet the spiritual needs of the Armenians, who made up a not inconsiderable part of the population of colonial Krasnovodsk'. The Armenians already had four other churches in what is now Turkmenistan when the Armenian Synod decided in 1900 to build the Krasnovodsk church. Imperial permission was received in 1902 and construction was completed in two years. The church was consecrated on 15 May 1905. However, it functioned for only some two decades before being closed in the 1920s on orders of the Soviet of People's Commissars. Two of the towers were later demolished and the interior decoration and furnishings were destroyed. The church was turned over to industrial use. New tall buildings in surrounding streets hid the church from three sides, although it is situated on a central square opposite what is now the local government office. `The building is still intact today, though minus the towers and interior decoration,' Ambassador Grigoryan told Keston, `and needs thorough restoration. We are now making attempts to realise the restoration jointly with the mayor's office of the city and the local Armenians.' The ambassador appealed for support from abroad to speed up this work. However, while Grigoryan was optimistic over the future reopening of the church in Turkmenbashi, he was less hopeful about providing churches in other Turkmen towns. `The construction of Armenian churches in other towns in Turkmenistan is possible, but is not feasible because of the lack of funds.' Before the latest version of the Law on Freedom of Conscience came into force, religious communities belonging to eight different faiths had registration. Following compulsory reregistration in 1997, most religious communities - including up to half the registered Muslim communities - lost their registration. Under the amendments to the law adopted in 1996 a religious community needs to have 500 members to apply for registration. However, many religious communities that have that number of members have been denied registration. Unregistered groups, including Bahais, Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Pentecostal Christians, have been harassed for holding unregistered religious gatherings. An application to register the Armenian church in Turkmenbashi will provide an interesting test case. In the absence of Armenian churches in Turkmenistan, religious Armenians mainly attend Russian Orthodox churches, where they are said to make up a sizeable minority of those attending. In May 1998 the Russian journalist NIKOLAI MITROKHIN estimated that they made up between ten and fifteen per cent of parishioners at Orthodox churches. (END)