Wednesday 17 March BULGARIAN CHURCHES PROTEST AGAINST NEW RELIGION REGULATIONS IN SOFIA by Felix Corley, Keston News Service A number of Churches have already protested against plans by the city council in the Bulgarian capital Sofia to introduce new regulations to restrict religious activity. Meeting on 9 March the Executive Committee of the Bulgarian Evangelical Alliance discussed in detail the planned regulations, which they had received the previous day. They resolved to write a letter of protest to the city council declaring that the new regulations were unnecessary and to work with other religious groups to have the plans overturned. NIKOLAI NEDELCHEV, the general secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, told Keston News Service on 9 March that his organisation viewed the proposed regulations as `restrictive', in some places duplicating provisions in other laws already in existence, in other places contradicting those laws. In particular, he declared, the Alliance complains that the regulations set out the responsibilities of religious groups, but not their rights. The Alliance is concerned about the wording of articles relating to the participation of children under 16 in religious activities, the advertising of religious events and the use of property for religious purposes (it believes that if the latter provisions are applied strictly, up to 80 per cent of places of worship - including some belonging to the Orthodox Church - could be threatened). However, Nedelchev is hopeful the regulations can be overturned. `We already have one case in Plovdiv region a few years ago when such rules were cancelled,' he told Keston. Speaking to Keston by telephone from Sofia on 10 March, a Catholic priest declared that his Church had not officially received the text of the proposed regulations, which are yet to be published. However, the priest, who preferred not to give his name, reported that the Bishops' Conference had already complained about the proposed regulations, protesting in particular against the proposal that onlyBulgarian citizens might be allowed to preach in Sofia, not foreigners. Some members of the Orthodox Church - the largest faith in Bulgaria - have also opposed the proposed regulations. `Denominations are divided into traditional and non-traditional ones,' Archimandrite Pavel Stefanov declared. `They must register and their registration may be revoked after complaints, foreign missionaries are strongly discouraged from working in the capital and teenagers may participate in the work of denominations only with the written permission of both parents. If strictly applied, the latter restriction can prevent young people from participating in the life of the Orthodox church as well.' The government's Directorate of Religious Affairs is also apparently opposed to the proposed regulations. The fact that new regulations on religion were being planned by the Sofia city council first came to light a month ago, when reports appeared in the local media on 10 February. The impetus for the proposed regulations seems to come from Sofia's mayor STEFAN SOFIANSKY. He is said to be close to Moscow's mayor YURI LUZHKOV, and some commentators have claimed the new document has been modelled on the Russian religious law. (END) Wednesday 17 March KAZAKH GOVERNMENT WITHDRAWS CONTROVERSIAL DRAFT BILL ON RELIGION by Felix Corley, Keston News Service The Ministry of Culture, Information and Social Accord has withdrawn the draft text of the bill on freedom of religious confession and religious organisations drawn up at the end of last year by SERIK AMIRGAZIN, an official of the then Ministry of Information and Social Accord. The announcement was made on 13 March by GAZIZ TELEBAYEV, a department head in the Ministry, at a one-day conference held in the former Kazakh capital Almaty. The conference, organised jointly by the Almaty Helsinki Committee, the presidential Human Rights Commission and the Congress of Spiritual Harmony, was convened in response to concerns expressed among religious and human rights groups about the new proposed bill. Attending were government officials, human rights activists, religious representatives, journalists and representatives of international bodies, including the OSCE and the European Union. `The draft text has been revoked,' Telebayev declared categorically, telling the conference that the process of drafting amendments to the 1992 law on freedom of religion and religious confessions would continue, but with radical changes to the controversial draft. `There will be cardinal changes and the text will be reworked,' he pledged. In particular he highlighted specific elements of last December's draft (copy of draft in English http://www.keston.org/) that he recognised as unacceptable. He pledged to change the preamble, which had specified the aims of the draft bill as tightening state control and regulating religious activity. Telebayev criticised the definition of terms used in the draft in Article 1, which he called `a mistake on the part of the drafter'. He pledged that the removal of subsidies from students at religious higher education establishments would be looked at again. He recognised that the wording of Article 6 of the draft bill on foreign missionary activity in Kazakhstan had aroused controversy and admitted that `the style was unsuccessful' and that the `formulation of the second half of the article was bad'. He pledged that there would be a fresh look at the article on religious associations and which type of religious associations were specified. On Article 10, which laid down what information had to be presented in the charter of a religious association before it could apply for registration, Telebayev recognised that the requirement to present `other information relating to the peculiar features of the activity of the given religious association' was too vague a formulation. On Article 11, which specified registration procedure, Telebayev admitted that further work was needed. He stated categorically that the 10-year rule preventing religious associations from applying for registration in the first decade of their existence `will be excluded'. However, speaking on a personal note, he declared that he favoured some time period before groups could apply for registration, preferring a period of between one and three years. He added that he believed that the certificate confirming the length of time a religious association has existed should be drawn up by a commission of experts, not by the `organs of local self-administration' as envisaged in the draft bill. Telebayev declared that he believed this one - to three - year period should relate to local associations of all religious groups, not just to new religious movements. He also affirmed that fresh work would be needed on Articles 12 and 13, which relate to the refusal to register religious associations and suspension or bans on their activity. Telebayev recounted that his ministry had written to religious groups suggesting the establishment of a League of Religions to discuss such laws, as well as other matters of interest. He believed such a League should meet on a regular basis. He pledged that no future drafts of a law on religion would be produced without a discussion of them by the League. Although the conference welcomed Telebayev's announcement on the withdrawal of the December draft bill, many speakers expressed their concern about the way the process of drafting amendments to the law had proceeded. They complained that religious groups had been given little or no information and that even different agencies of the government seemed to have little idea of what other agencies were doing. The conference decided to set up a small working group to be organised under the auspices of the Almaty Helsinki Committee to monitor developments on any new draft bills and to keep all religious groups informed, as well as to provide the government with its own comments. It was suggested that the group should include members of several different religious communities, including Muslims, Christians and members of other faiths, as well as lawyers and human rights activists. However, the conference did not select any specific members of such a working group. Serik Amirgazin of the Ministry of Culture pledged that the government would accept input from the working group formed as a result of the conference. Although the conference was attended by representatives of many religious groups, the leading denominations - including the Muslim Board, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church - stayed away, despite being invited. Participants regretted their absence. The draft bill drawn up at the end of 1998 has aroused great controversy among minority religious communities in Kazakhstan. Although the government claimed religious groups had been consulted, it seems this amounted to little more than a small group of representatives based in the new Kazakh capital Astana, news of which did not filter down to Almaty, the former capital and the country's largest city. It was only when the draft bill was discussed in a debate on the Maidan programme on the Khabar television channel thatmany religious groups heard about it. Even then, many had great difficulty acquiring the text of the draft. A group of Protestant Christians wrote a detailed letter of complaint about the draft to the ministers of Information and Justice in January. On 1 February the Deputy Minister of Justice MEREI VAISOV wrote a reply to the Emmanuel church in Almaty which had sent the letter, pledging that in any reworking of the draft bill by the Ministry of Justice their views would be taken into account. There was no reply from the Ministry of Information. In February of this year the Almaty administration of the Ministry of Culture, Information and Social Accord sent a questionnaire to fifty of the larger religious groups in the city. In an interview in Almaty, the official responsible for relations with religious organisations, GULMIRA BAITLENOVA, stressed to Keston News Service that the survey had been entirely voluntary and was aimed solely at finding out their views on the proposed new legislation and on the idea from the Ministry of forming a Round Table of religious associations in the city to discuss matters of mutual interest. Thirty-one of the fifty religious groups responded to the survey. In a three-page summary of the results, the administration reported to the Ministry in Astana that `a significant enough number of experts do not see a need to adopt a new law on freedom of religious confession, as they consider the current law optimal for today's situation. At the same time the Russian law [on religion of 1997] aroused great condemnation, as did the possibility of the inclusion of articles in the Kazakhstan law drawn from the Russian, which they saw in the draft drawn up by the Ministry's department of religion�. Thirteen respondents had declared no need for a new law, while six had responded in favour. A further six had found it difficult to say. There were two other responses, one saying the present law should be carried out in practice, the other saying there should be a new law, but not like in Russia. Respondents were more favourable towards the idea of a Round Table, with 20 positive responses. In a separate development in Astana, the Minister of Justice, BAURZHAN MUKHAMEDZHANOV, told representatives of the OSCE Centre (located in Almaty) on 11 March that there would not be a ten-year rule in any law on religion. The recently-published plan of bills to be discussed in parliament in 1999 does not include any new law on religion. However, legal specialists in Almaty told Keston that this did not absolutely rule out the possibility that a bill could be brought to parliament. Specialists say that bills are on occasion brought to parliament without prior notification or entry into the plan. (END)