Friday 25 September PRESSURES REVIVED AGAINST AMERICAN MISSIONARIES IN RUSSIA'S FAR EAST by Roman Lunkin, Keston News Service For the second time this year the secular authorities of Russia's far eastern Khabarovsk province are trying to expel an American missionary from the country. Like the first case, the second involves a missionary affiliated with the Baptist Mid-Mission organisation, ARTHUR BRISTOL, who has taken the place of DAN POLLARD in the town of Vanino. (For details of the local authorities' harassment of pastor Pollard, see Keston News Service, 24 March and 2 June 1998.) On 16 July pastor Bristol arrived in Khabarovsk, but the secular authorities refused to let him go to Vanino--on the ground that Vanino was not specifically mentioned in Bristol's visa. According to Bristol, after two weeks of visits to the visa office and to VIKTOR NIKULNIKOV, the province's top official for church-state relations, Bristol decided to return to the USA, where he obtained a new visa specifically mentioning Vanino. According to Bristol and his lawyer YEKATERINA SMYSLOVA, who were interviewed by Keston News Service in Moscow, the missionary arrived again in Khabarovsk province on 20 August and in Vanino on Friday evening, 22 August. But on Monday, 25 August, he was told that he could not remain there. At first he was informed by the local visa office that the invitation signed by Pollard and bearing the seal of the Vanino congregation was invalid because Pollard no longer lived there. Bristol then rewrote the invitation, replacing Pollard's signature with that of one of Pollard's Russian assistants who was living in Vanino on 25 August. But he was told that he must leave Russia within two days or else he would be arrested. At the visa office in Vanino Bristol was told that he was being sent back to America on the basis of Article 84 of the Constitution and of the local rules of Khabarovsk province concerning foreign residents. He later realised that the local officials were using article 84 of the old 1976 Constitution; Article 84 of the 1993 Constitution now in effect concerns the powers of Russia's president. The officials told Bristol that his mission was not registered in Khabarovsk province, that it could not invite preachers and that therefore his visa was invalid. But according to Mrs Smyslova, Bristol, like Pollard before him, also had an invitation from Mission Emmanuel, a centralised organisation registered at the federal level. The reason why the authorities did not interfere with Pollard as aggressively as they have with Bristol, she suggested, is that the question of suspending US financial aid to the Russian government had still not been decided when Pollard's case was being considered. In Bristol's case, Mission Emmanuel had authorised the congregation in Vanino to receive him as a missionary. The Baptist congregation in Vanino is in fact registered in Khabarovsk province but it has not existed for fifteen years and is therefore subject to the restrictions on its rights spelled out in Russia's 1997 law on religion. But Mrs Smyslova pointed out that even Khabarovsk province's rules for inviting foreign citizens, cited by the local officials, to justify their treatment of pastor Bristol, authorise invitations by any organisation 'legally functioning on the territory of Khabarovsk province'. Such organisations might include religious associations, she told Keston. After consulting with his lawyer, Bristol decided not to accept the demands of the secular authorities threatening him with arrest and expulsion. On 27 August Bristol was summoned to a discussion with the head of the visa office in Vanino. The officials who were present did not identify themselves, but simply asked for Bristol's personal documents. According to Bristol he recognised that the person speaking for the town administration was someone who had been following him and who he and some of his Russian friends believed to be an agent of the FSB (the latest name for the secret police best known in the west as the KGB ). This person told Bristol that he was breaking the law and threatened him with arrest. The visa officials drew up a document for Bristol to sign, admitting that he had violated the province's rules on the residence of foreigners; the missionary refused. Bristol's firm position led to the secular authorities deciding on 31 August not to expel him. But they decided to register him in Vanino without specifically granting him permission to engage in religious activities, warning him that if he were caught publicly praying or preaching he would be forced to leave Russia. Bristol refused to be registered under these conditions. On that same day the provincial administration sent a representative to Vanino to inspect the congregation's documents and property. Captain SERGEI DROZDOV of the province's visa office concluded that the congregation was legally registered - but he then began to ask questions about Bristol's visa and invitation and insisted that everything be put into written form for the sake of precision. He demanded detailed information about the church building, including its interior furnishings and equipment, even asking whether its printer was registered with the town administration. After this review, in effect a police search, Bristol decided to appeal to higher authorities in Moscow. He bought aeroplane tickets on 1 September. When he presented his passport and visa for review at the airport an officer of the Ministry of the Interior took the documents away, went off to consult a colleague, then failed to return them. According to Bristol both officers then refused to talk with him further, even though they clearly understood him, and even laughed at his attempts to get his personal documents back. He finally decided to fly to Moscow without them, and managed to get onto the aeroplane by showing photocopies of the documents along with his US driver's licence. He noticed the officer who had taken away the documents boarding the same aeroplane - but in business class, unlike the missionary. According to Bristol all of these events were most likely organised by Nikulnikov, since the other officials always cited his instructions. In July, he said, Nikulnikov personally told him that he hated Americans and Christians and that missionaries were bringing an American ideology which was 'destroying our country'. Nikulnikov added that Russia's federal law meant nothing, that the main thing was local instructions. As in his conversations with Pollard, Nikulnikov suggested that Bristol and the congregation in Vanino join the regional branch of the Union of Baptists headed by GENNADI ABRAMOV. But Bristol replied that one of the key principles of his Baptist Mid-Missions organisation was independence. Bristol told Keston that the provincial authorities had long tried to convince the Vanino congregation's members that their church did not have the full status and rights of a 'legal personality' under Russian law. The church has not even been registered by the consular service of the Foreign Ministry on the list of those approved for services . According to Bristol several Russian members of the congregation have been told that to get such approval they must get the consent of Nikulnikov. In the opinion of these members, he said, dealing with the Khabarovsk province officials is like dealing with officials from a foreign country which is not part of Russia. Requesting comment from Nikulnikov's office, Keston was referred to one MIKHAIL SVISHCHEV who said in a telephone conversation of 3 September that Nikulnikov had left for holiday a week earlier and that he himself knew little about the situation. However he endorsed the previous accusation of the authorities that an invitation to a missionary such as Bristol could be issued only by an organisation registered in the territory of Khabarovsk province, not by a 'Moscow organisation'. According to Svishchev, Nikulnikov had nothing to do with the problem. 'Everything has happened as it has because of the fact that the invitation came from Moscow', he said. Bristol told Keston that he had come to Moscow because 'I'm worried about my own safety'. But all the same he said that he wished to return to Vanino. His visa was due to expire in November when he would be compelled to return home. In an 11 September meeting at the Institute of Religion and Law, pastor Bristol said that after receiving a new passport through the US Embassy, he accidentally found in his suitcase his original passport and visa. The missionary stated that he himself could not possibly have put those documents there; he suggested to Keston that the officer who had boarded the Moscow- bound aeroplane with him in Khabarovsk must have done so. He suggested that perhaps it was precisely for this purpose that the aircraft stood waiting at the airport in Moscow for two hours after landing. On 14 September Bristol flew from Moscow to Khabarovsk, to pray with the members of his congregation. That evening he called his wife in the US but was disconnected twice after saying firstly that the US Embassy in Moscow advised him against bringing his family and secondly that the Khabarovsk government thought that he was a spy, again, according to the US Embassy. On Friday 18 September, Bristol contacted the US Consulate in Vladivostok after being refused registration by OVIR (Visa Registration Department). The consulate told him they had a letter from the head of OVIR of Khabarovsk stating that Bristol would be registered. The same day Bristol received a letter from OVIR stating that he was not allowed to live in Pollard's house because the church met there. Smyslova had already assured Bristol that there was no legal basis for this statement. The letter also cited Article 20 Section 2 of the 1997 Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations to assert that Bristol could not participate in religious acts. But Section 1 of Article 20 gives him the freedom to be an active member in church life. Again, he was threatened with being 'punished' and or 'deported' if he did participate in religious acts. Finally, three days later, on 21 September, OVIR registered him under their 31 August conditions, but not before ordering Bristol to sign a letter stating that if he participated in religious acts he would be breaking the law and be 'punished'. Bristol wrote on the letter: 'I have received this letter and understand what it implies as compared to the law of the Russian Federation.' This registration, he was told, was only as a guest in Vanino of fellow foreigner Dan Pollard and was considered a personal invitation (not an invitation from the centralised organisation Mission Emmanuel or from his church in Vanino.) If his initial invitation to Vanino by Dan Pollard was rejected by authorities because Pollard no longer lived there, his position recognised by OVIR as Pollard's guest remains precarious. According to Bristol, the most important thing is not to be silent--otherwise the officials will engage in even more violations of the law. (END)