BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

18/11/2005

Belarus: government unable to control religious activity

Nov. 18 (Forum 18/CWNews.com) - Authorities in Belarus are concerned by their inability to contain religious activity, the Forum 18 news service reports.

Vasili Marchenko, the top religious-affairs official in the Brest region, is very upset that officials are not active enough in breaking up worship services and harassing, fining, and controlling religious activity, writing of "an even more depressing situation," Forum 18 reports. Having seen a copy of a government report on the question, Forum 18 says that officials are committed to "repairing defects" in their efforts to stop unauthorized religious activity.

Marchenko gloomily writes of the state's failure to return an alternative Orthodox community to the Moscow patriarchate, failure to stop Baptists from conducting two or three services a week, "freely and systematically distributing : religious literature," and conducting "an illegal water baptism." Local authorities are also castigated for failing to stop Eastern-rite Catholic, Jehovah's Witness, Adventist, and Pentecostal activity.

Source:

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=40827