RUSSIA: LARGEST TUVAN PROTESTANT CHURCH DISBANDS TO AVOID INVOLUNTARY LIQUIDATION
By Jeremy Reynalds (07/20/05)
Following an inspection by the religious affairs department in the traditionally Buddhist Russian republic of Tuva, officials complained the charismatic Sun Bok Ym church in the regional capital of Kyzyl had violated its charter by sending its pastor to a neighboring region and failing to notify officials of its new address.
Tuva is near the border between Siberia and Mongolia (www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ru-ty.html).
When officials of the Justice Ministry's Federal Registration Service, set up in Oct. 2004, initiated attempts to liquidate the church through the legal system, so the church decided to disband voluntarily.
Pastor Bair Kara-Sal told Forum 18 News Service he believes a promise by local justice department officials in court that they will not oppose a new registration application.
Founded by South Korean missionaries from the Full Gospel association in 1995, Sun Bok Ym is Tuva's largest Protestant church, with a predominantly ethnic Tuvan congregation of about 150 people.
Senior preacher Buyan Khomushku told Forum 18 that authorities first started close scrutiny of the church in 2001, when it experienced a sudden spurt in membership and moved from rented facilities to a church building funded by the South Koreans, who left Russia that year.
"They wouldn't have done anything to us when the missionaries were here," he told Forum 18.
Then, in Jan. 2005, Khomushku told Forum 18 News, the republic's religious affairs department inspected the church while he was filling in for Kara-Sal, then on a visit to the neighboring Russian republic of Khakassia.
Khomushku told Forum 18 that inspectors charged this arrangement was not provided for in the church's charter (a document outlining a religious organization's internal workings which forms part of its state registration application).
In addition, they reportedly said that the church had not informed the authorities of its new address or submitted the annual report of its ongoing activities as required by Russia's 1997 religion law. As a result, inspectors told church officials they would file for its liquidation.
Khomushku told Forum 18 that Sun Bok Ym had been unaware of most of these requirements, and authorities had incorrectly recorded the receipt of one letter of annual confirmation.
"In one sense they were right, but they could have just asked us and not gone via the courts," he said.
Concerned, the church decided to disband before the start of Feb. hearings in Tuva's Supreme Court, Kara-Sal told Forum 18. While the judge was consequently unable to act, he said, the church is no longer able to use the name by which it has become known, "and now there will be a lot more bureaucracy."
Forum 18 reported that having submitted its new registration application with the name "Good News," Kara-Sal explained that, as a newly registered independent religious organization, the church would have to re-register annually for 15 years to comply with the law. However, he said he doubted any loss of rights, such as inviting foreign religious workers or distributing literature.
Khomushku told Forum 18 that a justice department official had argued in court that the church did not need it its building, so it would be better transferred to a social service organization.
However, he shared his pastor's hope that the local authorities would eventually process the church's new registration application.
"Even though at the moment they are constantly telling us that this or that word isn't right," he told Forum 18 News.
Forum 18 reported that Tuva's main religious affairs official confirmed to the news service that the local branch of the Federal Registration Service (a group within the Ministry of Justice created by President Vladimir Putin's decree of Oct. 13 2004) had filed suit for Sun Bok Ym's liquidation.
In addition to the reasons listed by Khomushku, Forum 18 reported that Kambaa Biche-Ool claimed the church's administration had not held a sufficient number of meetings or submitted notification of a leadership change, despite several warnings.
Forum 18 reported that Biche-Ool claimed that the Tuvan authorities liquidate a religious organization only if it had violated its own charter and/or the Russian Constitution. He confirmed that court liquidation had been prevented only because Sun Bok Ym had disbanded itself. The church has now been given three months "to put everything right," he told the news service.
Biche-Ool also claimed, Forum 18 reported, that the authorities were following Article 25 of the 1997 religion law, which gives the government department charged with registering a religious organization the right to check for compliance.
However, Tuva appears to be very zealous in its enforcement of this law, Forum 18 commented, saying the news service has not run into attempts to liquidate a religious organization for procedural reasons anywhere else in Russia. Especially, Forum 18 commented, as the country's Constitutional Court ruled in Feb. 2002 that a religious organization may be
liquidated only if in violation of the Constitution or "properly proven to have ceased its activities."
Forum 18 reported that according to Biche-Ool, lawyers for the Federation Registration Service and Tuva's expert religious council examine the charters of religious organizations, while he and representatives of the local police and FSB (the former KGB) check the nature of their meetings.
Biche-Ool showed Forum 18 the 2005 timetable of annual check-ups on the republic's 47 religious organizations. "If everything is in order, we don't bother them, but if there is a violation, we issue a warning," he said.
Pastor Dmitri Ryabov of Kyzyl's 100-strong Glorification Church told Forum 18 News that state officials last checked up on his congregation "superficially" in summer 2004, in what he described as a "normal" procedure. He added that all the church's documents had been in order thanks to legal advice from the Russia-wide Pentecostal union led by Sergei Ryakhovsky, with which the church is affiliated.
In addition to monitoring charter activity and other functions mentioned in the 1997 law, Forum 18 said that Putin's 2004 decree gives the Federal Registration Service the right "to send its representatives for participation in events conducted by social organizations, political parties and religious organizations."
While both government religious affairs official Andrei Sebentsov and religious rights lawyer Anatoli Pchelintsev told Forum 18 that nothing would really change with the introduction of the Federal Registration Service, some religious organizations have reported their dealings with it are less than easy.
Speaking to Forum 18 in June 2005, Catholic Bishop Clemens Pickel pointed out that the registration of his St. Kliment diocese in June 2004 should have resulted in the simple insertion of the diocese's title into the charters of its 55 parishes. On requesting this, however, he told Forum 18 News, registration service officials remarked that the existing charters were "full of mistakes," resulting in the process taking a number of months to complete.
Then in April 2005, Colonel Barry Pobjie of the Salvation Army told Forum 18 News that the Church's central religious organization had recently been informed by the Federal Registration Service there was a discrepancy between a term on its registration certificate and in its charter.
"As a layman, I understand it to be the difference between ‘central' and ‘centralized,'" he said. Forum 18 reported that when Pobjiehe asked for this to be changed, however, officials reportedly told him that the organization's entire registration documentation would have to be reworked.
For more background see Forum 18's Russia religious freedom survey at www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=509
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