ROMANIAN RELIGIOUS MINORITIES CONCERNED ABOUT NEW RELIGION LAW
By Joy Junction (10/08/05)
A number of Romania's minority religious communities have expressed alarm about the current draft of a new religion law and the way they say it has been rushed to parliament under an "emergency procedure."
Romania is located in Southeastern Europe, bordering the Black Sea, between Bulgaria and the Ukraine (www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ro.html).
Mihai Agafitei of the State Secretariat for Religious Denominations told Forum 18 News Service that parliament will adopt the new law "by the end of this year."
"The government used the emergency procedures, as it wants this to be adopted before the end of the year, citing pressure in recent years from religious communities over why it is taking so long," Viorel Dima, religious freedom representative for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, told Forum 18.
The news service reported that the new law is set to replace the 1948 communist-era religion law which has remained in force in the post-communist era.
The draft law was approved by the government at its session on July 14, and then sent to parliament. It is now in the Committee on Human Rights, Religious Denominations and Minorities of the Senate, the upper chamber of parliament. It is also being considered by the parallel committee in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, Forum 18 reported.
Many religious minority communities object to provisions in the proposed law, mainly because it divides religious communities into three categories with differing rights, Forum 18 reported. Baptists and other Protestants, Greek Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses and Baha'is have already voiced unhappiness about the text, and the way the draft law has been prepared.
Enjoying the greatest rights under the proposed new law, according to Forum 18, are the 18 recognized "religious denominations" or "cults," a category that it is almost impossible for other faiths to join. Those with fewer than about 22,000 members can register as "religious associations" with lesser rights, while those with fewer than 300 members can only function as "religious groups," which have no legal status. Religious activity by unregistered communities will be legal.
"For the recognized denominations, the draft is generally OK," Pastor Dima of the Adventists told Forum 18, "but for the religious associations with fewer rights, it is bad."
Forum 18 reported Dima said the government justified the differing rights for religious communities according to category by pointing to other European states with similar provisions. He said, "The draft law is not ideal and in terms of religious freedom is bad, but it reflects the reality of other European states."
The River of Revival Pentecostal church in the city of Arad, led by Pastor Samuel Caba, Forum 18 reported, has organized protests in various cities against the new law, complaining particularly over what it regards as the discriminatory treatment of religious communities in the different categories.
Pastor Lucian Chis, who leads the Aletheia Church in Timisoara and also heads the Federation of Autonomous Christian Churches, which has 42 member churches across the country, also complained to Forum 18 of the "discrimination" between majority and minority faiths inherent in the draft.
Forum 18 reported he told the news service that his federation had written to President Traian Basescu to outline its concerns.
Also preparing a protest to parliament about the proposed law is a consortium of local human rights groups, Dorina Nastase, director of the Bucharest-based think tank the Romanian Center for Global Studies, told Forum 18.
Dana Georgescu, secretary of the Senate Human Rights, Religion and Minorities Committee, said committee members discussed the law in general terms in Sept., and are due to resume discussion next week.
"If the committee's conclusion is positive, the law will go to the full senate," she told Forum 18. "If it is negative, the draft law will have to be considered again." She said the Senate Legal Committee is also considering the draft.
Forum 18 reported that Georgescu said a number of religious communities, including the dominant Romanian Orthodox Church, the Evangelical Church, the Baptists and the Jehovah's Witnesses, have already written to the committee with their views.
The current draft of the law was prepared in the State Secretariat, a sub-division of the Ministry of Culture and Religion, Agafitei of the State Secretariat for Religious Denominations told Forum 18. The draft was discussed in April with leaders of the recognized religious denominations.
"All the representatives of each community approved the draft," Forum 18 reported he claimed. But Forum 18 reported the Greek Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses, who are both amongst the proposed recognized "religious denominations,"told the news service that they did not approve it.
The draft law was also discussed in Sept. at a seminar in Bucharest on Religious Liberty in the Romanian and European Context organized by the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs, the State Secretariat and the National Association for the Defense of Religious Liberty, Conscience and Liberty.
According to Forum 18, Adventist News Network reported that Cole Durham, a U.S. law professor who is on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Advisory Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief, told the seminar that the proposed religious law could be improved to what he called a "multi-tiered" system of religious organizations that gives some groups more prominence than others. He urged Romania to not only comply with international standards regarding church-state relations, but to exceed them.
The Baptists are concerned, Forum 18 reported, that parliament could, in their opinion, make the law even worse. They pointed out that provisions on pension funds organized by religious communities were modified in the draft after religious communities had agreed to the draft with the State Secretariat.
The Baptists welcomed the fact, Forum 18 said, that after a series of meetings this year between religious communities and the current government, the initial draft reflecting earlier restrictive drafts was improved in line with suggestions from the religious communities.
However, Florin Manoliu of the Jehovah's Witnesses said his community had not detected any improvements to meet their concerns. "We gave our comments to the State Secretariat in the spring," he told Forum 18.
"They told us that the later draft took account of our observations, but we did not see any improvements." He said the Jehovah's Witnesses therefore declined the invitation to attend later meetings with the State Secretariat to discuss the text. "We thought our view would be ignored once again."
Forum 18 reported that the Greek Catholic Church - which was banned by the Communists and only allowed to re-emerge in 1989 after the ousting of President Nicolae Ceausescu - withheld approval of the draft law because most of their properties handed by the Communist authorities to the Romanian Orthodox Church have still not been returned.
"We would like to have our patrimonial issues resolved before the law is adopted," Forum 18 reported that Greek Catholic priest Fr. Titus Sas told the news service.
Sas pointed out, Forum 18 reported, that it was the state that took the Church's property from it in 1948 and that it has the responsibility to return it.
"The state wants to leave this matter to us and the Orthodox Church, but this would bring us no positive results," Sas told Forum 18. "That is why we would like to have the properties back, and after that we may discuss religious freedom."
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