c. 1997 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Freedom of worship in Russia is under increasing threat at both the federal and regional levels, according to a Moscow-based human rights observer.”Russians have less religious freedom today than they did three years ago. Unless current trends are reversed, I predict that they will have still less religious freedom at the end of 1997 than they have now,”said Lawrence A. Uzzell, Moscow representative of the London-based Keston Institute, which monitors religious life in communist and formerly communist countries.

In 1993, Russia adopted a new constitution that guarantees the free exercise of religion and the equality of all religions.

But Uzzell said these provisions have become”largely meaningless in practice”in the predominantly Orthodox Christian nation.

Within the next few weeks, Uzzell said he expects the Russian Duma (lower House of Parliament) to approve proposed constitutional revisions that would place new regulations on religious organizations. The amendments could particularly single out non-Orthodox groups for restrictions, he said.

Uzzell said it is unclear whether Russian President Boris Yeltsin would sign any new religious restrictions. Three years ago, under strong pressure from the West, Yeltsin vetoed a similar measure.”Everything is up for grabs,”Uzzell said.

According to Uzzell, more than one-fourth of Russia’s provincial governments have already adopted laws that regulate religious activities. “At the provincial level, Russia is now restoring one of the most virulent institutions of the Soviet era, the council for religious affairs,”Uzzell said, adding that during the communist years council officials often worked”closely with the secret police, who punished priests”and religious believers.

Under a new law in the Ural Mountains province of Sverdlovsk, the reconstructed religious affairs council is explicitly authorized to assess a religious group’s doctrinal beliefs and to evaluate the”social-psychological consequences”of its activities, Uzzell said.

The Sverdlovsk law also imposes detailed requirements on”missionary”activities, but specifically exempts the Russian Orthodox Church and five other groups _ although not Baptists or Pentecostals, two of the largest Protestant groups in Russia.

Another new law in the province of Udmurtia, about 400 miles east of Moscow, requires all”missionaries”to get special accreditation from the local government. The law defines the term”missionary”so broadly that anyone _ including domestic clergy and lay believers _ who talks about their religion would be included.”The new laws give provincial authorities wide discretion to ban religious activities which are inconvenient to themselves or their political allies,”Uzzell said.

However, Uzzell conceded that the restrictive laws are not being enforced consistently in Russia’s”lawless”society.”Not only are laws that supposedly protect human rights often ignored in practice, laws that assault human rights are also sometimes ignored in practice,”he said.

Uzzell came to Washington this week to brief the congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (also known as the Helsinki Commission) about his concerns.

At a Tuesday (Jan. 14) commission briefing, Uzzell urged members of Congress and the Clinton administration to more vigorously protest the decline of Russian religious freedom. “I think the West should be making it clear that this issue matters to the U.S.,”Uzzell said.”Many Russian leaders now seem to think that they can proceed with full integration into Europe and the free world even while they continue and even intensify violations of fundamental rights _ including rights guaranteed by their own constitution. The West should state clearly that they cannot,”he said.

Other groups have also raised concerns about declining religious freedom in Russia. The Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville, Va.-based religious liberty advocacy group, this week wrote a letter of protest to Yeltsin.”Russia must choose to reject this totalitarian impulse and reaffirm the basic human right of religious liberty,”wrote Rutherford Institute President John Whitehead.

RNS END LAWTON