c. 1999 Religion News Service

MOSCOW _ Over 300 members of an embattled Pentecostal church in a remote Russian city are seeking political refugee status in the United States, citing”growing threats of physical punishment and pogroms”from local law enforcement officials.

While U.S. law gives priority to persecuted Jews, Pentecostals and Greek Catholics seeking to emigrate from the former Soviet Union, it is highly unusual for an entire congregation to seek political refugee status all at once. A U.S. lawyer working on the Magadan congregation’s appeal said it is unorthodox but warranted.

The unusual request stems from what church members and their supporters see as a pattern of harassment.”They made a list of all the people in our church and now they are going around to each person’s job and trying to get them fired”all because they go to our church,”said Pastor Nikolai Voskoboinikov in a telephone interview from the city of Magadan located 4,400 miles to the east of Moscow.”If the situation doesn’t get better, we want to move to America.” Last June, the local prosecutor asked a judge to shut down the Word of Life Church, alleging that Voskoboinikov used hypnosis and brainwashing to win converts and coerce donations.

More recently, the powerful Tax Police raided the church in December, seizing money, jewelry and files on the church’s membership, Voskoboinikov said.

And a local extremist group opposed to the Pentecostals frequently picketed and protested for the closure of the 500-member church, a related Bible school and a church program that airs weekly on local television.

Frustrated and fearful, Voskoboinikov delegated a member of his congregation to deliver an appeal from 326 church members for political refugee status to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow on Jan. 21. A few days later, a Moscow-based religious rights lawyer raised the issue with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Word of Life’s assistant pastor said U.S. consular officials in Vladivostok this week began making inquiries to Magadan by telephone although a spokesman at the U.S. embassy in Moscow said he could not comment on the case because such requests are covered by U.S. privacy laws.”We have never dealt with a mass asylum case like this,”said Jay Sekulow, the head of the American Center for Law and Justice, the Pat Robertson-founded legal organization that is working with the Pentecostal congregation.”Usually it is one person, one pastor, maybe a family.” Although the process in determining eligibility for asylum is often a slow one, Sekulow said the Magadan Pentecostals have a genuine”emergency situation”partly because”the harassment that has been leveled against these people has included death threats.” Sekulow said the ACLJ is currently devising a strategy to lobby U.S. legislators to take an interest in the Magadan Church.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Canadian churches which have supported the Magadan congregation in the past are asking their governments to look into the matter.”I’ll go through the congressman and then, if we have to get the ear of President Clinton, then we will do that,”said the Rev. David Mallory of the First Assembly of God Church in Naples, Fla.,”Russia is a sovereign nation but there must be something that can be done.”Last summer the church sent a 1998 Dodge van to the Magadan church.”The pictures I have seen of Magadan make it clear that it is no Naples, Fla. Life is hard enough there without having to go through this.” The pastor of the Christian Fellowship Church in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia has visited Magadan three times, bringing some 50,000 Canadian dollars ($33,500) in support, said youth pastor Tim MacDonald. Religious freedom is”a very hot issue”for the New Glasgow church, he said. “The key thing in the future is to stay in contact with them and to get the message out about what is going on over there,”MacDonald said, noting that Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy has been alerted to the Magadan church’s predicament.

While foreign governments may be able to pressure Russian authorities into easing up on the Magadan church, they have little control over fringe groups intent on closing the Pentecostal church. In Magadan, a city of 100,000 best known for being a disembarkation point for prisoners bound for Stalin-era concentration camps, Alexei Ivanov vowed his Moscow-based National Bolshevik Party would continue harassing the Word of Life Church. “We have our own places to worship for the Orthodox, Buddhists and Muslims,”he said.”Why can’t the people go there instead? We don’t need this foreign, this Canadian, this American, religion,”said Ivanov, an accountant who claims about 100 National Bolshevik Party members in Magadan.”They say their God is real and that other Gods are rubbish. They say that in the Russian churches they just drink vodka and swear at each other.” (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

Ivanov said the Pentecostal church outdraws Magadan’s two other churches _ both Russian Orthodox _ because it is less staid and more fun. “Why do people go there? Because the pastor is very active, there is music,”Ivanov said.”I hear it is quite lively.” The National Bolshevik Party’s objections to the Word of Life Church are primarily political, Ivanov said. He cited a Dec. 27 demonstration, carried out with the permission of local authorities, protesting Pastor Voskoboinikov’s weekly television program. During that protest, Ivanov and other demonstrators burned an American flag to protest the U.S. bombing of Iraq. “That one caused a big scandal,”Ivanov said with a chuckle.

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Based on Russia’s controversial 1997 religion law, Magadan’s regional prosecutor’s office is asking a local court for the”liquidation”of the Word of Life Church on the basis of the damage it is causing to society.

In a complaint filed in June, prosecutors accused Voskoboinikov of altering parishioners’ consciousness during worship services and gaining control over their minds to the point where they”freely give the church their bank accounts, jewelry and other valuables.” In the statement, one former parishioner was quoted as saying she lost consciousness during a service, was then diagnosed as being inhabited by the devil by other worshippers, who subsequently urged her to”destroy her icons and crosses and astrological symbols.” Assistant prosecutor Vladimir Dzedzyukh, who drafted the document, stood by the accusations in a Monday (Feb. 8) interview with RNS and denied the Word of Life Church is the target of a campaign of intimidation.”They are not being persecuted,”he said.”We have an argument and we have taken it to the judge to decide. They are going about their business. We are going about our business.” But defenders of the Word of Life Church are hoping that through other legal channels Moscow can be pressured into leaning on Magadan officials to leave the congregation alone. “Russia has signed the European Human Rights Charter, which includes provisions on religious freedom.”That is where we are looking right now. It is both a legal approach and a political one,”said Sekulow, noting Russia would suffer tremendous international embarrassment if an entire religious community were granted political refugee status.”Either the persecution is going to stop or these people will be given asylum.”

DEA END BROWN