FORUM 18 NEWS SERVICE, Oslo, Norway
http://www.forum18.org/

The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one’s belief or religion
The right to join together and express one’s belief

7 June 2010

RUSSIA: GHOSTLIKE EXISTENCE FOR DAGESTAN’S PROTESTANTS

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1456

The Hosanna Church – the largest Pentecostal Church in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan – had a five-year agreement allowing prison visits abruptly cancelled in early 2010, Pastor Artur Suleimanov told Forum 18 News Service. The authorities have also changed their earlier positive
assessment of the church’s work with drug addicts. He believes such
problems result from the personal initiative of individual officials. Rasul
Gadzhiyev of Dagestan’s Ministry for Nationality Policy, Information and
External Affairs insists that the authorities impose no restrictions on
churches’ social work. “If the Protestants’ activity is in line with the
law, there are no problems at all,” he told Forum 18. Three Pentecostal
pastors told Forum 18 that their congregations’ lack of freedom was
overwhelmingly due to public attitudes, which prevent some church members from attending Sunday worship even at openly functioning churches in urban locations. One village police chief who stopped Protestants meeting pointed to the mosque and told Pastor Suleimanov: “That’s my law.”

* See full article below. *

7 June 2010
RUSSIA: GHOSTLIKE EXISTENCE FOR DAGESTAN’S PROTESTANTS

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1456
By Geraldine Fagan, Moscow Correspondent, Forum 18 News Service

Dagestan’s largest Pentecostal church is now barred from conducting social
projects with even drug addicts and convicts, its pastors have told Forum
18 News Service in the southern Russian republic. A five-year-old agreement
granting prison visits stopped without explanation in early 2010, notes
Pastor Artur Suleimanov of the church’s parent Hosanna congregation, “even
though prison governors were glad to receive our people.” The authorities’
positive attitude towards the church’s anti-drugs work in the early 2000s
has also changed abruptly, he said. “It’s very strange, as in practice we
are the only people working with drug addicts – sometimes you get the
impression that the state anti-drugs agency is a very real drugs baron.”

Asked if there were any restriction on Protestant activity in the social
sphere, Rasul Gadzhiyev, departmental head of Dagestan’s Ministry for
Nationality Policy, Information and External Affairs, maintained that the
state authorities do not regulate it or issue special instructions. “If the
Protestants’ activity is in line with the law, there are no problems at
all,” he told Forum 18 in the Dagestani capital Makhachkala on 22 April.

Dagestan – a republic in Russia’s troubled North Caucasus which borders
Azerbaijan and Georgia – is highly ethnically diverse. Most of the
population is of Muslim background, the majority of them Sunnis but with a
Shia minority. Suleimanov – who is an ethnic Avar – estimates that some 85
per cent of the approximately 3,000 Pentecostals in Dagestan belong to
local ethnicities.

Christian churches in Dagestan known for working among ethnic Slavs –
including the Russian Orthodox and the Baptists – are unlikely to face
state and public opposition. The long-standing Jewish population in and
around the southern city of Derbent – estimated by local Pentecostal Pastor
Sergei Shakhov at 3,000 – does not face hostility from non-Jews.

Dagestan’s authorities also impose restrictions on the religious freedom of
Muslims outside the framework of the state-backed Spiritual Directorate of
Muslims of Dagestan, including in the areas of religious literature and
education. However, the authorities are beginning to relax their strict
control on Muslim public life (see F18News 3 June 2010
).

Change of attitude

An ethnic Russian, Pastor Ruslan Kornev of Hosanna’s daughter Source of
Life congregation in Kaspiisk, a port just south of Makhachkala, estimated
that Dagestan’s authorities switched their attitude towards the
Pentecostals’ work with drug addicts in the republic around three years
ago. “We were very active until 2005 – we did hundreds of music concerts –
but then relations became more distant,” he explained to Forum 18 on 22
April. “Of course, to our faces every official said ‘we completely
sympathise with you’, ‘we are willing’, ‘we would like to’.”

The church then spent several years trying to prove itself, he said. “But
then I understood that life’s too short – and we decided to work just as
individual believers.” By closing its separate charitable organisation,
Lazarus, in 2007, the church was able to save effort spent on extensive
bureaucracy and bookkeeping – in any case liable to frequent state
check-ups, Kornev told Forum 18. Scepticism continues to be a common
response to even personal charity, however: “People would understand if I
were doing this because I need money or some kind of personal glory, but
they don’t understand that I only need to give glory to God.”

Both Suleimanov and Kornev thought the problems were due to individual
officials. “The legal authorities have a quite good and correct attitude
towards us,” Suleimanov remarked to Forum 18 on 16 April. “If there’s
pressure, it’s the personal initiative of an official or law enforcement
agent – ‘You’re x, we’re Muslims, you’re doing x wrong.’ But it’s fine if
you respond on the basis of the law.”

Societal pressure

All three Pentecostal pastors with whom Forum 18 spoke reported that their
congregations’ lack of freedom was overwhelmingly due to public attitudes,
which prevent some church members from attending Sunday worship even at the
openly functioning churches in urban locations. Pastor Kornev said that in
Kaspiisk church members who do not attend worship are mostly young people
or wives whose husbands are opposed, “and we don’t want them to be in
conflict”.

In Makhachkala, Hosanna has been able to meet at a commercial building it
purchased in 2000, but was previously able to rent only due to his
friendship with the landlord of a local social club who resisted community
pressure to evict the church, Pastor Suleimanov told Forum 18.

In Derbent, local proprietors are afraid to rent to Pentecostals for fear
of pressure from the Muslim community, Pastor Shakhov (an ethnic Russian)
of Hosanna’s daughter Vineyard congregation told Forum 18 there on 17
April.

Clandestine communities

When Pentecostals gather in a village, however, “it is almost on the level
of a whisper”, Pastor Suleimanov told Forum 18. The members of the two
house churches to which Pastor Shakhov ministers are mostly women, who
sometimes cannot attend worship for fear of alerting their husbands. One
group at first included some men, but they left due to very strong pressure
from the village community, he said.

Pastor Suleimanov explained to Forum 18 that, due to strong family ties and
public opinion, people who become Christian are often cast out of the
community. Often, they are first attracted to Christianity after coming to
Christians for physical healing “as they know that the Prophet Isa [Jesus]
healed people and then they want to know more.”

There is little reaction if the community perceives Pentecostals simply as
followers of Isa’s teaching, Suleimanov continued. But if they are
identified as Christian, this is commonly associated with either Russian
Orthodoxy or the West – which has negative connotations of the Iraq War or
Hollywood culture – and conflict arises. “The whole village thinks that if
they have a Christian among them, that means he is kafr [an unbeliever] and
so unclean. They worry that this curse could extend to the whole village
and blame all misfortune on this person.”

Asked whether this attitude was shared by the village authorities, Pastor
Suleimanov replied: “Well, the police are the very same neighbours and the
very same Muslims.” He recalled visiting a village house group some two
years ago and being detained by police while preaching: “When the church
elder pointed out that our activity was lawful, the chief police officer
pointed to the mosque and said: ‘That’s my law’.”

This situation has not changed since Hosanna was founded in 1994, said
Pastor Suleimanov: “All these 17 years it’s been like the ninth month of
pregnancy – carrying a burden which is never resolved.”

Conditions are the same all over Dagestan except for the more open capital,
he said. Still, there are periods when Pastor Suleimanov receives threats
even in Makhachkala: “For the past three months I haven’t answered the
phone at night, as I know it will be some kind of verbal abuse or threat.”

Pastor Suleimanov does not believe that highlighting particular problems
will bring results, however, particularly for village house churches. “How
can it help? It doesn’t help at all,” he maintained to Forum 18. “People
have to live there, their roots and families are there. You can’t influence
situations like these by any official means whatsoever. Sometimes – in very
concrete circumstances, if a person is being oppressed or harassed or is in
prison – we can fight for him. But if you drag him out of that place he’ll
never live there again.”

Neighbouring republics

Senior representative in the North Caucasus for the Russia-wide Pentecostal
Union headed by Bishop Eduard Grabovenko, Pastor Suleimanov nevertheless
favourably contrasted the situation in Dagestan with that of the nearest
traditionally Muslim republics. “Here there is some kind of democracy and
secularity at least,” he told Forum 18, “in Chechnya and Ingushetia it’s
quite different – there are no open [Pentecostal] churches.” Describing the
situation in Chechnya as “dictatorship”, he estimated there to be around
100 Pentecostals, but no organised congregation.

Pastor Suleimanov had no figure for Ingushetia, where he said clan
influence is particularly strong: “I know Ingush believers who came to
faith via the internet or other means, but they can’t take any independent
steps, especially if they are young,” he told Forum 18. “Even if they
leave, it’s death for them, as they will be tracked down anyway.” (END)

For a personal commentary by Irina Budkina, Editor of the
http ://www.samstar.ru . Old Believer website, about continuing denial of
equality to Russia’s religious minorities, see F18News 26 May 2005
http ://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=570.

For more background, see Forum 18’s Russia religious freedom survey at
http ://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1196

Analysis of the background to Russian policy on “religious extremism” is
available in two articles: – ‘How the battle with “religious extremism”
began’ (F18News 27 April 2009