MOSCOW — Human rights defenders and church members have expressed outrage at the sudden destruction of Holy Trinity Church, a Pentecostal church in Moscow’s eastern suburbs. Workers, police and civil volunteers moved in soon after midnight Sept. 6 and forcibly demolished most of the three-story building.
“In human terms, this is barbarism,” Mikhail Odintsov, an aide to Russia’s ombudsperson for human rights said.
Pastor Vasili Romanyuk said he had been woken in the early hours and had rushed to the site to try to halt the destruction, but was too late.
In 1992 Moscow’s city government authorized Holy Trinity Church to situate its building in the outlying district of Novokosino.
According to the church the Moscow authorities subsequently withheld permission to build, and the city’s land resources department annulled its land rental agreement with the church in 2005.
In 2010 the government filed suit against Holy Trinity, demanding the church remove all construction from and vacate the site. The Supreme Court ruled that Holy Trinity was occupying “disputed land without any legal basis.”
Romanyuk said they had no official warning of the destruction. “We didn’t believe they would just do this.”
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