Report shows Belarus losing battle with believers

BREST, Belarus — A Belarusian state report seen by religious liberty news service Forum 18 gives a rare insight into state attempts to contain religious activity and official gloom at the state’s failure. Vasili Marchenko, top religious affairs official in Brest region, is upset that officials are not active enough in breaking up worship services and harassing, fining and controlling religious activity, writing of “an even more depressing situation.”

The report aims at “repairing defects” in controlling religious activity by Dec. 1. Marchenko gloomily writes of the state’s failure to return an alternative Orthodox community to the Moscow Patriarchate and to stop Baptists conducting two or three services a week, “freely and systematically distributing religious literature” and conducting “an illegal water baptism” lasting for more than four hours with more than 300 participants.