Gains in religious freedom in Russia during the past 10 years have been limited and Christians are still struggling to voice their beliefs, according to a Russian attorney who works with churches there.
Ekaterina Smyslova, president of the Esther Legal Information Centre in Moscow, was in Birmingham recently as a guest of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham. While gains have been made in religious freedom, she said they are far from what most people have been led to believe.
“People in Russia still don’t know what human rights are and what democracy is,” Smyslova said.
The attorney said the focus of her work with the center is to assist churches and individual Christians, following legislation in 1997 that restricted religious freedom in Russia.
“From the beginning, I had an idea that my legal profession can be my ministry,” she said.
Much of Smyslova’s work is pro bono and involves working with churches facing harassment by authorities that are unable to pay for a legal defense.
The collapse of communism in 1989 paved the way for the legal assistance of religious organizations, she said.
“The rights were in accordance to the universal declaration of human rights, so it just was really a wonderful time,” Smyslova said.
But the new religious freedom was short-lived. She said the 1997 legislation limited activities of religious groups.
“It is not complete freedom,” she said. “First of all, it is not easy now to be registered for any church or mission. You have to prove that you (the church or mission) already existed legally in the country, more than 15 years.
“It means that you have been registered originally in the Soviet time,” she said.
The legislation also said churches must complete what she called “a huge amount of legal papers for the registration, with special wording which must satisfy authorities.” She said the wording of the registration is so complex churches need lawyers to assist them.
Further complicating the situation is the fact most lawyers in Russia are usually “so far from religion.”
“In Soviet times, it was impossible for believers to get higher education,” she said, adding there are “few lawyers in our religious circles, who could be helpful.”
Mark Elliott, director of Beeson’s Global Center, said Russia’s new law on religion in 1990 was one of the “most liberal and generous in the Western world.”
But Elliott said Russian authorities began to question total religious freedom around 1993 because it threatened the Russian Orthodox Church, leading to the restrictions approved four years later.
“It’s (religious freedom) better than it was under communism, in my opinion,” Elliott said of the current situation, “but it’s much, much worse than it was in the early ’90s.”
Without the registration, churches cannot be recognized as legal entities and are not allowed to perform public activities. In addition, she said churches are not allowed to import or distribute religious information, nor do they have access to mass media material.
As a result, Elliott said many churches now face not only threats to their activities, but could be closed if the law is enforced as written.
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