Duma Mulls Tightening Controls Over Independent Religious Groups

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 3 – Up to now, Russian law makes a clear distinction between religious groups, which meet for services but are not registered with the state and cannot own property or have bank accounts, and religious organizations, which are registered, become “legal persons” and can function as such.

            Now, the Duma committee on civil society is drafting legislation that would require all religious groups involving “more than three to five” people to register with the state, thus forcing those which have operated independently to register, cease functioning or go underground as catacomb churches (tass.ru/obschestvo/7248025 and credo.press/227958/).

            If such a measure is adopted, the Russian authorities would acquire the legal authority to ban almost all religious activities they don’t approve of and to punish individuals for participating in any group meetings, a violation of the 1993 Russian Constitution and a dramatic move back to the practices of Soviet times.   

            Committee head Sergey Gavrilov says that the proximate cause for such a change was the supposed “’ritual’ murder” of a child in one of the independent groups in Yekaterinburg at the end of November. Many religious groups without registration often remain beyond the reach of the law. At the very least, this status “objectively makes control of them more difficult.”

            The deputy says that his committee is now consulting with experts on how to require that “all religious groups of more than three to five members” be required to register with and be monitored by the justice ministry. He says he sees only one problem with such a step: it would require a dramatic expansion in the staff of the justice ministry and the police.

            Three years ago, the Popular Assembly of Ingushetia, then under the control of Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, submitted a proposal to have all religious groups registered; but after a few months, the republic parliamentarians withdrew this legal initiative, TASS reports without providing an explanation as to why that happened.