HUNT FOR FINES IS ON-GOING
by Lev Semenovich Simkin, Dr. of Juridical Sciences, Professor
Nezavisimaia Gazeta-Religii, 20 June 2018
"Whose button is this?" And he grasped a shiny button on my high school tunic.
I recalled this when reading the order of the
magistrate
judge, issued last week.
Before 1 April, there was a sign on the house of meetings of the congregation of Mormons, but some person sawed it off—it was some April Fool's joke. Whose sign is this? Yours? And where is it? The day before it was there and the day after it appeared again. Who cares? The law is the law.
". . . In the court session, Ts. did not acknowledge his guilt, explaining that . . . the sign was stolen by unknown persons, and immediately after the discovery of the absence of the sign, information was posted in the form of a piece of paper posted on the entry door of the building, about which a statement was written to the police agencies."
The investigation has been going on for two months. To be sure, they did not seek to find out who stole it. They thought about how to punish the head of the congregation. In the final analysis they ordered for him a fine of five thousand [rubles].
Here it has already been two years since, under the flag of the struggle with extremism, responsibility for "activity without an indication if its official full name" has been imposed. Since that time, police and prosecutors have been diligently comparing signs with charter documents and holding literature to the light in search of identifying labels. One time the Adventists were caught, when they brought brochures about their faith to the local administration, for the lack of a complete name of the local congregation on the submitted pamphlets and another time the Pentecostals were punished for distributing the New Testament.
The Taganrog "extremist" was caught red-handed with the help of a witness, S., who quite accidentally was at the right place at the right time. "Witness S. explained that he is a former police officer. On Sunday he was walking by and turned his attention to the absence of a sign with the name of an organization, about which he informed the police."
The former officer took note with a sharp eye and the on-duty commissioner B. immediately "went out to check, composed a report of the search, and produced a video." Some serious case.
"The argument by Ts. and his defense lawyer regarding how a theft had occurred and was reported to the department of the Russian MVD for Taganrog, which was confirmed by documentation, and also that the violation was removed immediately after its discovery, does not have legal significance in the conviction of the judge."
To be sure, there was in this case one snag, which could not but have legal significance. According to the law, the subject of this administrative offense (absence of the name) can only be a legal person, while here it is clearly a physical person. To the question why a physical person was held liable under this article, I do not have an answer; most likely the police did not read the law to the end. But imagine that the judge did, and fined Sergei Fedorovich for an entirely different offense of which nobody had accused him: for "missionary activity with violation of the requirements of legislation." And the basis for the new charge was the evidence of that former policeman.
"Witness S. heard singing as he went past the building of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which is evidence of the conduct of missionary activity." That's what it was—singing inside the premises of the congregation turned out to be evangelism, and illegal evangelism at that. Excuse me for the long quotes, but it seems to me they explain much about the anatomy of what happened.
Why do law enforcement personnel resort to deceits, contrary both to law and to common sense? People as people do not live in an airless space; they watch television. They count themselves to be state workers and they display diligence with respect to those confessions that are connected with foreign fellow believers. They know that the state needs income and so it scrapes the bottom of the barrel, and they have already assessed four million rubles in fines from believers—all for the same absence of signs and for preaching outside their walls without a special paper.
But for a normal lawyer, a question arises: what about the constitution? After all, there are features written there, both about ideological pluralism and about a secular state and that no religion can be established as obligatory and that religious associations are equal before the law and that each person is guaranteed the right to profess jointly with others any religion and to freely disseminate religious convictions.
Do I have the right to freely disseminate? You do. And can I? No, you cannot; there are too many restrictions established for so-called missionary activity. So they hold Baptists and other evangelical Christians to account, for whom evangelism is everything; with them faith and religious practice are inseparable from proclamation of the Gospel. If only it were just evangelism! There is a threat to the very right of citizens to assemble together; now any meeting with prayer may be considered a "religious group," which is required to inform authorities about itself.
Since open season began two years ago for hunting religious societies (not for all, of course; several, you yourself know, are beyond suspicion), they have been tortured by inspections. They are so afraid that they are cautious about opening the doors for a stranger, fearing a provocation and an accusation of illegal evangelism.
They do not have much hope in the courts. Meanwhile the innovations of the "Yarovaya Law" are so vague that they could be interpreted by a court in favor of religious groups. But as a rule, judges rubber stamp police records. And you can put yourself in a judge's place. Will you say that it was simply necessary to release Sergei Fedorovich? The comrades in the police will not understand. They will say, how is it we do one deed and you turn up your nose at us; we will have to take a look at you—whether you are our man. The Supreme Court is in no hurry to correct judicial mistakes; it is too small a matter for it, and the Constitutional Court avoids speaking out on this score.
It got to the point where last Sunday, at the call of the largest Pentecostal union, an all-Russian fast was held during which thousands of Russian protestants prayed "for the admonition of the opponents." I am afraid they shut the barn door after the horse escaped. They have been satisfied with their position too long, viewing the persecution of those who believe differently too calmly. They secretly counted on receiving certification that they themselves have nothing to do with mythical totalitarian sects.
The times have changed. Previously the authorities dealt with the admonition of opponents in the religious minorities. To be sure, officials responsible for religion did not have official authorization, but it was possible to get a sympathetic ear from them, and they sometimes helped to find a place for worship and to settle a conflict and even to reason with excessively zealous siloviki and anti-cultists. The strictness of the law was ameliorated by the influence of authorities who were striving for inter-confessional peace. Now local administrations have gradually rid themselves of these officials and they brush off complaints; they say it is not our affair. Then whose is it? The police, prosecutor's offices, courts. State-confessional relations have just about been transferred to the criminal sphere, where laws operate that are convenient for siloviki and inconvenient for believers. Within the framework of the legal field, the boundaries of which, as it turned out, are boundless.
How do you bring to their senses those who know what they are doing?
(tr. by PDS, posted 21 June 2018)
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