M o s c o w – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg has sentenced Russia to a payment of 6.000 euros for restricting religious freedom. Russia had been taken to court by Baptist Pastor Peter Barankevich (Chekhov near Moscow) as reported by the Forum 18 church news service (Oslo). Barankevich heads an unregistered Baptist congregation: Christ's Grace Evangelical Church. Since a fire destroyed the congregation’s building in 2001, the 15-member congregation has been meeting in private quarters. Whether the government indeed does respect the court ruling and pays is not as important to Barankevich as the mere fact that the congregation’s position has been upheld. The concrete issue regards a request by the congregation in 2002 to hold a public worship service in a city park. Government offices refused citing among other reasons the fact that all other religious communities would need to be given the same right. After a second appeal, a regional court in Moscow ruled that such a service would damage public order and upheld the decision in late 2002.

The European Court of Human Rights views the negative rulings as an infraction against the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Russia signed the Convention in 1998. If neither side contests the verdict, the ruling will go into effect on 25 October 2007. In a similar case in which the Salvation Army had taken the Russian government to court, Russia had, according to Forum 18, paid a fine in April of this year. Yet the Salvation Army’s Moscow branch has still not been re-registered.

The officially-registered Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists also dealt with the situation of the Baptist congregation in Chekhov in a press release. Alexander Semchenko (Moscow), a Baptist businessman, philanthropist and publisher of the Moscow weekly “Protestant”, stated in a conversation in Moscow’s Baptist headquarters that his church should legitimately “be regarded as one of Russia’s traditional churches”. Through the many years in which Baptists were persecuted and repressed, they have earned the right to such recognition. Semchenko also noted that Baptists have been present in Russia for exactly 140 years: “Our constitution declares Russia to be a secular state and guarantees every citizen religious freedom.”

Semchenko regretted deeply that the Chekhov congregation first found favour with a foreign court. “But it was not a ruling against Russia.” It was instead a ruling against ”government officials ignorant and uncaring about religious affairs. Yet the majority of government officials act according to Russian law and do not simply do as they like”. It makes sense to appeal to Russian officials and courts. He attributed the drastic wrongdoing in Chekhov and elsewhere to new, lay Orthodox believers without knowledge of historical developments.