Source:         www.forum18.org

Date:            April 24, 2008

 
 
By Geraldine Fagan, Forum 18 News Service <http://www.forum18.org>
 
Recent changes to the visa regime governing foreign religious workers are
hampering the operations of some religious communities, Forum 18 News
Service has found. Under a 4 October 2007 government decree, a foreign
citizen holding either a business or humanitarian visa - which includes
religious work - may now spend only half the period it covers within
Russia.
 
"Our priests are really, really suffering from this," one Russian Catholic
told Forum 18 on 16 April. Limited to 180 days a year with his parish in
Moscow Region, one priest is making the gruelling 24-hour commute from his
native Poland to lead weekend Masses, he said. Others are spending extended
periods outside Russia as their 180 days are already up. With fewer priests
to go round, there are no weekday services in some towns, said the
Catholic.
 
The visa changes themselves are not to blame, believes Fr Igor Kovalevsky,
secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference in Russia. "The problem is
the bureaucracy involved in getting temporary residency or a work permit
instead," he told Forum 18 on 21 April. The Catholic Church in Russia is
currently trying to obtain temporary residency for the 90 per cent of its
clergy - over 200 priests - who are foreign citizens, Fr Igor told Forum
18. While the state authorities' response has been helpful so far, he said,
the labour-intensive and complex procedure still takes six months.
 
Protestants are also being stung by the regulations. "Currently in Georgia
serving my three-month sentence" - the 90 days of a six-month visa to be
spent abroad - is a US citizen who assists the Lutheran Church in Russia.
He is now considering moving to Tbilisi due to the stringent new visa
regime. "I may still come to Russia on occasion to teach," he told Forum 18
on 12 April. "But living there is proving to be too complicated."
 
The US Lutheran finds that he is not the only "exile" in Georgia. Two
western Protestants spending three months there after a maximum three
months in the Russian Far East intend to move to Georgia permanently due to
the visa difficulties, he told Forum 18.
 
"Other religious workers in Moscow are either closing up shop and going
home or finding a place to work while they are out of Russia. Many who have
been there 10-15 years are seeing the proverbial 'handwriting on the wall'
and leaving. Others are trying to bide their time and go to neighbouring
CIS countries." Some - including the US Lutheran - are trying to obtain
work visas through the local churches that invite them to Russia. While
such a visa "will allow us to stay in Russia without the three-month
intervals of entering/exiting the country," he told Forum 18, "it appears
that the authorities are limiting how many they [the local churches] can
get."
 
Under the 1997 Religion Law, foreign religious workers must be invited to
Russia by a local religious organisation.
 
The new regulations correspond with those in the European Union (EU),
Andrei Sebentsov, vice-chairman of the government's Commission for Issues
Concerning Religious Associations, stressed to Forum 18 on 22 April. As
humanitarian visas are now no longer suitable for prolonged religious work,
he explained, work visas are the main alternative, for which work permits
are required. The permits are issued according to foreign labour quotas
fixed by each of Russia's 83 regions. While Sebentsov personally finds the
quota system inappropriate for religious work, "there would need to be a
change in the law for anything to happen," he told Forum 18.
 
Moscow-based religious rights lawyer Vladimir Ryakhovsky agrees that the
new procedure is in line with EU norms, "so there's no point trying to
challenge it." Problematic is the dependence of both permission to work and
temporary residency upon the regional foreign labour quotas, he told Forum
18 on 18 April. "These are based upon demography, the local need for
foreign labour, and so on," Ryakhovsky explained. "But these criteria
aren't acceptable for religious work - the state shouldn't say who the
leaders of a religious community should be; it's their internal decision."
 
Despite the current difficulties, Ryakhovsky is advising foreign religious
personnel to apply for work permits. If they receive refusals on the basis
of the regional quotas, he told Forum 18, "We will fight them in the
courts."
 
Fr Igor Kovalevsky agrees that religious work should not be treated as
ordinary labour: "A priest's work is not for profit, but a service." So far
the regional labour quotas have not led to work permit refusals for the
Catholic Church in Russia, he told Forum 18.
 
According to the US Lutheran, however, a Moscow Protestant church this
year applied for 15 work visas for its own staff and friends from several
non-denominational churches, but "ended up receiving only three, even less
than they usually get for their own church."
 
The foreign labour quota for Moscow is approximately 300,000, according to
government official Sebentsov. He told Forum 18 he could not comment on
implementation of the new regulations.
 
In early 2008 the Union of Christians of the Evangelical Faith in Russia -
the Pentecostal union led by Bishop Pavel Okara - received permission to
employ 230 foreign citizens across Russia as requested, its vice-chairman
Pavel Bak told Forum 18 on 21 April. As each individual work permit still
has to be processed, however, foreigners assisting the Union - Bak did not
know how many - are currently having to leave Russia for 90 days at a time.
"This disrupts the projects they are involved in," he complained. Much time
and energy is also taken up obtaining work permits for foreign personnel,
added Bak. "We try and work fast, but applications still take four months
to process - and they [the foreign personnel] have only three."
 
"The situation is up in the air right now," William Yoder of the Baptist
Union's Department for External Church Relations told Forum 18 on 18 April.
The Union is also going through the complex procedure of becoming an
official employer so that some 150 foreign personnel across Russia can
switch to work visas, he said. While Yoder is aware of several currently
outside the country due to the new visa regulations, he pointed out that
many received new visas just before the changes.
 
As the Salvation Army started preparing for the new visa procedure before
it came into effect, none of its approximately 20 foreign personnel have
been forced to leave Russia, Moscow spokesperson Aleksandr Kharkov told
Forum 18 on 21 April. Those whose humanitarian visas expired after the
changes switched immediately to work visas as Army employees, he said.
 
The 40-50 foreign rabbis in Russia are similarly able to be employed by
Jewish community organisations, according to Moscow Chief Rabbi Pinchas
Goldschmidt. "People are in the process of changing to a work visa," he
told Forum 18 on 18 April. "It's a hassle, but there is a positive side. A
work visa opens up the possibility of getting the Russian equivalent of a
Green Card, and you don't need to leave the country to get a new visa,
unlike before."
 
Rabbi Goldschmidt is not aware of any Jewish religious workers forced to
leave Russia due to the changes.
 
Led by the Russian Orthodox Church, lobbying by religious leaders in
2006-7 resulted in a simplification for religious organisations of new
annual accounting procedures under the so-called NGO Law (see F18News 17
April 2007 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=943>).
 
In this case too, the Russian Catholic source told Forum 18, "there was
hope within the Catholic Church for Russian Orthodox support - just one
word from the patriarch to [President Vladimir] Putin or [United Russia
leader and parliamentary Speaker Boris] Gryzlov - for the exemption of
religious work from these regulations. But now the issue is outside
Orthodox-Catholic dialogue." In particular, said the source, it was not
raised at a 14 April meeting between Metropolitan Archbishop Paolo Pezzi of
the Catholic Church's Moscow-based archdiocese and Metropolitan Kirill
(Gundyayev) of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, who heads the Russian Orthodox
Church's Department for External Church Relations (DECR). The source
suggested, however, that this was partly due to "a phobia about addressing
the issue" on the Catholic side.
 
Fr Kovalevsky, the Catholic spokesman, mentioned to Forum 18 that there
was "nothing particularly bad or unusual" about the switch to a work permit
regime, which he pointed out was in line with EU practice. He did not
believe that lobbying by the Catholic Church could have effected any
exemption for religious workers.
 
Fr Georgi Ryabykh, who assists Metropolitan Kirill, was unaware of the
issue when contacted on 22 April. He directed Forum 18 to Fr Georgi
Kirindas, who deals with visa invitations for foreign citizens at the DECR,
but his telephone went unanswered on 22 and 23 April.
 
Sebentsov, the religious affairs official, told Forum 18 that there are no
moves to seek an exemption from the new regulations for foreign religious
workers, and that he is unaware of any appeal from religious communities
for this to happen.
 
Dozens of foreign religious workers have been barred from Russia over the
past decade, including eight Catholic priests (see F18News 19 December 2005
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=706>). Rabbi Goldschmidt and
a German Lutheran Bishop were temporarily barred (see F18News 7 September
2005 <http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=644>). Two British and
Danish Salvation Army officers were denied entry "in the interests of state
security" (see F18News 4 May 2005
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=555>).
 
While not deported, Fr Wladyslaw Wojdat, a Catholic priest based in the
north-western city of Tver until late 2007, is currently outside Russia and
unable to obtain a return visa, according to the Russian Catholic source.
Fr Kovalevsky told Forum 18 that he was not in a position to comment on the
case.
 
Thirteen foreign students at a Jewish yeshiva in the southern city of
Rostov-on-Don, detained and deported for registration irregularities in
November 2007, have not attempted to return to Russia to Forum 18's
knowledge.
 
On 9 April 2008 Jeff Thompson, who heads the California-based Christian
relief organisation Eastern European Outreach, was turned back from a
Moscow airport despite holding a valid visa, the organisation's website
reported. Thompson was barred from travelling to the Soviet Union from
1984-9. (END)
 
For a personal commentary by Irina Budkina, editor of the
<http://www.samstar.ru> Old Believer website, about continuing denial of
equality to Russia's religious minorities, see F18News 26 May 2005
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=570>.
 
For more background see Forum 18's Russia religious freedom survey at
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=947>.
 
Reports on freedom of thought, conscience and belief in Russia can be
found at
<http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?query=&religion=all&country=10>.
 
A printer-friendly map of Russia is available at
<http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/index.html?Parent=europe&Rootmap=russi>.