April 6. House of Hope has to appear before the Court again. |
April 3. Religious Freedom lawyer released from prison
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April 1. Mr. Shavtsov
soon to be released from prison
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March 31 House of Hope wins court case.
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March 25. Pastors beaten up during demonstrations On Saturday the demonstrations against the falsification of the presidential election result continued. The plan was to have a peaceful demonstration at the October square in the centre of Minsk, but was met with dozens of tractors and trucks, and a several thousand men strong police force. The official reason for all the tractors and trucks was that the skating rink (occupying less than 5pst of the entire square) was to be removed that Saturday, thus filling the whole square with scrap metal on wheels. When a crowd started to march towards the prison where several hundred demonstrators are jailed, the police force attacked the unarmed crowd with bats, tear gas and chock grenades. Several demonstrators where brutally beaten and kicked by the police, amongst them two evangelical pastors. As far as we know, the two pastors where not seriously injured, but they where shocked over the extreme violence used by the police. It is unknown if this was a wilful targeting from the policemen's side, since the church they are leading has many members from the opposition parties. We will come back with more on this later...
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March 24.
This is the second time in the history of Belarus that a person has been jailed for this "offence". The previous was a Baptist pastor that was jailed earlier in March. These two cases can only be interpreted as the beginning of a new era in Belarusian law enforcement. In November 2005 an amendment was added to the existing "law on Cultic activities" that was passed in October 2002, after massive protests both from the protestant churches as well as the international community. According to our sources one has to go back to the late 1960 in the Soviet Union to find similar measures taken by the authorities against protestant believers. Sergey Shavtsov has been a fierce fighter against the government's harsh line on religious activities. In 2002 he prepared the so called "White Book", a packet of documentation on Belarus' violation of international laws regarding religious freedom. He is also acting as a legal counsel to the main leaders of most of the protestant church unions in Belarus. He is married to Dina (also lawyer) and they have two children. We want to let the authorities of Belarus know that we cannot accept that people are being harassed and jailed for their beliefs, and we want to encourage you to let the responsible authorities know that they are outside of their jurisdiction when they try to regulate peoples faith. Update : After leaving Belarus
Darrow Miller, the conference speaker, sent out a newsletter on what
happened on the day of the arrest. You can read it HERE |