Legal framework on freedom of religion and actual application
Article 16 of the Constitution of Belarus declares the legal equality of all religions and faiths. It also prohibits religious activities which threaten morals, or are directed against the state, its political system, or the civil liberties of its citizens. The same article also states that the relationship between the state and particular religious organisations “shall be regulated by the law with regard to their influence on the formation of the spiritual, cultural and state traditions of the Belarusian people.”
Freedom of religion is guaranteed by Article 31 of the constitution, which allows individuals to manifest their religious views and gather for worship provided these activities are not prohibited by law. However, in practice, only registered religious organisations are granted these rights and protections.
The Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organisations of 1992 more specifically defines the legal framework for religions in Belarus. Article 6 establishes the equality of all religions before the law. According to Article 13, only Belarusian citizens can lead religious organisations. Articles 14 and 15 differentiate between religious communities, which are organisations with at least 20 adult members, and religious associations which consist of at least 10 religious communities of which at least one has been active in Belarus for more than 20 years.
Articles 16 through to 19 regulate the registration process for religious organisations. Registration is necessary for a religious organisation to be recognised as a legal entity. Among other requisites, registration demands the fulfilment of stipulated conditions and the provision of a variety of information including details about its beliefs and its founders. As specified in Article 21, an application for registration can be denied if the authorities deem the information unsatisfactory or the doctrines professed to be non-compliant with the law.
The law prevents any religious activity by unregistered religious communities. In July 2018, criminal punishments for unregistered religious activities, including worship meetings, ended, but were replaced by summary fines of up to five weeks’ average wage. In 2022, the government reinstated the penalty for “activities conducted by unregistered religious groups from a fine to imprisonment of two years”. Subordinate to the Council of Ministers, the Office of the Plenipotentiary Representative for Religious and Nationality Affairs (OPRRNA) regulates all religious matters.
The religious activities of both communities and associations are limited to the territory in which the given group operates, and to properties that belong to these organisations or its members, while holding religious events in public requires an approval from local authorities.
Under Article 26 of the Law of the Republic of Belarus on Religious Freedom and Organisations, all religious literature is required to be pre-approved by a state religious expert, while non-registered religious groups are prohibited from distributing any religious materials.
Article 29 limits to one year the period that a foreign missionary without Belarusian citizenship can be engaged in religious missionary activities, which can be extended or reduced by the authorities.
The Republic of Belarus and the Belarusian Orthodox Church (BOC) of Moscow Patriarchate (MOP) signed a bilateral agreement in 2003, just after amending The Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organisations of 1992. The concordat granted “rights and privileges not granted to other religious groups”, recognized the “determining role of the BOC” and established cooperative agreements between the Church and various governmental institutions, including educational establishments. Article 2 of the agreement outlined cooperation “against pseudo-religious structures presenting a danger to personality and society”. Although the Belarus authorities have not signed any bilateral agreements with other historically present Churches, the concordat recognises “the historical importance of the ‘traditional faiths’ of Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, and evangelical Lutheranism”.
There is no law providing for a systematic restitution process for property, including religious property, seized during the Soviet and Nazi periods; many applications for restitution or compensation for seized property are refused on administrative levels. For example, Catholic parishes in Mogilev, Grodno, Bobruisk and Niasvizh, have been trying without success to regain ownership of their own historical churches which they use. Similarly, other religious communities such as the New Life Pentecostal community, have been evicted from their Church buildings.
Jews continued to fail in their efforts to recover synagogues or prevent their destruction, which has had a chilling effect on instigating further claims.
Incidents and developments
Orthodoxy is the dominant religion in Eastern Europe, including in Belarus. The main religious groups in Belarus are Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, and Baptists. According to the official number of registered communities, the Orthodox account for the biggest share (49 percent), while in sociological surveys these Churches register an even higher score – 81 to 83 percent of the population identify as Orthodox, likely because these reflect a sense of a “cultural Orthodoxy”. The second largest group is that of the Roman Catholic Church with members numbering between 10 to 12 percent while the Protestant sector is almost invisible in social surveys, although in total it covers nearly a third of all registered religious communities in Belarus (Pentecostals 16 percent; Baptists nine percent; Adventists two percent; and charismatics two percent). Other religious minorities include Old Believers, Greek Catholics, Lutherans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, and Sunni Muslims.
Belarus declared independence from the Soviet Union on 25 December 1991, and has been ruled since 1994 by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has referred himself as an “Orthodox Atheist”. The government’s authoritarian crackdown resulted in devastating consequences for civil society and human rights, including religious freedom. This coupled with Russia’s influence has resulted in religious freedom restrictions towards groups other than BOC and Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox structures, including protracted registration procedures; registration denial; arbitrary obstacles imposed on the activities of even registered communities (such as denials of building permission); arbitrary work permission denials to clerics other than those MOP related; foreign financial aid restrictions or bans; and other religious activity restrictions.
The Belarus government also runs regular surveillance of religious believers through the KGB secret police (the name preserved since the Soviet period) along with the monitoring of, and restrictions on, religious communities by the Plenipotentiary for Religious and Ethnic Affairs. Approximately 20 officials are employed in “local Ideology Departments whose mandate includes controlling religion.” Surveillance is extended to publications by censorship, and internet publications by the penalization of users for content posted.
According to their own sources, Jehovah’s Witnesses are continuously disallowed from registration procedures – even though they are officially allowed to exist in Belarus – which obliges this community to pursue activities at considerable risk. In some communities, where they have been present for decades, they are denied the right to gather in private houses and face fines or detention for distributing literature in public places.
Authorities have also continued to crack down on other religious communities. A Pentecostal pastor, Valentine Borovik, appealed his case to the UN after the police raided a Bible study organised by him in Mosty in June 2008, and charged him with illegally starting a religious organization. After Pastor Borovik won his religious liberty case before the United Nations, the Belarus government subsequently withdrew from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, eliminating the right of Belarusians to file appeals with the UN.
Even if a community is registered, this does not guarantee an end to official obstruction. Since 2005, Pomore Old Believers in Minsk (a Russian Orthodox community, though independent of the Moscow Patriarchate), have sought to relocate a historical wooden church on the border with Lithuania to Minsk. The requested approvals were repeatedly denied. The community then attempted to build a new church in a village near Minsk, however, the application for this was also refused.
Religious communities have also encountered obstacles in using and reclaiming their places of worship, especially in Minsk. In the capital, the authorities confiscated the Red Church (the Catholic Church of Saints Simon and Helena) as it had provided shelter for protesters hiding from the police after the 2020 elections. The Red Church suffered an arson attack in September 2022, which was immediately extinguished and resulted in only minor damages; the incident, however, served as pretext by the Belarusian administration to close it permanently, preventing its use by Catholic community. Other religious groups confront similar challenges. One of the longest-running property cases concerns the New Life Church, the leaders of which bought a former cowshed on the western edge of Minsk in 2002. The faith group was evicted by the authorities 12 years later. The community then continued to hold its Sunday worship services outside in the car park. These religious prayer gatherings were banned on 25 September 2022.
The violent suppression by police of protests following the bitterly disputed 2020 elections won by Alexander Lukashenko, sparked widespread protests and condemnation by religious leaders including bishops, priests and other faithful. The authorities applied legislation forbidding “unauthorized mass events” to pursue pro-democracy protestors including clergy. The Catholic Archbishop of Minsk and Mohilev, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, called on the Belarusian authorities to end the violence, saying that the bloodshed in the streets of Belarusian cities was a “heavy sin on the conscience of those who give criminal orders and commit violence.” On 31 August 2020, Belarus border security blocked the re-entry of Archbishop Kondrusiewicz to Belorussia returning from Poland, despite his being a Belarusian citizen. Bishop Jury Kasabucki of Minsk and Mohilev was officially admonished by the Belarusian Prosecutor General’s Office for urging Catholics to remain united with Archbishop Kondrusiewicz, insisting the archbishop’s “actions and statements” had conformed to Catholic teaching and Belarusian law.
On 24 December 2020, mediated by the Vatican, authorities allowed Archbishop Kondrusiewicz to return to Belarus. On 3 January 2021, the Vatican accepted straightaway the resignation of the archbishop on his 75th birthday. The unusual nature of his immediately accepted and publicly announced retirement led some to believe it was part of the agreement to allow his return to Belarus. Pope Francis appointed Auxiliary Bishop Kazimierz Wielikosielec of Pinsk as the Apostolic Administrator of Minsk.
On 7 August 2021, the Belarusian regime journal “Minskaya Prauda” published a caricature mocking the Catholic Church on the cover. It pictured a series of Catholic religious leaders with a swastika (transforming from a pectoral cross) and behind the priests an altered version of the painting depicting the monks burned alive by the Nazis in 1943 together with 1,526 inhabitants of the village of Rosica, near Vitebsk. Acting press secretary of the Belarusian Episcopate, Fr. Yuri Sanko, stated that the attack on the Church in the newspaper offended several million Catholics living in Belarus. The Media IQ project, studying state propaganda, published an analysis of anti-Catholic defamatory narratives in Belarus from March to August 2021 citing several such similar examples.
Another indication of the deteriorating situation was the increasing restriction encountered by Catholic charitable organisations. Caritas, the charitable society of the Roman Catholic Minsk and Mohilev Archdiocese, was prevented by the Department for Humanitarian Affairs at the Belarus President Property Management Directorate from receiving foreign funding to provide food and shelter for the homeless in Minsk and other cities during winter.
Despite the predominance of incidents directed at the Christian community, Jewish communities also reported acts of anti-Semitism and vandalism: on 3 May 2022, in Bobruisk, unknown persons vandalised the ruins of a synagogue by spray painting the letter “Z”, which is associated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During the period under review, anti-Semitic images and videos featuring neo-Nazi themes and calling for violence against Jews were prevalent on the Russian social media platform VKontakt.
On 6 July 2021, President Lukashenko, in anti-Semitic remarks on Belarusian Independence Day, stated: “The Jews succeeded in causing the entire world to kneel to them and no one will dare raise a voice and deny the Holocaust”. Due to political protests and the pandemic, “Belarusian Jews have made up the largest group making aliyah and moving to Israel”.
Notwithstanding concerns of the Russian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MOP) in sporadic autocephaly interests by the Belarusian Orthodox Church (BOC) – with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) serving as a precedent – the BOC refused to recognize the autocephaly of the UOC following the 2019 Tomos issued by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.
Concerning the war Ukraine, although the BOC aligned itself with the ROC MOP Russkii Mir, or “Russian World” position (which identifies contemporary Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus as core Orthodox nations of the Kyivan Rus’), and the fact that certain BOC hierarchy publicly supported the Russian position, generally the BOC response to the Russian invasion was muted. On 3 March, Metropolitan Veniamin stated that soldiers were “often people who are related by blood, by faith and in spirit. Military personnel are dying on both sides, and civilians are suffering” calling faithful “to pray for peace to return to Ukrainian soil and for fraternal peoples to find a path to reconciliation and mutual forgiveness”.
Prospects for freedom of religion
Most human rights, including religious freedom, are endangered due to the authoritarian nature of the government in Belarus. The laws regarding religious freedom are onerous, applied in an arbitrary manner by either the Office of the Plenipotentiary Representative for Religious and Nationality Affairs or by local authorities, and obstacles to religious life including ubiquitous surveillance are rife. Although the Belarusian Orthodox Church enjoys a privileged position identifying itself as one of the core elements of a distinct Belarusian national identity, it experiences occasional challenges due to autocephaly interests.
As there is no sign of the current regime ending its violations of human rights – including freedom of religion – the prospects for this right remain negative.
Belarus