Tag Archives: Country: Russia

Reuters: “A lesbian couple will try to defy deep-rooted Russian homophobia next week in the first attempt at a gay marriage even though rights activists say it will be rejected outright.”

AP: “Russian gay-rights activists say they plan to hold a march and rally May 16 before the final night of the Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow . . . ”

Hartford Courant (AP): “A congressionally backed panel said today that religious freedoms were deteriorating in Russia, Turkey and four other nations that were added to a watch list of countries where people’s rights to worship as they please or not to worship at all are at risk.”

Interfax reports: “The Russian Orthodox Church has asked the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR), which started in Geneva on Monday, to introduce into international law the notion of Christianophobia.”

In an exceptional insight into the behind-the-scenes mechanisms employed by state officials to restrict disfavoured religious communities, a regional governor has ordered the seizure of a Pentecostal church’s land by “any” means, Forum 18 New Service has learnt.

Vice Speaker of the Federation Council Alexander Torshin supported the idea of establishing the Public Council on Morality at the television and backed up the federal religious TV channel.

Interfax-Religion: “Organizers of the Moscow gay pride parade sent an application to the European Court of Human Rights on Monday, complaining about the violation of the freedom of assembly and the right to fair trial, fixed by the European convention …

Russia Today: “The Muslim community in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region is opposing plans to include church bells in a proposed new regional anthem. Local authorities had earlier set a competition to compose an anthem for the region.”

Voice of America: The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexei II, has died at the age of 79, ending a long church career in which he maintained close ties with the Kremlin and the Russian state . . .  …

Reuters: Moscow has banned gays and lesbians from promoting their way of life because they can help spread HIV/AIDS, the Russian capital’s 72-year-old mayor was quoted as saying on Thursday by RIA news agency . . . “We have banned, …

Forum 18 reports:  Following the surprise mid-October publication of a list of 56 centralised religious organisations scheduled for liquidation, apparently for not submitting correct accounts, Russia’s Justice Ministry has refused to reveal what stage any plans for liquidation are at …

Over half of all centralised religious organisations belong to the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), but none are among the 56.

The Christian Telegraph reports:  On 15 October, a declaration unexpectedly appeared on the webpage of the Russian Ministry of Justice listing 56 religious organisations scheduled for liquidation . . . Pastor Vitaly Vlasenko, the RUECB’s Director for External Church Relations, warns against undue …

Albert Mohler has this post on his Blog that begins: “Reports out of Russia indicate that the recent military clash with Georgia may have represented something more like desperation than opportunism. Murray Feshbach of The Washington Post reports that, all …

The St. Petersburg Times reports: The number of infertile women in Russia is growing by 200,000 to 250,000 each year, with the main cause being complications from abortions, Marina Tarasova, deputy head of the St. Petersburg Reseach Institute For Gynecology …

LifeNews.com reports: “Russia has long been a world leader in terms of the percentage of pregnancies that end in abortion and experts say those figures are still high. They say the abortion epidemic is leading to a problem of hundreds …

The Sun reports:  FOUR teenagers were horrifically slain by Satanists — stabbed 666 times each and then EATEN. The gang of Devil worshippers butchered their victims and roasted them on a bonfire before devouring their flesh . . . Russia …

Prosecutors in Russia want to ban the award-winning satirical U.S. cartoon South Park, calling the series “extremist” after receiving viewer complaints, a spokeswoman said on Monday.

Stunning actress Olga Kurylenko yesterday told how her mother feared she was going to be kidnapped by sex traffickers.

Reuters reports: Russians on Monday mourned Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the author and dissident whose criticism of the tyranny of Soviet rule made him one of the bravest figures of the 20th century. Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel literature laureate, died of heart failure …

The Russian Orthodox Church’s (ROC) assertion of a constitutionally inappropriate role in affairs of state has severely compromised Russia’s secular constitutional framework.

Forum 18 reports: In a crucial development for religious organisations, Russia’s Supreme Court on 10 June ruled that a Smolensk Regional Court decision dissolving a local Methodist church was “unlawful and without foundation”. The Regional Court had dissolved the church …

Interfax reports: “Organizers of the Moscow gay pride parade have sent a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights in Starsbourg, asking to compel the Russian authorities to pay compensation of 30,000 euro for denying them the right to …

The Telegraph reports: The initiative, the latest in a series of measures harking back to Russia’s communist past, represents the latest attempt to reverse a population decline that Vladimir Putin described as the country’s biggest crisis . . .

This paper argues that the emerging pattern of collusion presents a serious challenge to Russia’s constitutional order and to the country’s regional and international human rights commitments – chief among these being the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief.

The underpopulation crisis unlimited abortions has caused in Russia is so bad, that the nation will likely need to import large numbers of foreign workers because of labor shortages.

“The Moscow City government has made it clear that it will not tolerate the public promotion of sodomy during Labor Day celebrations on May 1st, reports Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, LifeSiteNews.com. ”

Forum 18 this week reported on the latest in a series of legal maneuvers against a United Methodist church in the western Russian city of Smolensk.

China was rebuked for denying religious freedom to Tibetans and other human rights violations in a report published Tuesday by Britain’s Foreign Office.

The Ukrainian authorities are preparing to break up the Church in Ukraine, and this could take place as early as this year, Kremlin-connected political scientist Sergey Markov claimed.

From PinkNews: There are reports that many on the far-right and among Russia’s conservative religious community are focused on disrupting the events, even going to the point of refusing to rule out acts of criminal behaviour.

The Becket Fund provides an update on Cuba’s actions and other International Religious Freedom issues around the world: 1. Australia: Private School Fails to Accommodate Sikh Student 2. Cuba: International Rights Treaties Signed “With Reservations” 3. Russia: Police Harass Methodist …

. . . the KGB used to be in the vanguard of official atheism, but this is one legacy of his past life that Putin has repudiated. He is fervently and ostentatiously observant in his religious beliefs. As a result, the Russian Orthodox Church, now richer and more powerful than at any time for almost a century . . .

Interfax reports (2.14.2008): The values of other religions, just as secular ones, should not be advocated by the heads of Christian Churches, said Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, who represents the Russian Orthodox Church at European international organizations . …

Officials estimate that some 500,000 people are trafficked in Europe alone; most are women and girls who are forced into prostitution from countries such as Albania and Russia.

Religious Clause blog reports: ". . . Russian authorities have banned as "extremist" a moderate Islamic theological text that gives Koran-based advice on family and social relationships . . . "