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Published
by Forum 18 News
Service, October 6, 2005
ROMANIA:
Concerns about draft religion law
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By
Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service
Romanian
religious minorities and human rights groups have
told Forum 18 News Service of their alarm about
both the current draft of a new religion law and
it being sent to parliament under "emergency
procedures." Proposals to replace the
communist-era 1948 religion law have been
discussed for 15 years, but Mihai Agafitei of the
State Secretariat for Religious Denominations told
Forum 18 that parliament will adopt the new law
"by the end of this year." Much concern
– from Adventists, Baptists and other
Protestants, Greek Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses
and Baha'is - surrounds proposals to divide
religious communities into three categories with
widely differing rights, and Baptists are
particularly concerned that parliament could
worsen the draft law's provisions. Agafitei told
Forum 18 that "all the representatives of
each community approved the draft," but both
the Greek Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses have
told Forum 18 they did not approve the draft law.
A
number of Romania's minority religious communities
have expressed alarm about the current draft of a
new religion law and the way it has been rushed to
parliament under "emergency procedure",
Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Mihai Agafitei
of the State Secretariat for Religious
Denominations told Forum 18 from the capital
Bucharest on 5 October that parliament will adopt
the new law "by the end of this year".
"The government used the emergency procedures
as it wants this to be adopted before the end of
the year, citing pressure in recent years from
religious communities over why it is taking so
long," Viorel Dima, religious freedom
representative for the Seventh-day Adventist
Church, told Forum 18 from Bucharest on 6 October.
The new law is set to replace the 1948
communist-era religion law which has remained in
force in the post-communist era.
The draft law was approved by the government at
its session on 14 July and then sent to
parliament. It is now in the Committee on Human
Rights, Religious Denominations and Minorities of
the Senate, the upper chamber of parliament, which
is chaired by Senator Gyorgy Frunda. It is also
being considered by the parallel committee in the
lower house, the Chamber of Deputies. The text of
the draft law (L394/2005) is available in Romanian
on the website of the State Secretariat http://www.culte.ro/ClientSide/lege_libertate_rel.aspx.
Many religious minority communities object to
provisions in the proposed law, mainly because it
divides religious communities into three
categories with differing rights, as well as
having other concerns (see F18News 7 October 2005
). Baptists and other Protestants, Greek
Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses and Baha'is have
already voiced unhappiness about the text and the
way the draft law has been prepared.
Enjoying the greatest rights under the proposed
new law are the 18 recognised "religious
denominations" or "cults", a
category that it is almost impossible for other
faiths to join. Those with fewer than about 22,000
members can register as "religious
associations" with lesser rights, while those
with fewer than 300 members can only function as
"religious groups" which have no legal
status. Religious activity by unregistered
communities will be legal.
"For the recognised denominations, the draft
is generally OK," Pastor Dima of the
Adventists told Forum 18, "but for the
religious associations with fewer rights, it is
bad." He says the government justified the
differing rights for religious communities
according to category by pointing to other
European states with similar provisions. "The
draft law is not ideal and in terms of religious
freedom is bad, but it reflects the reality of
other European states."
The River of Revival Pentecostal church in the
city of Arad, led by Pastor Samuel Caba, has
organised protests in various cities against the
new law, complaining particularly over what it
regards as the discriminatory treatment of
religious communities in the different categories.
Pastor Lucian Chis, who leads the Aletheia Church
in Timisoara and also heads the Federation of
Autonomous Christian Churches, which has 42 member
churches across the country, also complains of the
"discrimination" between majority and
minority faiths inherent in the draft. He told
Forum 18 from Timisoara on 5 October his
federation had written to President Traian Basescu
the same day to outline its concerns.
Also preparing a protest to parliament about the
proposed law is a consortium of local human rights
groups, Dorina Nastase, director of the
Bucharest-based think tank the Romanian Centre for
Global Studies, told Forum 18 on 6 October.
Dana Georgescu, secretary of the Senate Human
Rights, Religion and Minorities Committee, said
committee members discussed the law in general
terms in September, and are due to resume
discussion next week. "If the committee's
conclusion is positive, the law will go to the
full senate," she told Forum 18 from
Bucharest on 6 October. "If it is negative,
the draft law will have to be considered
again." She said the Senate Legal Committee
is also considering the draft.
Georgescu said a number of religious communities,
including the dominant Romanian Orthodox Church,
the Evangelical Church, the Baptists and the
Jehovah's Witnesses, have already written to the
committee with their views.
The current draft of the law was prepared in the
State Secretariat, a sub-division of the Ministry
of Culture and Religion, Agafitei of the State
Secretariat for Religious Denominations told Forum
18. The draft was discussed in April with leaders
of the recognised religious denominations.
"All the representatives of each community
approved the draft," he claimed. But the
Greek Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses, who are
both amongst the proposed recognised
"religious denominations," have told
Forum 18 that they did not approve it. The text
was completed in May, Agafitel added.
The draft law was also discussed on 12 and 13
September at a seminar in Bucharest on Religious
Liberty in the Romanian and European Context
organised by the Ministry of Culture and Religious
Affairs, the State Secretariat and the National
Association for the Defence of Religious Liberty,
Conscience and Liberty. Adventist News Network
reported that Cole Durham, a US law professor who
is on the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Advisory Panel of
Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief, told the
seminar that the proposed religious law could be
improved to what he called a
"multi-tiered" system of religious
organisations that gives some groups more
prominence than others. He urged Romania to not
only comply with international standards regarding
church-state relations, but to exceed these.MHUJ
The Baptists are concerned that parliament could
change the law even further to the worse, pointing
out that provisions on pension funds organised by
religious communities were modified in the draft
after religious communities had agreed the draft
with the State Secretariat. "The experience
we gained in previous years - where after the
consensus of all denominations proposed drafts
were significantly modified to the point that the
content submitted for parliamentarian approval was
totally different - make us extra careful."
The Baptists recount what they regard as fifteen
unhappy years trying to approve a new religion law
to replace the communist-era law.
"Unfortunately, many of the drafts submitted
for parliament approval maintained the ideas and
practices of the past, even if they declared the
most democratic intentions. In practice, the
proposed legislation was far from making Romania a
democratic and western society; therefore the
proposed law was never adopted by
parliament."
The Baptists welcomed the fact that after a series
of meetings this year between religious
communities and the current government, the
initial draft reflecting earlier restrictive
drafts was improved in line with suggestions from
the religious communities. "In this situation
the Baptist Union agreed to support in principle
the current law proposal. Nevertheless, it did so
with certain reservations in the areas that were
clearly articulated or areas that depend upon
implementation methodologies that have no concrete
guarantees outside verbal promises made by
government officials."
However, Florin Manoliu of the Jehovah's Witnesses
said his community had not detected any
improvements to meet their concerns. "We gave
our comments to the State Secretariat in the
spring," he told Forum 18 from Bucharest on 5
October. "They told us that the later draft
took account of our observations, but we did not
see any improvements." He said the Jehovah's
Witnesses therefore declined the invitation to
attend later meetings with the State Secretariat
to discuss the text. "We thought our view
would be ignored once again."
The Greek Catholic Church – which was banned by
the Communists and only allowed to re-emerge in
1989 after the ousting of President Nicolae
Ceausescu – withheld approval of the draft law
because most of their properties handed by the
Communist authorities to the Romanian Orthodox
Church have still not been returned.
"We would like to have our patrimonial issues
resolved before the law is adopted," Greek
Catholic priest Fr Titus Sas told Forum 18 from
Cluj on 6 October. He points out that it was the
state that took the Church's property from it in
1948 and that it has the responsibility to return
it. "The state wants to leave this matter to
us and the Orthodox Church, but this would bring
us no positive results," he declared.
"That is why we would like to have the
properties back and after that we may discuss
religious freedom."
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