Wednesday, May 4, 2005
SALVATION
ARMY OFFICERS DENIED ENTRY INTO RUSSIA
Forum 18 News
Service
RUSSIA (ANS) --
Two high-ranking British and Danish Salvation Army
officers were recently denied invitations to enter Russia in March "in
the interests of state security."
"If this is an official policy of opposition driven from above, it
doesn't speak well of the nation as a whole," Colonel Barry Pobjie
remarked to Forum 18 at the Church's Moscow headquarters on 26 April,
in an article by Geraldine Fagan, Forum 18 News Service, obtained by
ASSIST News Service (ANS).
"The Russian people are the victims -- the Salvation Army and other
churches play a vital role alongside the state authorities in tackling
the Aids epidemic here, as well as the trafficking of women and child
homelessness. These issues are so great that we would like to think all
assistance would be welcomed," Pobjie said.
Colonel Pobjie categorically rejected all possibility that Major Robert
Garrard and Colonel Karl Lydholm might pose a threat to Russian state
security, describing them as "two very fine Salvation Army officers"
serving respectively as the personal secretary to the Salvation Army's
highest ranking officer and co-ordinator of the Church's work in
Finland and Norway.
"The accusations are ludicrous -- this is directed not against these
individuals but the organization as a whole," Pobjie maintained to
Forum 18, pointing out that both officers had previously worked and
traveled extensively in Russia for several years without any impediment
whatsoever.
In September 2000 another Salvation Army officer, Canadian citizen
Geoff Ryan, was denied an entry visa to Russia without explanation and
has not returned since. The Salvation Army in Kalmykia, in
south-eastern European Russia, where he worked, was described in the
local state press as "western spies" and "one of the most powerful
totalitarian sects in the world" and foreign missionaries from the
Salvation Army and other Protestant organizations were refused entry
(see F18News 14 April 2003 www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=31).
Two letters from the Moscow city department of Russia Interior Ministry
dated 22 March 2005, viewed by Forum 18, explain that both Garrard and
Lydholm were denied visa invitations under Article 27, Part 1 of the
federal law on entry to and exit from Russia, in accordance with which
a foreign citizen may be denied permission to enter the country "in the
interests of state security."
Forum 18 says the official commentary to the law adds that such a
decision is to be taken, in particular, if there is evidence that the
foreigner concerned "belongs to an international terrorist organization
or organized crime network, has links with extremist or criminal
organizations in Russia or foreign secret services, or intends to
commit a crime in Russia."
According to Forum 18, when there was no response to the Salvation
Army's mid-February visa invitation applications submitted in Moscow,
Colonel Lydholm applied independently for a tourist visa from Finland
at the beginning of March, but received his passport back from the
Russian Embassy in Helsinki with a stamp showing that he was barred.
Pobjie told Forum 18 he is now pursuing the matter through the Danish
Foreign Ministry, while the Salvation Army is currently still
deliberating its official response as an organization to the
rejections. He added that the two officers were due to stay in Moscow
for only several days in order to attend a church congress on 12 March,
and that, while there was an unusual delay, other foreign visitors --
including Lydholm's wife -- were able to attend the event: "She wasn't
seen as a threat."
Forum 18 said that while not attributing any significance to the 12
March congress, Colonel Pobjie mentioned that it was to celebrate an
elevation in the status of the Salvation Army's operation covering
Russia, Georgia, Moldova, Romania and Ukraine from "Command" to
"Territory."
A purely internal change allowing greater independence from the
Church's London headquarters in financial and personnel matters, this
decision was made on 1 December 2004 but became operable on 1 March
2005.
Pobjie added: "I don't know how the Russian authorities could have
known about it."
Five foreign Catholic clergy were denied entry to Russia in the course
of several months in 2002 after the Catholic Church in Russia made a
similar internal decision to elevate the status of its four apostolic
administrations to dioceses. Currently, the visa situation of foreign
Catholic clergy is best described as mixed (see F18News 23 November
2004 www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=461).
Forum 18 says that despite an unsuccessful attempt to liquidate the
Moscow branch of the Salvation Army by the state authorities in the
Russian capital in 2000-2, Colonel Pobjie also said that relations with
them have since been "warm, cordial and helpful," with the rejections
coming "completely out of the blue."
Anatoli Pchelintsev of the Moscow-based Slavic Centre for Law and
Justice told Forum 18 on 28 April, that while a 2002 Constitutional
Court decision prevents the Moscow branch from being liquidated, it has
still not been re-registered in line with Russia's 1997 religion law.
"The Russian authorities argue that this is impossible because the
re-registration deadline expired at the end of 2000," he explained.
Forum 18 also reports that on 1 July 2004 the European Court of Human
Rights declared admissible a case filed against Russia by the Moscow
branch of the Salvation Army in 2001.
While the Church would prefer to settle the affair without turning to
Strasbourg, Colonel Pobjie stressed to Forum 18, the Salvation Army is
anxious to overturn accusations contained in a July 2000 Moscow
district court decision that it is a "militarised organization" with
"barrack-room discipline."
"We were considered for the Nobel Peace Prize once or twice -- I think
our name is worth defending," Pobjie said.
While those accusations are outstanding, Pobjie said, the Salvation
Army is unable to challenge the 2002 publication of a Moscow school
textbook, "The Basics of Living Safely," which draws upon the July 2000
local court verdict.
Endorsed by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the textbook's chapter on
terrorism counts the Salvation Army among "pseudo-religious
organizations seeking all possible methods of using the Russian
education system to spread their so-called religious teachings."
"Posing as an evangelical Protestant Church," it continues, "the
Salvation Army is in essence a militarized formation with a strictly
hierarchical system, military ranks, uniforms and commands, as well as
unflinching subordination of juniors to seniors."
Meanwhile, German Lutheran Bishop Siegfried Springer, the head of the
Evangelical-Lutheran Church in European Russia who was recently denied
entry to Russia (see F18News 18 April 2005
www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=545), has been told he can make
a brief return visit after the General Synod of the
Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Russia and Other States wrote to
President Vladimir Putin calling for his return.
Bishop Springer told Forum 18 from the German town of Bad
Sooden-Allendorf on 4 May that the German embassy in Moscow and the
Russian consulate in Berlin both indicated on 28 April that the Russian
authorities would grant him a one-week visa.
"They also intimated that a decision would be taken at the end of May
as to whether I will then be given a one-year visa, although there is
no firm promise of this yet," Springer said. He has now applied for a
one-week visa for mid-May.
Bishop Springer is unhappy that Russian officials have still not told
him why his valid one-year visa was abruptly annulled at Moscow's
Domodedovo airport on 10 April.
"I keep asking for the reason, as I don't want to get a new visa
without knowing this," he told Forum 18. "Otherwise a shadow will
remain on me and my office -- I want truth and clarity."
For more background see Forum 18's Russia religious freedom survey at www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=509
A printer-friendly map of Russia is available at www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/index.html?Parent=europe&Rootmap=russi
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