The Protestant community is struggling to keep its prayer house, which the Minsk authorities have already declared as property of the city.
In its appeal, New Life Church describes as illegal all court rulings ordering the community to sell its prayer house and the adjacent land plot to the city authorities, the community’s lawyer, Syarhey Lukanin, told BelaPAN.
If the UN Human Rights Committee takes sides with New Life Church, it will tell the Belarusian government to “restore” the community’s rights, while the International Monetary Fund may halt its lending to Belarus, according to Mr. Lukanin.
On August 24, members of New Life Church began an open-ended prayer vigil inside their worship house on the outskirts of Minsk to prevent the city government from taking control of the building.
In mid-May, Dzmitry Shashok, head of the Maskouski district housing authority, ordered New Life Church to vacate its prayer house by June 1, 2009.
The community defied the order despite Mr. Shashok's warning that failure to obey would be dealt with in accordance with regulations currently in force.
In March, the Minsk government offered the community to consider applying for a 0.4-hectare (one-acre) plot at the intersection of the Minsk Beltway and Sharanhovicha Street instead of the plot that New Life Church had been ordered to vacate.
At their general meeting held on May 5, New Life Church members unanimously voted to reject the offer.
It would take the community between 18 and 24 months and at least $100,000 to obtain the necessary permits for getting a new plot, Mr. Lukanin explained in an earlier interview with BelaPAN. The construction of a new building would cost from $3 million to $5 million, he added. "In addition, people said that the community's prayers and sufferings had made the disputed plot into holy land," Mr. Lukanin said.
According to him, the community actually asked the Minsk government to expand its current land plot to enable the construction of a new modern building, a Bible college, a student dormitory, a rehabilitation center for alcohol and drug addicts and victims of violence, a homeless shelter and other facilities to accommodate social services. New Life Church requested the Minsk government to provide funding for these projects out of its budget.
New Life Church, one of the largest communities of the Association of Full Gospel Christians, obtained state registration in December 1992 and is said to have more than 1000 members. In 2002, the community bought a former cowshed together with a four-acre land plot from a kolkhoz. It converted the building into a prayer house and some 500 to 700 people gathered there each Sunday for worship.
The area was later added to the territory of Minsk and the city government decided to confiscate the plot and ordered New Life Church to sell the former cowshed to the city for 37.6 million rubels, or some $10 per square meter. Officials explained that this amount was what the building had been worth before New Life Church converted it into a prayer house without permission.
This article appeared in
Belarusian Review, Vol. 21, No. 3
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Copyright 2009 Belarusian Review
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belarusianreview@hotmailcom
11 october 2009
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Source: Naviny.by/Office for Democratic Belarus, September 11, 2009