Tolerance Foundation: Annual Report on Religious Freedom in Bulgaria

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Subject: Tolerance Foundation: Annual Report on Religious Freedom in Bulgaria

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Tolerance Foundation: Annual Report on Religious Freedom in
Bulgaria


TOLERANCE FOUNDATION*
An associated member of the "Human Rights
Without Frontiers International"

Annual Report on the State of Religious Freedom in Bulgaria in 2001

Sofia, March 24

In 2001 the situation concerning the religious rights of Bulgarian
citizens was the same as it had been in 2000. Nothing worsened, but
there was also no significant improvement in this sphere of human
rights. The general patterns, which have existed every year since
1998, can be summed up as follows: The massive police actions and
unrestrained media campaign against the so-called �sects� that existed
in the past are no longer present. But the fundamental problems
stemming from the outmoded legislation that takes no standards of
human rights into account (the 1949 Denominations Act is still in
effect), as well as those stemming from the arbitrariness of local
authorities, continue today. Furthermore, attempts are still made to
limit religious rights in many new spheres � such as the media.

In 2001 no new legislation was passed in the area of state relations
with religious groups. At the same time, local authorities took no new
measures to limit religious rights as they had in the past (in 1999
and 2000 more than 10 municipalities took such measures). The old
measures, however, were not changed. This only exception was the
decree in the city of Pleven, whose discriminatory clauses were
partially removed by court order. On 24 January 2002, after seven
years of waiting, the Church of the Nazarene finally received its
registration from the Council of Ministers. Some municipal authorities
� such as those in Plovdiv, Burgas, and Stambolijski � continue
illegally to refuse registration to the Jehovah's Witnesses, despite
the fact that the church is registered at the national level.

The most important development in the realm of religious rights was
undoubtedly the incident in the village of Ravnogor, in the Bratsigovo
municipality. There, on 21 June 2001, fanaticized crowds of Orthodox
Christians attacked a group of Protestants from the United Church of
God, who had come to the village to show a film. That evening about 20
Protestants from the Plovdiv branch of the UCG arrived to show films
with Biblical themes and to give a concert. A crowd of enraged local
residents, led by the local Orthodox priest and the local director of
the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) attacked the
visitors. With shouts of "Get out of here, get out of here! You have
no business in our village!" dozens of villagers ran at the young
Protestants, who were camped out on a field at the edge of the
village. They destroyed the visitors' tent, beat one of them with a
tent stake, and stole their expensive projector and generator. The
police who were called to the scene refused to file an official
protocol about the incident, and in this way effectively covered for
the villagers who had committed the attacks and the theft. A few days
after the victims filed an official complaint with the Prosecutor's
office, the stolen projector was thrown into the yard of the UCG
office in Plovdiv and broke when it hit the ground. No information is
available to point to whether the Prosecutor�s office formally
continued its official investigations after the silent return of the
stolen projector.

According to reports from the Institute for the Principles of Justice,
a local non-governmental organization, there were at least two other
cases in which local municipal authorities impeded the Agape
Association from showing its film "Jesus." These happened on 6 April
at the Students Municipal Association in Sofia and on 12 April in Nova
Zagora. The decisions in both cases were arbitrary.

At the end of March the results of the analysis of the so-called
Consolidated Draft Denominations Act were announced. This analysis was
conducted after the Bulgarian government sent the draft act to the
Council of Europe for expertise at the end of 2000 [i].  It was
conducted by a team of experts on Religion and Human Rights. The
government of the UDF concealed the report from the public, probably
because of the severe criticisms of the draft act contained in the
30-page text. The analysis, however, reached human rights
organizations by unofficial means, and on 2 June it became the topic
of a conference attended by representatives of practically all
religious faiths. The conference was organized by lawyers working in
the realm of religious and human rights. One of the Council of Europe
experts wrote the following about the consolidated draft act [ii]: 
"Looking at the draft law as a whole, all of the experts pointed out
one main problem, which is serious enough to prompt the conclusion
that serious changes must be made for this document to meet the
requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights." An-other
part of the analysis states that "The inadequacies of this draft act
are such that nei-ther this general report nor the three individual
analyses can focus on the act�s specific technical problems, because
they must spend so much time pointing out the inadequacy of the act as
a whole and the general approach that it takes."

The most significant criticism in the experts' report was directed at
the procedures for registration of religious organizations. The report
states that "The very procedure for registration contains serious
problems from the point of view of the European Convention on Human
Rights. These include:
a. The theological prejudice in the procedures for registration
b. The limitation of religious pluralism and limitations on the
evolution of the doc-trine of religious organizations
c. The lack of clarity and double-meanings in the criteria for
refusing registration or annulling registration, which provides a
broad leeway for arbitrariness
d. The lack of criteria concerning the subsidization of religious
groups"

The report especially emphasized the fact that the regulations
concerning the registration and refusal of registration of religious
groups directly contradicted the practice of the European Court for
Human Rights on theological and ideological neutrality in such
procedures. The regulations dealing with the rights of religious
organizations to open houses of prayer and to use public buildings for
religious purposes were seriously discrimina-tory. The powers of the
local authorities to limit the practice of certain religions on their
territory were unjustly broad.

The experts contended that the regime of relations between the state
and religious com-munities was by its very nature discriminatory. The
report stated that �Even if we accept that second-level relations
between the state and the church theoretically correspond to the
criteria of the European Convention on Human Rights, and even if the
procedures for registration are neutral, prior tempore potoir jure,
the procedures still must be revised in terms of all of the points (a)
through (d), in order to guarantee that there will be no
discrimination and that the state will not interfere on the basis of
religious doctrine."

The new government, however (On June 17, 2001 general elections were
held in Bulgaria and new established party - National Movement Simeon
the Second /NMSII/- that has been leaded by Simeon the Second, the
former king of Bulgaria, won the elections) did not show that it had
paid attention to the criticisms against the draft act. On 5 July, the
day that the new Parliament was first called to session, NMSII MP
Borislav Tsekov unexpectedly introduced his own draft denominations
act. This draft provoked widespread public debate not only because it
was the first law introduced by the NMSII movement, but also because
it contained a series of regulations directed at the forcible
unification of the two hostile groups within the Bulgarian Orthodox
Church. In addition to the fact that it contained (albeit in somewhat
softened form) several of the restrictive regulations that the Council
of Europe had already criticized, Tsekov's draft also prohibited the
division of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and allowed the state to
recognize only that branch of the church that is currently led by
Patriarch Maksim. The fate of this law is still not clear, but many
observers believe that its contents are symptomatic of the attitude
prevalent among the parliamentary majority and in the current
government on the problems of religious freedom.

In 2001 it became clear that, 12 years after the democratic changes in
Bulgaria, the problem of the restitution of the property of religious
groups that had been nationalized by the communist regime was not
solved. Until this real estate is returned to its previous owners, the
religious organizations' right to property is blatantly violated. The
situation also hinders the groups' ability to carry out their normal
activities. On 27 July the Tolerance Foundation held a special
conference on this topic. The information presented at the conference
confirmed that the injustice of the communist confiscation in 1944-89
of the ma-jority of the buildings, cult objects, and underground
properties that belonged to religious communities has not been
corrected.

Even though some laws for restitution exist and even though some of
these � such as those for the Rila Monastery and for Catholic Church
properties � effect specifically church real estate, the state
continues to hold on to a large number of properties. The largest
portion of such properties was confiscated from the Catholic Church.
These include schools, hospitals, orphanages, and land. Muslims
contend that many of their religious buildings, which were turned into
museums after their nationalization, are still in state hands.
Methodists and Seventh-Day Adventists have made claims on nationalized
buildings. The Dunovites' property has tragically been destroyed, for
the most part. Even the Orthodox Church claims that the state still
controls some of its property.

The major obstacle to fair restitution is juridical. The laws for
restitution are written in such a way that, in practice, it is
impossible for a religious group that exists today to prove in court
that it is the rightful heir to the property of a group that existed
before 9 September 1944 (i.e. before the communist's  coup d'etat).
This is the case despite obviousness of the relations between the
historical and the current groups. Moreover, there is an obvious lack
of political will to solve this problem, and no government in the past
12 years has tried to solve it [iii].

The deputy directors of the National Assembly�s Religion and Human
Rights Commission, Ahmed Yusein and Kiril Milchev, attended the
conference of the Tolerance Foun-dation. They took on the
responsibility to do whatever they can to solve the problem, but for
now they have made no progress.

In August the Supreme Administrative Court refused to approve the
application of Radio �Voice of Hope� (which was founded as a
commercial association by a group of people tightly connected to the
United Church of God). The court reversed a 2 October 2000 decision of
the State Commission on Media and Communications, refusing
programming, and thereby radio broadcasting licenses, to this
Christian radio station. This was the first attempt in Bulgaria to
found an electronic media with a religious orientation. The National
Council on Radio and Television blocked it for the implicit reason
that an Ortho-dox radio station should be registered before any
Protestant one is allowed. After the de-cision of the Supreme
Administrative Court there was nowhere else to turn in Bulgaria, and
so the radio station�s founders turned to the European Court of Human
Rights in Strasbourg.

According to press reports in November, the government intends to
strengthen its relations with the major religious groups in the
country by appointing their representatives to a Directorate of
Religious Affairs. It is unclear what the functions of these
representatives will be, nor is it clear whether they will have any
influence � other than in an advisory capacity � over governmental
decisions on religion. On 14 December the leaders of the Evangelical
Alliance (an alliance of the five largest Protestant churches in
Bulgaria) sent a letter to Premier Saxe-Coburg Gotha, to Chairman
Gerdzhikov of the National Assem-bly, and to Chairman Toshev of the
Commission for Religion and Human Rights. In this letter, they sharply
protested against the government�s intentions to include in the
reformed Directorate of Religious Affairs representatives from the
Orthodox, Muslim, Catholic, and Jewish communities, while excluding
representatives from Protestant groups in the Directorate's
structures. Leaders of Bulgarian Protestant groups declared in the
letter that the changes constitute an act of discrimination against
Bulgarian evangelists, whose number they claim is over 300,000
Bulgarian citizens. They insisted upon receiving a place in the
reformed administrative organ for religious affairs, and they
ex-pressed their hopes that the project for reform of the Directorate
for Religious Affairs would not be implemented in its original form.

On 3 May the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg approved a
"friendly settlement" reached in the case of Stefanov v. Bulgaria. The
plaintiff is a Jehovah's Witness, who was sentenced (at the first
level effectively, and after appeals conditionally) to a year and a
half in prison for his conscientious objection to perform his
compulsory military service. In the agreement, the state is required
to introduce a law for total amnesty for all Bulgarian citizens, who
have been accused, tried, or convicted for conscientious objection.
The state must also make the length of civil service equal to that for
military service, take measures to protect the plaintiff from
discrimination during his performance of alternative civil service,
and to reimburse the plaintiff for his legal expenses related to the
case. However, no legislative measures had been taken in this regard
by the end of 2001. The Republic of Bulgaria had only paid the
expenses stipulated in the agreement.

Endnotes:
i. See Human Rights in Bulgaria in 2000, Annual report of the BHC,
Obektiv, February 2001.
ii. For details see the press release of the Tolerance Foundation from
17 May 2001: "Bulgaria: The Council of Europe's Expert Opinion on the
Bulgarian Draft Law for Religion is Negative." The text is available
in Bulgarian and English online at: www.bghelsinki.org

iii. For details see the Tolerance Foundation's press release from 3
August 2001 (in English): "Bulgaria: A Conference of Religious Leaders
Insists on Adopting a Special Bill for Restitution of the Confiscated
Church Property." The text is available online at: www.bghelsinki.org

On behalf of Tolerance Foundation:

Emil Cohen, President
------------------------------------------------

*The TOLERANCE FOUNDATION is a human rights group monitoring the
freedom of conscience and the religious freedom practices in Bulgaria,
providing legal assistance to victims of discrimination based on
religion, as well as propagating the idea of tolerance towards
religious and other convictions.

The group was founded in 1994. Mr. Emil Cohen is President of the
Tolerance Foundation. Atanas Krasteff, Krassimir Kanev. Mikhail
Sergeev and Tzanko Mitev are members of the Board of the foundation.
 
Since April 2001 the organization has been an associate member of
Human Rights without Frontiers International.

Address: 1000 Sofia, 163A Rakovski St.
Phone/fax: (+359 2) 981 23 57; Phone: (+359 2) 988 31 36
E-mail: [email protected]

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