| 26th
January, 2007
MICHAEL
IRELAND
Assist
News Service
Seventeen
years after the 1989 anticommunist revolution, the city of
Timisoara, Romania, is again asking for freedom. This time,
it is about freedom to express religious beliefs.
On 21st January, more than 5,000 believers from Christian
churches and members of religious associations from Timisoara
held a march of protest on the streets of the city against
the new "Religious Law", which they say infringes
the Constitution of Romania.
In the speeches of the march participants and in the official
petition to the Romanian Government, the marchers pointed
out the new law, which was approved by the President of Romaina
on 27th December - just four days before Romania joined the
European Union, breaks the Romanian Constitution which stipulates
the separation of the Church from the State.
CALLING
FOR CHANGE: Some of the 5,000 people who gathered
in Timisoara to protest the new "Religious Law".
"Through this law, it will open wide the door
for the control of the state over the spiritual life
in Romania, " said Paul Negrut, president of
the Baptist Union of Romania, during an interview
with Alfa Omega TV.
|
According
to Alfa Omega TV, the protesters "requested the reappraisal
of the articles referring to the compulsoriness of the State
to approve the status of the already existent denominations,
the freedom of expressing every person’s beliefs, educational
system for religious minorities, the extremely dull procedure
of registering a new denomination or religious association".
"Through this law, it will open wide the door for the
control of the state over the spiritual life in Romania, "
said Paul Negrut, president of the Baptist Union of Romania,
during an interview with Alfa Omega TV.
The marchers pointed out the discriminatory character of the
law which divides the citizens of the country into three categories,
according to their belonging to a predominant denomination,
a registered denomination, or an unregistered denomination.
The protesters say the limitation of expressing their beliefs
are unequal toward people of the same country; for example,
the ability to bury an evangelical believer in a cemetery
belonging to the predominant denomination depends upon the
benevolence of the priest.
Ben-Oni Ardelean, one of the pastors participating in the
march said: "The law contains formulations similar to
those for which, during the rule of Communism, our forerunners
were sent to prisons and murdered for their belief, under
the accusation that they made an attempt to the affect public
health and morality. Who is defining today in Romania the
term 'public health and morality', in a society predominantly
Orthodox? There is the possibility that any action of evangelisation
would be considered an attempt to affect the public health."
Daniel Matei, president of the Full Gospel Federation of Romania,
says the new requirement of 23,000 believers, or 0.1 per cent
of the population, and the necessity of a Christian association
existing for 12 years in order to be approved, "places
Romania among the last (countries) in Europe concerning recognition
of a denomination".
"The socio-political anticommunist revolution started
from Timisoara in December 1989, and we want also the spiritual
revolution to start from here," declared Pastor Daniel
Cocar.
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