Urusi imesaini sheria ya kukata kuongelea mambo ya dini nje ya nyumba ya ibada.soma zaid.

Ule msemo kwamba Putin anatamani
sana kuirudisha Urusi kwenye enzi za
ubabe wa Kikomunisti wakati yeye akiwa
KGB unaelekea kweli baada ya kupitisha
sheria inayokataza mtu yeyote kufanya au
kuongea jambo lolote linalohusu dini nje
ya nyumba ya ibada, kutia ndani na
kutumia email au social networks kwa
ajili ya mambo ya kidini.
Putin amefanya hilo na kukaidi maombi
mengi na na kusihiwa na vikundi vya
kidini na vya haki za binadamu asipitishe
sheria hii mpya. Amefanya hivi chini ya
kivuli cha kuzuia ugaidi.
=============================
Russia's Newest Law: No Evangelizing
Outside of Church
This week, Russian president Vladimir
Putin approved a package of anti-
terrorism laws that usher in tighter
restrictions on missionary activity and
evangelism.
Despite prayers and protests from
religious leaders and human rights
advocates, the Kremlin announced Putin’s
approval yesterday. The amendments,
including laws against sharing faith in
homes, online, or anywhere but
recognized church buildings, go into
effect July 20.
Though opponents to the new measures
hope to eventually appeal in court or elect
legislators to amend them, they have
begun to prepare their communities for
life under the new rules, reported Forum
18 News Service, a Christian outlet
reporting on the region.
Protestants and religious minorities small
enough to gather in homes fear they will
be most affected. Last month, “the local
police officer came to a home where a
group of Pentecostals meet each Sunday,"
Konstantin Bendas, deputy bishop of the
Pentecostal Union, told Forum 18. "With a
contented expression he told them: ‘Now
they're adopting the law I'll drive you all
out of here.’ I reckon we should now fear
such zealous enforcement.”
“There are potentially very wide-sweeping
ramifications to this law,” Joel Griffith of
the Slavic Gospel Association said in a
Mission Network News report. “It just
depends on, again, how it is going to be
enforced, and that is a very huge question
mark.”
-----
Earlier reporting (June 29): Christians in
Russia won’t be allowed to email their
friends an invitation to church or to
evangelize in their own homes if Russia’s
newest set of surveillance and anti-
terrorism laws are enacted.
The proposed laws, considered the
country’s most restrictive measures in
post-Soviet history, place broad
limitations on missionary work, including
preaching, teaching, and engaging in any
activity designed to recruit people into a
religious group.
To share their faith, citizens must secure
a government permit through a registered
religious organization, and they cannot
evangelize anywhere besides churches
and other religious sites. The restrictions
even apply to activity in private residences
and online.
This week, Russia’s Protestant minority—
estimated around 1 percent of the
population—prayed, fasted, and sent
petitions to President Vladimir Putin, who
will have to approve the measures before
they become official.
“Most evangelicals—leaders from all
seven denominations—have expressed
concerns,” Sergey Rakhuba, president of
Mission Eurasia and a former Moscow
church-planter, told CT. “They’re calling
on the global Christian community to pray
that Putin can intervene and God can
miraculously work in this process.”
Following a wave of Russian nationalist
propaganda, the laws passed almost
unanimously in the Duma, the upper
house, on Friday and in the Federation
Council, the lower house, today.
“If this legislation is approved, the
religious situation in the country will grow
considerably more complicated and many
believers will find themselves in exile and
subjected to reprisals because of our
faith,” wrote Oleg Goncharov, spokesman
for the Seventh-day Adventists’ Euro-Asia
division, in an open letter.
Proposed by United Russia party
lawmaker Irina Yarovaya, the law appears
to target religious groups outside the
Russian Orthodox church. Because it
defines missionary activities as religious
practices to spread a faith beyond its
members, “if that is interpreted as the
Moscow Patriarchate is likely to, it will
mean the Orthodox Church can go after
ethnic Russians but that no other church
will be allowed to,” according to Frank
Goble, an expert on religious and ethnic
issues in the region.
Russian nationalist identity remains tied
up with the Russian Orthodox church.
“The Russian Orthodox church is part of
a bulwark of Russian nationalism stirred
up by Vladimir Putin,” David Aikman,
history professor and foreign affairs
expert, told CT. “Everything that
undermines that action is a real threat,
whether that’s evangelical Protestant
missionaries or anything else.”
Sergei Ryakhovsky, head of the Protestant
Churches of Russia, and several other
evangelical leaders called the law a
violation of religious freedom and
personal conscience in a letter to Putin
posted on the Russian site Portal-Credo.
The letter reads, in part:
The obligation on every believer to have a
special permit to spread his or her
beliefs, as well as hand out religious
literature and material outside of places
of worship and used structures is not
only absurd and offensive, but also
creates the basis for mass persecution of
believers for violating these provisions.
Soviet history shows us how many people
of different faiths have been persecuted
for spreading the Word of God. This law
brings us back to a shameful past."
Stalin-era religious restrictions—including
outlawing religious activity outside of
Sunday services in registered churches
and banning parents from teaching faith
to their kids—remained on the books until
the collapse of the Soviet Union, though
the government enforced them only
selectively.
Some have questioned whether the
government could or would monitor
religious activity in private Christian
homes.
“I don’t think you can overestimate the
Russian government’s willingess to exert
control,” Aikman told CT. If history is any
indication, the proposed regulations
reveal a pattern of “creeping
totalitarianism” in the country, he said.
The so-called Big Brother laws also
introduce widespread surveillance of
online activity, including requiring
encrypted apps to give the government
the power to decode them, and assigning
stronger punishments for extremism and
terrorism.
The proposal is an “attack on freedom of
expression, freedom of conscience, and
the right to privacy that gives law
enforcement unreasonably broad powers,”
the humanitarian group Human Rights
Watch told The Guardian.
If passed, the anti-evangelism law carries
fines up to US $780 for an individual and
$15,500 for an organization. Foreign
visitors who violate the law face
deportation.
Russia has already moved to contain
foreign missionaries. The “foreign agent”
law, adopted in 2012, requires groups
from abroad to file detailed paperwork
and be subject to government audits and
raids. Since then, the NGO sector has
shrunk by a third, according to
government statistics.
“In Moscow, we shared an office with 24
organizations. Not a single foreign
expatriate mission is there now,” Rakhuba
previously told CT. “They could not re-
register. Missionaries could not return to
Russia because they could not renew
their visas. It is next to impossible to get
registration as a foreign organization
today.”
While Russia’s evangelicals pray that the
proposed regulations are amended or
vetoed, they have gone underground
before, and they’ll be willing to do it
again, Rakhuba said.
“They say, ‘If it will come to it, it’s not
going to stop us from worshiping and
sharing our faith,’” he wrote. “The Great
Commission isn’t just for a time of
freedom.”
Source: christianitytoday.com