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- Written by Viktor Kostov
Above: Explaining the threat of the new religious law amendments in a Bulgarian Christian Television talk show
Watch the show on Facebook here.
Update: Analysis of the bills in English added on Nov. 11, 2018. See links at the end.
During the first half of May, the BSP (Bulgarian Socialist Party), GERB (Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria) and MRF (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) parliamentary groups, as a unified group of sponsors, and separately the coalition of nationalist parties, the United Patriots, submitted draft amendments to the Law on Religions.
In October, despite the clear, critical, and united opposition to the totalitarian bill by all faiths in the country, and by our human rights organization, the parliamentarian Commision on Religions and Human Rights (leading) voted for the bill without any hindrances, and the proposal was submitted for voting in entered the plenary session. On October 11 the National Assembly also voted "for" the bill at first reading, accepting the draft law in principle, without any particular debates.
On October 19, 2018, with a report by the leading committee, the two projects were brought together into a single one.
After November 16, 2018, when the extra-parliamentarian discussion on the proposal will be exhausted, there is a serious risk that the draft will be voted at the second reading and become enforceable legislation. Such will still be contrary to the Constitution, international law and the principles of freedom and democracy.
If the Parliament does not listen to the voice of reason, the higher laws guaranteeing the basic human rights, and the piling criticisms against the proposal, this totalitarian and anti-Christian law will come into effect.
We unambiguously and categorically oppose the introduction of tyrannical and totalitarian measures against fundamental and inalienable human rights and freedoms, aimed primarily at limiting religious belief and its public preaching, sharing, and practicing.
In order to prevent the passage of these unapologetically tyrannical bills into law, on May 28, 2018, together with the National Alliance "United God's Churches", we submitted a protest declaration to the National Assembly, whose text is fully published here. Twelve evangelical-Protestant faiths and religious communities joined the declaration. The declaration was slightly amended on 1.11.2018 to reflect current developments.
On October 18, we published an Analysis of draft laws to further critique the anti-democratic and anti-constitutional and anti-democratic nature of the project.
Tens of evangelical-protestant denominations are planning to exercise their right to a peaceful protest before parliament on Nov. 11, 2018, to express their disagreement with the anti-religious draft law.
LINKS TO RELATED DOCUMENTS
UPDATED ON NOV. 11, 2018 WITH THE ANALYSIS OF THE BILLS ON AMENDING THE BULGARIAN RELIGIOUS LAW
Analysis of the Draft Law for Amendments on the Law on Religions, in English. Written on Oct. 18, 2018. Updated and translated in English on Nov. 11, 2018. (Please, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to let us know that you have downloaded and used this document.)
Link to the text of the Declaration in English, with the possibility to sign the petition in support. First drafted on May 28, 2018, updated on November 1, 2018.
Memorandum by Alliance Defending Freedom Europe submitted to the Bulgarian Parliament, regarding the proposed bill, explaining the European Convention and Cases Defending Freedom of Religion before the European Court of Human Rights
The proposed bill in English with highlights of problematic areas
Eminent Constitutional Crisis Introduced by Bills Restricting Fundamental Human and Religious Rights
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- Written by Viktor Kostov
Back in May of 2018, two draconian antireligious bills were introduced to the Bulgarian legislature for the third year in a row. After the bills received critical opinions from all the major religious denominations in the country, on October 4 the leading committee in the Bulgarian parliament held a hearing with the participation of the bills' sponsors and these religious representatives. Freedom for All also took part as a human rights and religious freedom group, as well as represented two evangelical-Protestant denominations. Below is the English translation of our report from the meeting.
Meeting of the Parliamentary Commission on Religious Denominations and Human Rights Regarding the Two Draft Amendments and Supplements to the Religious Denominations Act
Last Thursday, October 4, 2018, the leading Committee on Religions and Human Rights held a meeting in the National Assembly on the two draft amendments to the Religious Denominations Act.
Present at the meeting were nine of the regular members of the commission, as well as representatives of most of the religious communities: the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (BOC), the Roman Catholic Church, the Muslim faith, and the United Evangelical Churches. Freedom for All, our human rights and religious freedom group, attended and represented the Protestant-Evangelical Christian denominations of the National Alliance of United Churches of God (NAUCG) and the National Christian Center (NCC), as well as its own position.
Our general assessment is that the fate of these bills is questionable. The Commission ultimately voted for both bills to enter the plenary session and have their first reading before the Parliament. This means that the possibility of a crisis of a constitutional magnitude in which the freedoms of conscience, faith, speech, and other human rights becoming extremely limited by a new law are very real.
Only Freedom for All held the position that the Commission should not allow the proposed laws to be allowed to enter the plenary discussion of the Assembly because of their extreme anti-democratic and anti-constitutional character.
At the beginning of the meeting, the Vice-President of the Commission, Mr. Vassil Antonov, said that the BSP (Bulgarian Socialists) party will not be supporting the bills in the event of a vote, which includes the bill they co-sponsored along with the MRF (Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the “Turkish Party”) and GERB (the largest party, a compilation of socialists, quasi-right wingers, opportunists). A representative of ATAKA, which is part of the United Patriots party, and a sponsor of the second bill, also expressed his general opposition to the bills.
A representative of the sponsors from the three big parties, Mr. Tsonev from the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and representatives of the United Patriots, briefly motivated their bills by offering only cosmetic changes. Both bills continue to overwhelmingly restrict views on freedom of religion.
On the part of the denominations, the opposition and criticism of the bills was almost unified, categorical and on many of the major points, overlapped. Criticisms focused on the fact that national security issues are not resolved by limiting the rights of believers and religions; that donations should not be controlled and limited by the state through extraordinary and/or special laws, but by general laws already in place; that the right to preach cannot be subject to an authorization by the state; that the preparation of preachers and clergymen is absurdly subject to state control agencies that are not competent to grasp the essence of the religious education of a particular religion; and that faith is not a national phenomenon and the state cannot restrict international contacts and communities because of their religious beliefs.
The position of the BOC, considered to be the largest religious denomination in the country, was impressive because it stood against the excessive interference of the "Religions" Directorate in the internal affairs of the church (respectively the denominations), which, even under communism, was not as significant as it is envisaged in these bills. This position is also impressive because to date, in the public discussion of religious (or rather anti-religious) bills, the BOC has not taken a firm position, perhaps because of the state's patronage, which is not the case here. That is, the BOC in its position defended not only its own interests (it relies on state protectionism) but took a stand that is principled and favors Christian religious freedom from excessive state interference.
Of course, it remains unclear to what extent the BOC supports the freedom of religious denominations from having to be registered and the registration of other Orthodox faiths in Bulgaria. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, despite its disagreement with the bills, insisted that the currently registered (179 according to the Committee Chair, Mr. Velchev) denominations are far too many.
The position of Freedom for All and NEAFC and NHS is that bills must not be admitted into the legislation of the country because they are written in a totalitarian and intolerant spirit against all believers, threaten the constitutional order in the country, discriminate based on religion and, if they become law, will be in violation of the Bulgarian Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights, international law and the principles of a democratic and free society. We advocate that these bills do not reach the Chamber of Deputies at all because of their incompatibility with Bulgarian traditions of religious tolerance and the principles of democracy. We also took the position that the Bulgarian constitutional state is secular and not atheistic, as the spirit of the two laws implies. The secular state is neutral in terms of faith and ideology, the atheist state promotes atheism and attacks religious views.
Our position, on all the other points, largely coincides with the views and criticisms of other denominations, disagreeing with the position expressed by some attendants and the committee chairman that the number of registered denominations should be limited. Such restrictions are neither necessary nor somehow helpful to the quoted reason for the need for these restrictions, "because the denominations are exempt from taxes", so they have been acting in bad faith as such. This argument is unsubstantiated.
The sponsors of the bills agreed that if there is any draft law on religious denominations and amendments, they should be subjected to a careful and thorough public discussion as it is a complex and delicate matter, which is our position on the approach to religious law in general.
The bills were voted to be considered by the Parliament at this first reading by the Commission under Art. 43 (Rules of the National Assembly). In the discussion there were no opinions about the categorical rejection of the bills so that the projects would not make it to the floor discussion (plenary), which we expected and on which we insisted (as mentioned above). Setting up working groups with the participation of the Commission, to generate discussions on the bills before the second reading, with the hope that such extremely restrictive and dangerous bills could be rebuilt into something good, in our opinion, is an impossible task. Despite the vote to proceed head, the fate of the bills remains unclear because of the extremely restrictive and totalitarian approach to their writing by all religious communities, including the BOC and the disagreement with them even by some of the sponsors (BSP in this case).
In his closing remarks, the Vice-President of the Commission stated that the current Religious Denomination Act, although not perfect, is good and effective in contemporary society and should not be re-written with hasty amendments and additions.
We also believe that writing new laws, especially anti-democratic ones, does not solve problems, but rather creates new ones which we reiterated also in private conversation after the meeting with some members of the Commission.
In view of the outcome of the meeting, we believe that there is still uncertainty about the freedom of belief in Bulgaria. This is due to the present possibility of voting in a draft amendment to the Law on Religions which is contrary to the principles of a free and democratic society.
In this regard Freedom for All and the evangelical-Protestant communities NAOBTS (NAUCG) and NHTS (NCC) and the unregistered religious community Christian Mission Center will continue to monitor the process concerning freedom of belief and expression and its legislative treatment in order to protect basic human rights and freedoms for our communities and for churches and believers throughout the country.
Viktor Kostov, Ph.D.
missiologist, lawyer
* Freedom for All is our human rights, missionary, and publishing group of lawyers and missionaries acting in defense of the Christian faith in the public square.
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- Written by Viktor Kostov, PhD
FOR HOW LONG WILL THE BULGARIAN STATE TREAT FAITH IN GOD AS AN OFFENSE?
According to statistics from the European Court of Human Rights Bulgaria holds second place in losing cases based on complaints of violations of Art. 9 of the European Convention. Art. 9 protects freedom of religion and conscience. With an 83% rate of cases lost, Bulgaria ranks behind Turkey and Russia. The conclusion can only be that the state and its officials have no intention of learning and beginning to respect one of the most basic human rights, the one that sustains democracy -- freedom of religion and conscience.
Immediately after the success of GERB (Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria) and BSP (Bulgarian Socialist Party, former communists) in the early elections, held at the end of March, there was yet another attack by Bulgarians authorities against the fundamental rights and freedoms of believers. The tenacity with which Bulgarian rulers want to eliminate the free functioning of basic human rights in the country is remarkable.
Exactly one year ago we had the ill-fated bills by Kadiev and BSP amending the Law on Religious Confession (LRC), which had the intent to practically eradicate freedom of religion in Bulgaria. About two weeks ago we had a new prosed bill that could have been a copy-pasted version of the bills of 2016! On April 3, 2017, the Ministry of Justice (MJ) published on its website a Draft Law on the Law on Bulgarian Citizenship (formerly downloadable from the website of the Ministry of Justice here, in Bulgarian).
This time, however, to avoid the charge of the political and ideological motivation of the project, the proposed draconian restriction of basic human rights in the sphere of faith, expression, association, and assembly came from the Ministry of Justice rather than a socialist or another political faction. It later became clear that the bill was proposed by the newly elected president of the republic of Bulgaria – Rumen Radev (Fall of 2016). The Bulgarian president is a rather ceremonial position, as the country follows the parliamentary republic model of government. Thus, the president has no legislative initiative under the constitution. However, Mr. Radev had no reservations about circumventing his lack of powers and putting the Ministry of Justice as a front for his project. It comes as no surprise that Mr. Radev, and independent presidential candidate during the campaign was endorsed and supported by the Bulgarian Socialist Party.
The draft for amendments of the LRC was covertly introduced as a part of a Draft Law for Amends on the Law on Bulgarian Citizenship. The public outcry came after the draft law was published on the MJ website. However, the negative reaction came from the Bulgarian voters who live abroad that to whom the bill effectively denies the right to vote. The media picked up the scandal and the bill was hastily pulled from the internet. A mid-level government lawyer was fired for posting the draft law on the web. He spoke to the media and told in detail how the president of Bulgaria had a meeting with MJ officials and insisted that the law would be introduced without delay.
In an article the Wall Street Journal[1] claims that President Radev was the choice of Mr. Vladimir Putin for a Bulgarian president. Radev’s campaign for the presidency was supported by Kornelia Ninova, the chairwoman of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, formerly the communist party. She had met with a former KGB officer to discuss Radev’s candidacy for the position of president, states the WSJ article. When exposed to Bulgarian media she first lied about meeting the Russian negotiator, then when she was faced with the facts, stated that nothing important had been discussed at the meeting. Radev was elected president soon after these events which unfolded in the summer of 2016.
Then we have an attempt of the new president to legislate by introducing a draft law which almost verbatim repeated the anti-religious bills of 2016. One may even argue that under Art. 103 of the Bulgarian Constitution Radev has violated his constitutional duties by acting as a legislative agent.
Read more: New Legislative Initiative against Freedom of Religion and a Russian Spy Saga in Bulgaria
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- Written by Super User
Posted May 6, 2016
Alliance Defending Freedom's Robert E. Clarke serves as legal counsel and director of European advocacy for ADF International at its office in Vienna, Austria. Mr. Clarke has recently posted an article addressing the precarious situation of freedom of religion and the threat to a free and democratic society in Bulgaria. Here is the opening of the piece:
The communist regimes of the twentieth century were renowned for the restrictions they placed on religious freedom. Many churches and religious believers were driven underground as the state tightened its grip on people’s fundamental freedoms. Recent developments in Bulgaria demonstrate that these days are not entirely behind us. Some members of Bulgaria’s Parliament have made moves to exert state control over people’s religious freedom once again.
The full article can be read here:
Bulgaria dragged back to communist era
A post referring to the commentary and the Bulgaria predicament also appears in the Italian website ACI Prensa.
