Forum 18 - Russia

"RUSSIA: WHOSE SIDE ARE THE POLICE ON?
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=794

Pentecostals, Catholics and Baptists are among religious communities to complain recently of police failure to protect them from attacks or other unwarranted intrusions during services or of police raids to prevent them conducting religious activity - such as giving out religious literature - which they regard as legitimate, Forum 18 News Service notes.

Police failed to respond when 300 Pentecostals in Spassk in Siberia were terrorised by 20 drunken youths who attacked their service in April or when a Catholic service in St Petersburg was disrupted by intruders in late May. Only when church leaders complained did the authorities take belated action. In Ivanovo near Moscow, the FSB security police initiated a raid on a 14 May Baptist evangelisation event at a rented cinema and an investigation is underway over the fact that copies of the New Testament being handed out did not include the name of the publisher. 'We are still trying to find out what will happen,' Pastor Aleksandr Miskevich told Forum 18. 'I can't imagine how they are going to check the authenticity and authorship of the Gospels!'"