Human rights news: August 2001
| Friday, 3 August 2001 |
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TOLERANCE FOUNDATION* Press Release BULGARIA: A Conference of Religious Leaders Insists on Adopting a Special Bill for Restitution of the Confiscated Church Property
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SOFIA, 2 August 2001 - On July 27 2001 Tolerance Foundation in co-operation with the Bulgarian Association for Defense and Encouragement of Religious Liberties organized a conference devoted on the process of restitution of the confiscated by the communist regime church property. About 40 leaders of different religious organizations took part in the event. Leaders from almost all religious groups that existed before the communist coup d'etat participated in the conference. Representatives of the largest religious group in Bulgaria - the Orthodox Church, the Islamic faith and the Catholic Church, as well as of many other minority denominations (Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals and others) were present at the conference. Three members of the National Assembly and among them two vice chairmen of the Parliamentary Commission on Human Rights and Religions participated in the event. The main speaker at the seminar was Mr Atanas Krastev, a juridical expert, co-author of the draft act known as 'Dogan - Mestan' (a draft Denominations Act entitled 'Religious Liberty and Religious Organizations Act' which is strongly supported by almost all religious minorities in Bulgaria). It was noted at the seminar that there are several general acts for restitution of the ownership, forced confiscated by the former communist regime. There is also special Act on the Restitution of Property of the Catholic Church. Owing to these bills a part of the property of the religious organizations has been restituted. Nevertheless all par-ticipants in the seminar found that the process of restitution of the church property is too far from finished. For instance, despite the existence of a special bill on the restitution of the property of the Catholic Church in Bulgaria, the representatives of this religious organization said that tens of buildings, shops and many different posses-sions continue to be owned by the state.> The situation with almost all other religious denominations is the same. Even the Orthodox Church has some possessions that are not restituted by the state. It should be stressed that, as a rule, almost all temples have been restituted, but the state continues to hold a lot of buildings such as hospitals, schools (some of most popular schools in the country are in fact ownership of different churches, but the state continues to rule over them), shops and even a stadium. For example, that is the case with the main stadium in Plovdiv, that is the second by population town in our country. On the other hand, the representatives of the Muslim denomination complain that during the first years of the communist regime the state took away a lot of mosques, transformed them into museums and now do not want to restitute these temples to the Muslims in order to be used for worship. Beside this, as it is well known, the state can't give enough money for maintaining of the museums and thus some of them (including a lot of the confiscated mosques) now are semi-ruined. Furthermore it is obvious, that the topic for the state of the process of restitution of the Church property is an essential part of the religious human rights of the citizens. All participants in the seminar stressed that the current state of the process of the restitu-tion of the property of the religious organizations considerably restricts the right of the religious organizations to own property. Thus they cannot develop activities in the sphere of charity and become dependent on state financial support. In this way, as the state continues to rule over the essential part of the former church property, twelve years after the fall of communism the human rights of the citizens and their religious organizations are very seriously violated. The participants in the event agreed that here are a lot of reasons for this unsatisfactory situation. The main among them is the situation, that the procedure for restitution especially of the church property is extremely complex. It was stressed that in many cases it is impossible for the denominations to prove that their claims are well grounded before the court. They cannot do it because as a rule the files for the ownership were destroyed when the former regime confiscated the church property. But there have still been witnesses who are able to give proof in support of the claims of denominations. The problem is that the present legislation does not accept this kind of proof as reliable in this type of cases. In other cases the church property was filed as owned by single persons, not by the appropriate juridical persons. Thus some religious organizations hoped to save their possessions from the encroachments of the communist authorities. However, at present according to the existing procedure they are unable to prove that their property is their own, but not of the successors of these private individuals. In the second place, an important obstacle before the restitution process is the circum-stance that in lot of cases it is impossible for the present religious organizations to prove that they are genuine successors of the juridical persons that existed before the communist takeover. This problem is due to the present procedure of registration un-der the acting Denominations Act. A lot of religious organizations were registered in 1990 under the provisions of Art. 16 of the Denominations Act (as it is well known, it was adopted in the beginning of the communist rule in 1949 and continues to be in effect). When they came out from the state of near illegality it was not written in their files for registration that they were inheritors of the religious organizations that existed before the communist coup. The third reason for the existing state with the restitution is the lack of political will for adopting both a new Denominations Act and a special Law on the Restitution of the Property of the Religious Organizations. The proof for this assertion is the fact that twelve years after the fall of communism the old communist Denominations Act continues to be in force and besides there is no special Law on the Restitution of the Church Property. On the other hand, the religious organizations have fought for their rights one by one. The initiative of Tolerance Foundation was the first step for unification of the efforts of the religious communities in that direction. The participants in the seminar unite around the opinion that a new special Law on the Restitution of the Property of the Religious Organizations is necessary to be adopted by the Parliament. It is clear that under the regulations of the existing laws for restitution that problem is impossible to be solved. All participants in the event agreed that Mr. Atanas Krastev and other presenting lawyers have to make a team for drafting of the appropriate draft act. Tolerance Foundation will give them all possible assistance in order to promote the process of creating of that new law. Beside this the Tolerance Foundation will continue its efforts and have an intention until the end of the current year to make a special report devoted on the state of the restitution process of the property of the religious organizations. The seminar was the first step in that direction. The second will be the preparation of the report and simultaneously with it the work on the preparation of a special act will have to begin. On
behalf of Tolerance Foundation: *
The TOLERANCE FOUNDATIN is a human rights group monitoring the free-dom
of conscience and the religious freedom practices in Bulgaria, providing
legal assistance to victims of discrimination based on religion, as well
as propagating The group was founded in 1994. Mr. Emil Cohen is President of the Tolerance Foun-dation. Since April 2001 the organization has been an associate member of Human Rights without Frontiers International. Address:
1000 Sofia, 163A Rakovski Str |
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