To mark Ascension Day on June 5, a group of 20 Baptists organized a choral performance and began evangelizing in a market place in the town of Uschachi, Vitebsk region. When a plain clothes policeman approached the group to say that they should stop as they did not have permission from the District Executive Committee, organizer Vladimir Burshtyn said that they were not disturbing public order but were “preaching the gospel as God instructed”. He also cited religious freedom guarantees in Belarus’ 1994 National Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A member of the District Executive Committee arrived shortly afterwards and escorted Burshtyn to a local police station and charged him for violating regulations for “holding demonstrations or other mass events”. He was fined 700,000 Belarusian roubles ($US329)  - more than two months’ average wages.

The Baptists came to Uschachi from outside the area. Local authorities said that if they had had the proper permit, there would have been no problem with their activities. However, Belarus has a very strict religion law and it is unlikely that they would have been granted a permit in the first place.

Belarus has a burgeoning pro-democracy movement, and many activists are emerging from the churches.

In a presentation to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Zimbabwean women have warned of genocide in the troubled nation.

“We, the Zimbabwean women and women worldwide, urgently call for an end to the violence in Zimbabwe and for the protection of women and girls in this post election catastrophe,” they said in a submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council's June hearing.

“The violence persists and is real. No election observers are yet in the country, despite our calls, appeals, cries to the Southern Africa Development Community, the African Union, and to the United Nations,” the women said on 12 June.

“We are watching a silent genocide of the poor and powerless, due to politically induced murders, criminal actions, and collapse of basic services resulting in deaths due to lack of health care, food, and shelter for the displaced, especially after the March 29th elections. Most of the affected are women and children.”

A presidential run-off election between dictator Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was due to take place on June 27—however Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the race on June 22 because of increasing violence against his supporters. Within hours of making the announcement, Mr Tsvangirai sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare. He has so far survived three assassination attempts by Mugabe’s thugs and on other occasions has been beaten up. 

Robert Mugabe

Both the SCMZ and the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance have been prominent in promoting peaceful and democratic change in the southern African country, which has been led by Mugabe since its independence from Britain in 1980.

Commenting on the raid on the offices of the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance, Useni Sibanda, the alliance's national coordinator, said, “This is pure harassment of church organisations. We are just doing our usual work and we don’t understand why we should be attacked by riot police like this.”

One Alliance staff member was reported to have been injured in the police operation.

The SCMZ said it condemned “such acts of intimidation directed to civil society players by the state security agents. The government has abdicated its duties by declaring war on its own people and creating an atmosphere of general insecurity among the populace.”

It added, “To members of the ecumenical family the time has come for us not only to speak but also to act against injustice, oppression and corruption according to the standard of the word of God.”

At least 85 people are reported to have died in the post-election violence, and some 3,000 have been injured and 200,000 have been displaced from their homes.

Women from various Christian denominations have gathered at six venues across the country to pray for God’s intervention to stem the violence.

“As we pray there are some who are hiding in mountains afraid to come down fearing that they may be surrounded and attacked,” Tawona Mtshiya, vice-chairperson of the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, told worshippers at a prayer meeting in Harare on 31 May.

UK publication Church Times reports that the Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts in the US, the Rt Revd Thomas Shaw SSJE, recently undertook a week-long visit to the African country. He met the Bishop of Harare, Dr Sebastian Bakare, interviewed 49 of the clergy, and met about 50 lay people, including lawyers defending Zimbabweans detained by President Robert Mugabe’s regime.

While there, Bishop Shaw was invited to preach to a congregation of 400 Anglicans in the garden of a private house—the worshippers had all been ousted from their church buildings elsewhere. Bishop Shaw said that the people’s resilience in the face of such opposition reminded him of the Christians in the Acts of the Apostles.

“To see these Christian men and women in the face of such persecution was a very powerful experience,” Bishop Shaw said. “These people have gone through real persecution, but the spirit of the people is amazing. One of the priests said to me: ‘You can take away our jobs; you can physically threaten us; but you can’t take away our faith.’

By Alison Vicary, Burma Economic Watch

Burma has received considerable attention in the media with the devastation inflicted by Cyclone Nargis. In response to the destruction, the regime has called for more than $US10.7 billion for reconstruction, of which $US42.52 million is for the reconstruction of the 110 hospitals and 288 rural health clinics destroyed or damaged.

Burma, despite being a very poor country, has an enormous amount of government-provided hospitals and health clinics. In fact, prior to the cyclone there were 839 hospitals, 1473 rural health clinics, 86 primary and secondary health centres, 348 maternal and child health centres, 14 traditional medicine hospitals and 237 traditional medicine clinics. This is quite remarkable, especially since the government spends considerably less than the other ASEAN governments on healthcare on a per capita basis. The regime in 2006 spent only nine cents per person, which compares with the government of Laos that managed to spend $US1.91.

In total, the Burmese regime in 2006 only spent only $US4.6 million dollars on healthcare, which means that if nothing was spent on administration and all the revenue was distributed (an unlikely scenario), then each government hospital and clinic in the country received from the 'government' on average about $US1,500.  This paltry sum might go some way towards explaining the near absence of beds, sheets, clothes, medical equipment and drugs within the government hospitals and clinics.  Burma might have lots of hospitals and clinics, but there is nothing in most of them.

This meagre allocation of resources to a system that is nearly all empty buildings is from a 'government' that earns around $US100million each month in revenue from its gas sales to Thailand. Theoretically, the regime could increase the country's aggregate expenditure on healthcare by nearly 50%, if it bothered to allocate to healthcare only one month of the revenue it receives from gas sales.

Mind you, the revenue does not end up in the government's budget. Instead, the money from gas sales disappears into the private bank accounts of the generals or is wasted on totalitarian extravagances such as the building of a new capital city, purchasing nuclear reactors (for medical research) and weaponry for an army whose enemy is its population.

Giving the regime money to build new hospitals and clinics, even if they were to be built, is simply a waste of resources. There are already too many empty hospitals and clinics.  More buildings are not needed.  Rather, the people of Burma need a health system that is properly financed and administered.  Presently the country has neither, and simply throwing resources at the regime to erect more empty hospitals and clinics will only contribute to a mentality that sees infrastructure-building as equivalent to the provision of healthcare.

34 evangelicals who gathered for prayer and fellowship in a local home in Keren at the end of May were arrested by police during a raid. Members of the Berhane Hiwet (Light of Life) Church located in Keren, Eritrea’s third largest city, were taken to prison, while their children were left behind.

Meanwhile, unconfirmed rumours are circulating that several Protestant pastors who were arrested four years ago may be tried for treason—a crime which carries the death penalty in Eritrea. The most well-known pastors who may be at risk are Haile Naizghi, Dr Kifle Gebremeskel, and Tesfatsion Hagos. The three men have been held incommunicado for the duration of their imprisonment.