How young Christians in Belarus try to learn about one another ecumenically despite state control

Testimony given at the WCC central committee by a young Belarussian Christian

The Youth Christian movement in Belarus.

(This testimony reminded me of Natalka and her blog from Belarus and her involvement in Syndesmos the Orthodox youth organisaiton. It's easy to take free speech and freedom of worship for granted and not value it or even make use of it. Anyway enough editorialising here's what Raman said and wrote.)

I'm Raman from Belarus, Belarusian Orthodox church of Moscow patriarchate.
I’m a steward at this meeting and I’m very glad to have a possibility to speak now. I want to tell you about some of my impressions about WCC connected with student’s Christian movement in my country. First of all I was really surprised that I’m the only one person from Belarusian Christian churches among participants of WCC. I was really surprised by questions of some stewards from my team. They wondered if Belarus is an independent state? Does Belarusian language really differ from Russian? I had to tell them a lot about my country to make them realise that I’m not from Russia and my mother tongue is not Russian. Also, I asked the stuff to correct my badge from “Russian Orthodox church” to “Belarusian orthodox church”. It’s an important thing for many of young people of Belarus.
So, anyway, I want to tell you some words about SCM in Belarus. Nowadays we have the post-communistic regime of Aleksandr Lukashenka. Special intelligence services try to control everything that does not fit in the frame of the state post-communistic ideology. They try to stop and frighten young politicians, artists, cultural and church activists. They want to take under control every active person whose opinion is not in accordance with state ideology. Also active and independent Christians became a target for them.
Another thing is that our Belarusian Orthodox church started to cooperate with the Belarusian government. There are some new official programmes of cooperating in the educational sphere for student’s. Christian churches which don’t cooperate with government (I mean first of all our protestant churches) have many problems with state authority and police. Catholic and orthodox believers had the same problems when they try to confess their beliefs without official registration and permission. So, for example, if there are more than five persons having a Christian service in a private house, they would be punished according to the new Belarusian law regarding religious activity. Also Belarusian governmental TV-company create TV-programme about Protestant churches calling them a “sect”. And no other Christian church said any official word of protest to it because they don’t want to have problems with government.
There are a lot of youth fellowships in our churches as orthodox, protestant and catholic. Youth fellowship as a rule are doing caritative actions, holding meetings, discussions about what the most pressing questions about faith are for them. They organize pilgrimmages, camps for children and so on.
As for our ecumenical activity there is no good conditions for it in official way. A very few young people in our churches know about ecumenical programmes and organizations like the WCC. And there are a lot of young people who really do not hear anything about ecumenism at all.
In Belarus every religious act has to be registered and permitted at special state department. So I wonder if I manage to organize at least a one meeting of young people of different confessions in my city because I have to do it as my steward’s project. Thank you for your attention.