#13 - JRL 7286
gazeta.ru
August 12, 2003
Secular court supports religious zealots
By Lera Arsenina
A Moscow court on Monday threw out a case against two Orthodox believers who in January this year trashed an exhibition entitled ''Beware: Religion!'' organized by an influential human rights group in the capital. The court said criminal persecution of the vandals was unlawful, ruling that there was no indication they had committed a crime. The organizers of the exhibition intend to appeal the ruling, which was hailed by the Russian Orthodox Church.
On Monday the Zamoskvoretsky court of Moscow dropped the case against two Orthodox believers Mikhail Lyukshin and Anatoly Zyakin, who in January this year severely defaced an exhibition on religion organized by the Sakharov Centre at the museum named after the eminent scientist and human rights activist. The exhibition dealt with the dangers of religious fundamentalism and church-state relations, its organizers said.
Lyukshin and Zyakin, along with four other young men, smeared artworks with paint, destroyed several exhibits and wrote obscenities on the walls. The accused said the exhibits were blasphemous and offended their religious feelings.
A criminal probe into vandalism was launched by the prosecutor’s office of the Tagansky district of Moscow. The inquiry was carried out by investigators of the Tagansky police station in the capital’s central administrative district.
In February Lyukshin and Zyakin were charged with hooliganism under Article 213 Part I of the penal code. At the same time, criminal proceedings were launched against the organizers of the exhibition under Article 282 Part 11, envisaging punishment for inspiring religious enmity.
Lyukshin and Zyakin considered the investigators’ action against them unlawful and filed a complaint to the Zamoskvoretsky court of Moscow. Last week the court began examination of the complaint, which attracted some 500 believers who thronged outside the court building expressing their support for the two men. Lawyer Mikhail Kuznetsov, representing Lyukshin and Zyakin in court, said that the investigators had made a mistake by qualifying their actions as hooliganism.
According to the lawyer, in truth the accused had sought to prevent the kindling of inter-religious enmity, which they believed the scandalous exhibition was doing.
Kuznetsov persuaded the court to attach a request by Lyukshin addressed to the prosecutor of the central administrative district of Moscow to the case-file in which the claimant contested the impartiality of the investigators. Lyukshin alleged he had been subjected to pressure and threatened by them.
The lawyer also said that the case against his clients was unlawful, and on Monday the court upheld that claim. The judge ruled that there was no indication that the defendants had committed any crime. Moreover, the court supported the criminal case against the organizers of the controversial exhibition.
Director of the Sakharov Centre Yuri Samodurov called the ruling ''amazing''. He told Gazeta.Ru that he intends to discuss with the centre’s management an appeal against Monday’s ruling. The administration of the centre and the artists whose works were damaged by the Orthodox vandals were the plaintiffs in the case.
They demanded compensation for material damages from the six men to the amount of 2,500 roubles for defacing the premises of the Sakharov Museum where the exhibition was held and 3,000 roubles for disrupting the exhibition that that was to be open for a month, but instead was forced to close after only 4 days.
Representatives of the centre and participants of the exhibition, who face the prospect of a criminal case for kindling religious enmity, have still not been officially charged. According to the director, investigators plan to carry out an expert examination first; his colleagues were summoned to the prosecutor’s office merely as witnesses.
A spokesman for the Za Prava Cheloveka (For Human Rights) group Yevgeny Ikhlov believes that the court has passed an ''ignominious decision'', by ruling an act of vandalism lawful and thus giving its ''blessing for defacing everything that that fails to conform to the ideas of Orthodoxy and nationalism''.
''And the prosecutor’s office is carrying on proceedings against the organizers of the exhibition, who may face graver charges of kindling inter-religious enmity,'' the human rights activist told Gazeta.Ru.
Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) hailed the Monday ruling by the Zamoskvoretsky court, though at the same time they maintain that the believers could have expressed their protest in a different way.
In the opinion of an ROC spokesman Rev. Mikhail (Dudkov), the court has ruled that what the young men did was not an act of hooliganism; it was a move to cut short a breach of public order, which is the duty of every citizen.
''Commenting on the action itself, we have already expressed great indignation, and defacing is not the word to describe it. Most of the Orthodox believers understand those people, for the exhibition was plainly aimed at hurting religious feelings. And this falls within the purview of Russian law, in particular, the law on the freedom of conscience and religious liberty,'' said Rev. Mikhail.
He noted that what happened at the Sakharov Museum can be compared with an incident on the roadside of the Kiev-Moscow motorway, when a young woman was badly wounded by a hand-made explosive device as she tried to dismantle an anti-Semitic poster. ''This was an outrage against national feelings, even if it was expressed on someone else’s property or in a work of art. And that woman was right to destroy it,'' the ROC official said.
The ''Beware: Religion!'' exhibition was opened on January 14 this year at
the Sakharov Museum in Moscow. As the Sakharov Centre director Yury Samodurov
said, the exhibition dealt with issues such as religious fundamentalism and
church-state relations, and the title reflected the need to be cautious and
respectful in matters of faith. The exhibits were a mixture of religious and
atheist themes. The exhibition displayed icons with fretwork in the shape of a
hammer and a sickle and even Nazi symbols, as well as icons with holes instead
of saints' images. Any visitor could put his face in the hole and feel like a
saint. Over 40 artists from Russia, Cuba, the US, Japan, Georgia and Armenia had
their work exhibited.
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