Moscow, November 22, 2010
The State Department made its allegations in the 2010 Report on International Religious Freedom.
"The authors of the State Department report were unable to ignore positive trends in our country relating to religious freedoms," the ministry spokesman said in a statement.
However, "the American experts tried to dilute this impression by listing hackneyed complaints about the 'persecution' of totalitarian religious sects and the allegedly privileged status of the Russian Orthodox Church," he said.
If the Orthodox Church enjoys a privileged status in Russia, "one should speak about the same status of the Catholic Church in Italy or Poland, the Muslim [community] in Turkey or Jordan, or the Buddhist [community] in India or Japan," the spokesman said.
"The crux of the matter is apparently not privileges but social status. Such status above all depends on what proportion of the population wants to join a specific church. The Orthodox Church in Russia has traditionally commanded the largest flock, and the State Department report mentions it, by the way," he said.
"The Muslim denomination is second in our country in terms of the number of believers, etc.," the spokesman said.
"Consequently, different denominations and religions may have different representation in civil society institutions. But that is a human factor," he said.
"Legally, the various denominations are equal in status in our country. The growth of the number of registered religious communities, of which there already are 23,500 in Russia, is evidence of this," the spokesman said.
"Interdenominational peace and harmony is an invaluable asset of Russia, something that we treat very carefully, making all necessary efforts to preserve it," he said.
A new report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom placed Russia on its watch list for close monitoring of serious violations of religious freedom alongside countries like Afghanistan and Byelorussia.
Chechnya President Ramzan Kadyrov also spoke out about the U.S. State Department's crude inaccuracy last May:
"I was extremely perplexed by the contents of the U.S. governmental commission's report analyzing the observance of religious freedoms in Russia and, moreover, suggesting some direct action measures to affect this situation," Kadyrov told journalists in Grozny.
"We know what religion is and how to pray, we know what our people need, and we are doing all we can to improve our people's lives. And we know that nobody in America has anything to do with how the Chechen people live and what they care about," he said.
"Step by step, we are resolving most complex postwar period problems engendered not least by foreign special services' efforts. Therefore, we will cope with our problems ourselves and can well do without suggestions from someone who knows nothing about the religion of Islam," Kadyrov said.
"In the course of special operations against terrorists in Chechnya, people having documents of U.S. citizens were identified repeatedly among the thugs' leaders or their instructors," he said.
"It is incomprehensible what cruel persecution of Muslims in Russia and what obstacles imposed by the authorities in the area of religious education the U.S. is talking about," he said.
"We know well what the U.S. support leads to. You can see the results in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam, which the commission also criticizes for not observing religious freedoms," he said.
"The U.S. acts brutally exactly in countries where most people practice Islam. Against this background, it is a sacrilege to raise concerns about the observance of religious freedoms in Russia. The authors of the report live in the past and do not know anything about changes that have occurred in Russia on the whole and Chechnya in particular," Kadyrov said.
