A Belarusian lawyer Sergey Shautsou received a prestigious Christian award

From 6 to 12 October the capital of the USA Washington hosted the Fifth World Forum of Christian Lawyers. “The Advocates International”, Christian Legal Society, Advocates North America were the organizers of the event. Around 1,500 delegates from 106 countries all over the world took part in the Forum. Belarusian Christian lawyers and human rights defenders Sergey Lukanin, Sergey and Dina Shautsovy were also invited to the event.

All week Christian lawyers worked hard taking part in various seminars (“Religious norms and corruption legislation”, “Promotion and Protection of civil interests of the poor: who is in charge of justice?”, “Religious conflicts”, etc.), shared experience, talked about the situation with the freedom of religion in their countries, held presentation of regional projects implemented in various continents.

In the course of the conference Belarusians were responsible for moderating at the seminar “The Rule of Law and the Freedom of Belief in Belarus”. In the course of the seminar various international standards in the area of the freedom of religion were discussed and an analysis of the compliance of the national Belarusian legislation to these standards was made, Belarusian lawyers talked about concrete examples of persecution of priests and about the violations of the rights of believers.

Lawyers from Bulgaria, USA, Italy, UK, Slovakia and CIS countries took part in the seminar.

A lawyer of the religious community “ New Life Church” Sergey Lukanin made a presentation regarding the campaign concerning collection of signatures in favour of amendments of the religious legislation of Belarus.

A lawyer and a human rights defender Sergey Shautsou was awarded with a special award “Good Samaritan” for his active position in protecting the rights of believers in Belarus. In March 2006 Sergey Shautsou was sentenced to 10 days of administrative arrest for organization of a religious seminar, which was not sanctioned by the Belarusian government. He served his term in a sadly known detention centre on the Akrestina Street in Minsk. Sergey Shautsou believes that “this award belongs to all Christians of Belarus that take an active position with regard to justice and protect the rights of believers and promote Christian values in all social spheres”.

The President of the Christian Lawyers organization “The Advocates International” Samuel Ericsson, said that “we should not be just observers and state the violation of the laws or inconsistence of the local laws with the international standards and regulations. Lord called upon us to stand for his interests and to use our efforts in order that all human beings acted in compliance with the Laws of the Holy Kingdom”.

Today there is no independent representation of the Advocates International in Belarus. However Belarusian lawyers were cooperating with regional organization Advocates International – Advocates Europe for already a while. In 2007 Sergey Shautsou was selected as a member of the Council of the Advocates Europe.

Ludmila Korsak