Authorities break a lock on the door of New Life Church in Minsk, Belarus on Feb. 17, 2017. | YouTube/New Life Church Minsk
About a week after police evicted his congregation from its church building, the pastor of New Life Church in the capital of Belarus says his church is praying for “a great revival” in the eastern European country where violations of religious freedom have increased since last year’s presidential election.
“We would have expected this kind of situations in the Soviet Union times, when churches were persecuted,” Senior Pastor Vyacheslav Goncharenko told Evangelical Focus in an interview. “It might be the first case in the history of modern Belarus that we face this kind of injustice, a situation in which they entered forcefully in a church and evicted us.”
19 February 2021
Olga Glace, Forum 18
Bailiffs accompanied by police used an angle grinder and a crowbar on 17 February to gain access to Minsk s New Life Pentecostal Church to evict it. Officials told the Church they were enforcing a 2009 court order. Aleksey Petrukovich, who signed the enforcement order, refused to explain why the eviction happened, and why force was used. I am indignant. This is a hostile takeover of church property with the excuse of official papers, Sergiy Melyanets, a member of a different Church who witnessed the eviction, told Forum 18.
On 17 February, police and court bailiffs forcibly evicted New Life Full Gospel Church from the building it has used in the capital Minsk since 2002. Some 30 bailiffs, police, and Housing Repairs and Utilities Association officials took part in the eviction. Bailiffs used an angle grinder to cut the door lock to gain entry.
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