Courts, Bureaucrats Besiege Salvation Army in Moscow

On the day this week that a Moscow court discussed whether to close down the Salvation Army, two homeless boys lay propped on their elbows here on a stretch of grass littered with dog droppings and wondered why anyone would want to stop the organization from feeding needy people.

Andrei Volkov, 12, and Dmitri Gribkov, 15, come for the soup and the hunk of bread doled out by the Salvation Army each lunchtime in a shabby city park near one of the big railway stations that are shelter to many of the homeless.

In a dingy courtroom not far away Tuesday, Judge Svetlana Grigorieva brushed aside the arguments of the Salvation Army seeking a suspension of the case against it.

The following day, she handed down a judgment “liquidating” the group’s national headquarters here without waiting to hear final arguments by the Salvation Army’s lawyer, Vladimir Ryakhovsky, who had been caught in one of the city’s infamous traffic snarls and arrived 10 minutes late.

The Salvation Army was banned as an anti-Soviet organization in Communist times but began operating freely in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Then in 1998 prosecutors here sought to close it down based on the contention that it is a paramilitary organization because of its uniforms, ranks and the word “army” in its name.

But after 2 1/2 years of legal action, the Salvation Army was finally closed down on a technicality--claims by the Ministry of Justice Moscow directorate that the group made a minor mistake in its application for re-registration, which is required by Russia’s law on religions.

Col. Kenneth Baillie, commanding officer of the Salvation Army in Russia, said two previous court rulings against the group because it is a paramilitary organization still stand.

“Two courts have endorsed that ridiculous argument, but we consider it to be something of a smoke screen, a populist argument designed to appeal to certain people,” he said.

“It’s so patently ridiculous that one shakes one’s head at the idea that a court could record that decision or a lawyer could mount that argument,” he said.

Baillie said the legal ground has shifted many times as the case has dragged on.

“I’ve heard so many different versions of why they are denying us registration,” he said. “I don’t know who to believe anymore because they have said contradictory things.”

Throughout Russia, the Salvation Army runs soup kitchens and offers prison and home visits and other social services.

The Salvation Army does have national registration, but the implications of the Moscow ruling could extend beyond the capital because the group’s lawyers fear it could be liquidated in other cities where it operates.

In a phone interview Thursday, Vladimir Zhbankov, deputy head of the Justice Ministry’s Moscow directorate, made it clear that the ministry will aggressively pursue the organization.

He said the Salvation Army will be forced to give up all of its property and assets in Moscow to the state, including vehicles. It will not be able to rent property in Moscow or operate as a religious organization.

“This will teach them a good lesson that in Russia everybody is equal before the law, regardless of whether you represent the Salvation Army or not,” Zhbankov said.

“There are some notorious organizations I would so eagerly liquidate, but I can’t because they comply with the law. But the Salvation Army chose not to. Well, now they will have to sustain serious material losses, as they will have to hand in all their property and money to the state and start again from scratch: write a new charter, fill in all the forms and hand in the registration papers on time,” he said.

For those dependent on the Salvation Army, the legal action against it is incomprehensible.

The homeless boys, Andrei and Dmitri, seem destined for long-term unemployment, vagrancy and premature death. But they still have dreams.

Dmitri, the older, wants to be a driver. Andrei would like to be a doctor. Now, though, they have filthy hands and feet and nowhere to go, and their goals seem unattainable.

Neither can think of where he would get food if the Salvation Army, which has been their main source of food for the last year, disappeared.

“I want them to feed us. They’re a good organization,” said Dmitri, whose mother is an alcoholic and whose father is in prison for theft.

“It’s a bad decision. Let them feed us. If they don’t feed us, it will be bad for us,” Andrei said.

“Why should the government liquidate them? It’s not normal,” said another soup kitchen patron, Valentina Shatornaya, 49, who was carrying several shopping bags filled with her possessions and with bottles she had collected to trade for cash.

“I think every city needs a place like this so that once a day, people can come and get fed, because anything can happen to people,” said Shatornaya, who used to be a technician in a power plant.

For the time being, Baillie said, the Salvation Army plans to continue ministering to the poor and will wait to see if there is any punitive police action.

The group is also planning to take its case to the Russian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. Russia comes under the latter court’s jurisdiction as a member of the Council of Europe.

Anatoly Pchelintsev, director of a Moscow think tank, the Institute of Law and Religion, and a lawyer who has worked for the Salvation Army, said closing down a religious organization with an impeccable record on a technicality creates a disturbing precedent.

“We once again hurry to demonstrate to the civilized world that we are definitely not part of it,” he lamented.