Pavel Seviarynets: The authorities are blackmailing the USA

By evicting the Protestant parishioners of the New Life church the regime is blackmailing the American Protestants, the politician believes.

“The attempts to evict the New Life are illegal and antisocial. The church purchased a cowshed in a terrible condition and made a wonderful building for prayers out of it. And not they are taking these premises away from it not offering any worthwhile compensation. This is the material side of the matter, whereas the moral side loos much worse for the state”, - the co-chairman of the organizational committee for creation of the party Belarusian Christian Democracy Pavel Seviarynets told told in an interview to the charter97.org web-site.

According to the politician, there no such repressions against a church practically anywhere in the world:

“A church, which has around a thousand of parishioners, which organizes campaigns protecting life, against alcoholism, magic and occultism, which fights the moral decline in a big city like Minsk, ends up under the strike of the authorities. Practically nowhere in the world there is a situation when a church is attacked and deprived of a building, may be in some Muslim countries”.

Pavel Seviarynets gives two versions of why the authorities could have decided to take the building from the church:

“This can be a fit of unmotivated cruelty of the regime’s top establishment. He went angry for not having money or for the political prisoners not writing pleas for pardon, so he would crush everything what is left there: evict Viasna, evict the New Life. It could also be a crude blackmail of the USA. It is not a secret that the majority of the Americans are Protestants. Thus the authorities are blackmailing them – we will now evict your people, so start a dialogue with us. Lukashenka’s aide Valiantsin Rybakou went to Washington, they discussed something there. May be the authorities want a second stage of the dialogue”.