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LISWATI ARRESTED FOR JESUS IN RUSSIA

11/06/2018 08:27:00 BY PHEPHILE MOTAU

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MBABANE – Engaging in normal everyday practices can actually land you in hot water in other countries.

Nosisa Shiba, a medical student in Russia learnt this the hard way after being sentenced to deportation from Russia. All Shiba did was sing a song about Jesus in church.
According to the Open Democracy Russia (oRD) website, last month, Nizhny Novgorod’s Sormovsky district court charged Shiba, a citizen of Eswatini in her final year at Nizhny Novgorod Medical Academy, with an administrative offence for publicly singing hymns at an Easter service in the city’s Embassy of Jesus Pentecostal Church. The Easter service was held last year and posted on YouTube on April 16, 2017. However, Shiba was recently charged.

The video of Shiba’s performance was reportedly found on YouTube by the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation. In the video, Shiba is shown singing a song with other members of the church, before a pastor takes over to deliver a sermon.

It was reported that the local police and legal authorities interpreted this behaviour as missionary activity, incompatible with Shiba’s stated aims when entering the Russian Federation.
The outcome was a fine of about E1 500 (7 000 Roubles) and deportation from Russia, but the court showed some leniency and deferred Shiba’s expulsion until June 30, after Shiba’s final exams and degree conferral.
Nizhny Novgorod is one of this year’s World Cup host cities.

Russian Religion News, an online publication, reported that Shiba began going to an evangelical church of Nizhny Novgorod, the Embassy of Jesus Bible Centre of KhVE, upon her arrival in Russia.
According to oRD, the trial established that the charge, based on Article 18.8 of part 4 of the Code of Administrative Violations of Law of the Russian Federation, was put forward by Major Tatarov, a Senior Special Inspector of the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Immigration Control Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and that it was, in fact, the second time Shiba had been charged with a breach of residence regulations.

Conference

The charge reportedly reads that Shiba, having gone to study in Russia, ‘effectively took part in a missionary conference called ‘To Save One More Soul’, organised by the Russian Association of Christians of the Evangelical Faith (RACEFP) in Nizhny Novgorod. It was further alleged that the inspector concluded that, by singing about Jesus, Shiba was engaging in religious activity.

The website further stated that the documents included a file sent to the Regional Immigration Control Department by the FSB on April 18, in which Lieutenant-Colonel Malyshev, the Deputy Head of an FSB department in the Nizhny Novgorod region, allegedly informed his senior officer that in the course of FSB operations in the Nizhny Novgorod region, it was discovered that a foreign national had breached Russian residence regulations – Shiba had engaged in activity incompatible with the stated aim of her coming to Russia. In his file, Malyshev allegedly stated that the unlawful religious activity engaged in by Shiba could be seen on a YouTube video.

Drawing up the charge, Major Tatarov allegedly mentioned the fact that Shiba had already been charged earlier under the same article, and that she had been fined.
It seems Shiba is not the only foreign student who got into trouble for being a Christian in the foreign country. Kudzay Nyamarebva, another foreign student at the Nizhny Novgorod Medical Academy and member of the Embassy of Jesus Church, was allegedly threatened with prosecution for reposting a video in which her fellow-parishioners and friends talk about how God had helped them.

The police, again at the instigation of the FSB, charged Nyamarebva with an administrative offence, in this case a breach of the law concerning Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Religion and Religious Associations.
It was also reported that the public outcry about Nyamarebva’s prosecution, however, led the police to announce that legal time limitations meant that the case could no longer go ahead. Nyamarebva was reportedly earlier prosecuted for inviting people to come to an event at the Embassy of Jesus via her social media page. Nyamarebva too has been required to leave Russia by June 30, after receiving her degree.

It was reported that that the two articles under which Shiba and Nyamarebva were charged formed part of the ‘Yarovaya law’ – a package of amendments passed in 2016, supposedly designed as anti-terrorism measures which civil rights campaigners believed violated privacy and freedom.

It was reported that the church which Shiba attended had been around for over 20 years, during which it has carried out an enormous amount of social work throughout the Nizhny Novgorod region: rehabilitating alcoholics and drug users, rehousing the homeless and supporting children’s homes, families living in poverty and other socially vulnerable citizens as well as people with disabilities.

Inspection

Since the ‘Yarovaya Law’ was passed, Russian security services had been allegedly subjecting the Embassy of Jesus to numerous inspection.
“We are being charged with new offences by the courts and threatened with cumulative fines of over a million roubles (over E200 000). We are accused of failing to put information on a video about faith in God. Just think: they want to take a church to court for incomplete listings on a video talking about Christian values such as faith, love and mercy,” a church official reportedly said.

The pastor of the Embassy of Jesus Bible Center of KhVE (city of Nizhny Novgorod), Bishop Pavel Ryndich, reportedly commented on the situation in his accounts on social networks.

“Today there was a trial again. This time it was of Nosisa, an African who sang in our praise service while being a student of the medical academy. Our sister was convicted because she sang praises. This was considered to be (doing) missionary activity without the documents permitting it. And we were unable to prove to the judge that in evangelical churches, everybody may sing. Once again, somebody with a bias dug up somewhere in the vastness of the internet one of my year-old sermons, where he made out the African woman among the worshipers.”