RELIGIOUS REPRESSION IN RUMANIA
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—The Minorities Law lately promulgated in Rumania deals only with certain racial and linguistic minorities. There are, however, religious minorities which are inter-racial, and these not only derive no benefit from its provisions, but are treated with the utmost severity by the Government. The most conspicuous example of such religious minorities is the Baptist. An administrative ordinance (decizie) No. 26208 published in June last is so drawn that it will suppress in the coming December practically all the churches of the Baptist communion.
For this decizie leading officials of the Rumanian Orthodox Church are directly responsible. It bears the signature of Archbishop Colan as Minister of Cults, and the Government of which he is a member has at its head the Patriarch. Yet that Church sent official delegates to the Oxford Conference of last year, and these delegates accepted a Report containing the words, " All Churches should renounce the use of the coercive power of the State in matters of religion."
The same Report sets out under eight headings certain " essential conditions necessary to the Church's fulfilment of its primary duty." The decizie directly repudiates no.fewer than seven of the eight " essential conditions " thus formulated in a document to which the Rumanian Orthodox delegates were parties.
Though the full application of the decizie is postponed until mid-December, scores of Baptist churches are already sup- pressed under its provisions, and ministers sand members arrested and imprisoned in steadily increasing numbers.
The repression is purely religious. The Baptist communion is known all over the world, and there is nothing in its tenets opposed to good morals or the safety of the State. The Baptists of Rumania are loyal to. King and country, and as loyal citizens fulfil all their obligations, including military service. In neighbouring countries such as Hungary, Jugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, they are a fully recognised cult enjoying entire
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