Two Danes visiting Belarus were detained by police and deported from the country for expressing - in the words of the deportation order - "thoughts of a religious nature", Forum 18 News Service has learned.
"We sat and prayed, read and spoke from the Bible, greeted people and prayed with them," one of the two, Erling Laursen, told Forum 18. Police recorded video of the two praying at Gomel's charismatic Living Faith church, but they refused to say who recorded the video "to protect our colleague."
Church pastor Dmitry Podlobko told Forum 18 that a young man he had never seen before was recording a church service on his cell phone. Pastor Podlobko said: "It's not news to us that the security services are watching us. They visit us and monitor us secretly." The KGB secret police closely follows all religious communities. The expulsion of the two Danes - who are banned from entering Belarus for a year - brings to 31 the number of foreign citizens who have been barred from Belarus in recent years because of their religious activity. The latest people to be expelled were four Catholic priests and three nuns. They were banned from entering Belarus at the end of 2008.
Forum 18 and Danish European Mission
