“Discriminatory” Religion Bill

(Forum 18) – Religious minorities and human rights activists have told Forum 18 News Service that a draft religion bill is discriminatory. If passed, the bill would give full rights only to religious communities recognized by the parliament of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia between 1918 and 1941. These communities are the Serbian Orthodox Church, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Slovak and Hungarian/German Lutherans, and the Hungarian Reformed Church. They will receive substantial state financial support and the right to perform marriages, burials and to maintain marriage registers. Other religious communities would be denied these rights and have strongly criticized the bill, the Baptists pointing out to Forum 18 that the only communities recognized are essentially mono-ethnic, and so the bill discriminates against “multi-ethnic” religious communities and is thus un-constitutional. Milan Radulovic, Minister of Religion, has dismissed criticisms as “communist”.