Protest The Religious Extremism In Russia!, SUPPORT TEMPLE

rani · 01-05-2006, 08:02 AM

Dear brothers and sisters,

Please help these people.....

There are 60-70 million Krishna followers in Russia, around 10,000 in Moscow alone. The movement’s flourishing there," says the guru, who has even faced prosecution by the KGB, the former Russian intelligence agency.Many of his colleagues were jailed. Three of them, he recalls, died after being tortured. "We endured all sorts of hardships. We still face opposition from the orthodox Church in Russia. But we will not stop our mission".

Stop Religious Extremism in Russia,

Support temple Send Protest E-mail with Just One Click at: http://www.indiacause.com/cause/iv00...ia_temple.aspx

This is a gross violation of religious and human rights!

for more information: http://sheerni.blogspot.com/

01-05-2006, 02:18 PM

Moscow Mayor Gives Go-ahead for
Construction of New Krishna Temple

After desperate appeals to Moscow's Mayor by Hare Krishna followers, a previous decision to allow construction of a new temple has been reinstated.

The decision by the Moscow government to allocate a land plot for construction of the new Vedic cultural centre, where the present Krishna temple was to be moved to, was put on indefinite hold following a protest campaign by nationalist politicians. At the same time the pre-existing Krishna temple faced demolition, leaving the prospect of no place of worship for the city's Vaishnavas.

Ignoring opposition from some Christian and nationalist quarters, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has cleared the construction of a temple and Vedic Centre in the city by the local followers of Lord Krishna. The Mayor has allotted a 1.05-hectare (2.5 acre) plot of land on the prestigious Leningrad Prospekt to the Moscow chapter of International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) for the construction.

Ambarisa Dasa, grandson of the US automobile magnate Henry Ford, visited Moscow to offer his support to the project, which besides a temple would have a museum of ancient Indian religious culture, a yoga centre, a compact theatre, and a vegetarian cafe, said Sergei Andreeyev chief of the local ISKCON chapter.

Moscow alone is said to have about 10,000 Russian followers of Lord Krishna.

The Russian chapter of ISKCON was registered in 1988 and has over 300 local branches all over the country. The first Krishna temple was opened in 1990, and became the very first centre of Hinduism in the former Soviet Union. Under the city master plan it would also be the very first Hindu temple to be pulled down by authorities for the construction of new apartment blocks.
Amid protests by local religious bodies, a senior city official has strongly defended and justified the allocation of land for the construction: "This is an officially recognised structure. This is not a banned religion and has a large following," said Moscow Deputy Mayor Valery Shantsev.

Earlier, Russia's Inter-religion Council comprising of spiritual leaders of traditional faiths — Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists — had opposed Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's decision to allocate the plot for Krishna temple by describing it as "rash" and "inconsistent with the cultural and historical traditions of the nation".

The Russian Inter-religion Council, which respects Hinduism as a Global religion, however, views "Krishnaites" (devotees of Lord Krishna) as a foreign-based sect, and in its statement expressed concern at the growing sectarian activities in the public life of Russia posing a challenge to the "spiritual health of the nation".

http://www.iskcon.com/new/040222_russia.htm#top

© 2002-2004 International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) All Rights Reserved

01-05-2006, 02:35 PM

that must be an old article, not the latest situation, as the number for it is 040222, which i think corrisponds to the date of the article, or feb. 22nd 2004

01-05-2006, 07:04 PM

Before posting, I looked for the date of the
article on the article web page itself. I
didn't find it. Copyright notice at the
bottom said: 2002-2004. I also thought if the
new temple construction plan has just been
reinstated, the news would have been all over
the Internet. That is not the case. As you
point out the date of the document in the
URL is 040222.

I had to head for work. I posted the article
anyway because of the very first sentence
in it which reads as follows:

After desperate appeals to Moscow's
Mayor by Hare Krishna followers, a previous
decision to allow construction of a new
temple has been reinstated.