Nineteen European countries are violating religious rights, and religious minorities in some East European countries now face greater difficulties than they did during the communist period, according to the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF).

The editor of the federation's 1998 annual report on human rights said that protection of religious freedom was deteriorating across Europe as governments in both east and west of the region showed a "similar tendency" to strengthen traditional faiths at the cost of minorities.

The IHF annual report includes surveys of human rights in 41 countries. Religious rights violations are mentioned in a total of 19 countries: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Macedonia, Moldova, Norway, Romania, Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Yugoslavia (including Kosovo and Montenegro).

Sixteen former communist states are among those criticised in the report for their violations of religious freedom. The Vienna-based federation said Russia's controversial 1997 Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations "clearly violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and equality of citizens before the law regardless of creed".

Pressure on religious minorities was also strong, the report added, in other predominantly Orthodox and Muslim countries. In Armenia, where the Armenian Apostolic Church is the main religious organisation, all minority faiths are restricted under a 1997 law, while in Montenegro the authorities have "treated the Serbian Orthodox Church as a state church, subordinating other religious groups to its control".

In Kazakhstan, where most citizens are Sunni Muslims, Christian rites were also curbed after claims by Muslim leaders that Christianity must not be practised publicly in an "Islamic state".

The Helsinki Federation said that controls on the legal registration of religious groups were increasingly discriminatory, with serious problems documented in states ranging from Macedonia to Uzbekistan.

In Latvia, the Justice Ministry registered 37 religious groups for the first time in 1997, but denied legal status to 22. In Turkmenistan, all Christian churches were informed that "their previous status had been revoked" under a new law.

The editor of the report, Paula Tscherne-Lempiainen, from Finland, told ENI that the rights of religious associations and national minorities were deteriorating in tandem. The plight of many small groups in East Europe was now worse than under communist rule, she said.

Although human rights violations were occurring in all European countries, she said, the federation's greatest concern was currently focused on Belarus, where the rule of law had collapsed and all basic rights were disregarded.

"People now have a chance to act and organise in East Europe," she told ENI. "But daily tasks of survival, and the sense that little progress has been achieved in a decade anyway, are diverting energies away from human rights issues."

Among western countries, the report said a 1997 law in Austria effectively barred new "state-recognised religions" beyond the existing 12. Denominations wishing to register must now wait six months for legal status, compared to just six weeks required from ordinary associations.

A compulsory religious education course, introduced to Norwegian schools in 1997, "failed to take into account Norway's development into a multi-religious society", the report continues.

In Greece, where 97 per cent of citizens are nominal members of the Orthodox Church, Protestants and Roman Catholics face discrimination along with other minority faiths. Fourteen Evangelical churches were accused of operating without licences in 1997, while several prosecutions were launched under a law prohibiting "proselytism".

Tscherne-Lempiainen told ENI that several nations in the European Union were currently drafting laws to strengthen the status of traditional faiths while restricting smaller groups like Jehovah's Witnesses.