May the Lord bless you with His perfect . . . 

As you may recall from my previous report on Bulgaria, due to our proximity to Turkey we are experiencing an increasing influence of Islam. Today, we have ten times more mosques in Bulgaria than we had fifteen years ago. Therefore, I am encouraging local Bulgarian leaders to strengthen the deteriorating traditional Christian values in our country. An international seminar on this topic with co-workers from Bulgaria will be held next month in Sofia.

RLI and the "Bulgarian Union of Jurists" are currently working to sponsor a conference this fall that will spread public awareness on issues of corruption in the construction business. In addition, Rule of law Institute (RLI) signed a national petition of numerous Bulgarian NGOs to prevent proposed changes of the Bulgarian Law defining the rights of the children. The goal of the petition is to prevent the proposed decrease of parental rights in matters of child rearing (including instilling religious values), and to avoid the effects of a similar law that was passed recently in Germany.  

In Belarus, our lawyers are very active in religious liberty and held several rule of law conferences. They have monthly prayer meetings and gatherings.

In Germany, our corporate member "Christ und Jurist" was very active during the last years and gladly joined AE. Their representative will be one of our new Board members. Their goal is to encourage love, understanding, and Christian ethics through the workings of their groups in Germany. Like RLI in Bulgaria, our German colleagues started as law-students and have now grown to be specialists in the law.

One of our German members is active in human rights in the educational area. He reports that German authorities deny the internationally accepted standards for homeschooling and do not permit students to be exempt from certain school lessons such as sexual education or theatre performances. Threatened by civil penalties and withdrawal of parental custody, some parents were compelled to expose their children to public education principles with which they disagree. Some concerned families had to flee the country in order to avoid the withdrawal of their care and custody rights.

In Romania, our coordinator Beniamin Lup and his group are very active in defending church property rights, and advocating on behalf of victims of abuse and human trafficking. They write bills to prevent corruption, human trafficking, and preserve the life of unborn children. They also provide free consultations in labor law cases.

In October, AE will be represented at the Christian Legal Society-US and AI-US conference in Colorado Springs. Our AE delegation includes: Dusan Kostic from Serbia, Michael Sookias from the UK, and Latchezar Popov from Bulgaria. We expect our delegation to encourage our CLS colleagues.

I asked our Board member Nicolas Duval to visit Ukraine-Kiev in November, and speak/encourage the Association of Ukrainian Christian lawyers during their annual conference. The Ukrainian group is very active, and their last Board meeting focused on religious liberty and the rule of law in Ukraine.