E/CN.4/2005/61/Add.1 Page 10 address or gather there. State officials, however, have allegedly been giving differing views on whether religious activity by groups with fewer members than the threshold of 20 required for registration is illegal. 31. In May and June 2003, Pentecostal evangelists Aleksandr Balyk and Aleksandr Tolochko were fined for allegedly conducting unregistered home worship in the region of Grodno. Pastor Nikolai Rodkovich of the Pentecostal Church in Kobrin, near Brest, was reportedly fined on 11 December 2003 after the police attended the unregistered church’s service. 32. The religion law reportedly confines the activity of a religious organization to a defined area, often a single village, town or region of the country. Orthodox, Baptist, Pentecostal and Catholic leaders are among those to have expressed their concern that the law’s provisions make it difficult to organize new churches. 33. It has also been reported that according to the religion law only republic-wide religious organizations registered in Minsk have the right to found monasteries and convents. The Greek Catholic Church reportedly has no such central body in Belarus, making it difficult to have its monastery of the Holy Martyrs Boris and Gleb in Polotsk recognized. 34. Lastly, the religion law allegedly criminalizes the “attraction of minors to religious organizations and also the teaching of religion to them against their will or without the agreement of their parents or guardians”. It has been reported that local authorities are demanding that religious organizations supply the names and dates of birth of all their Sunday school children. 35. By letter dated 20 July 2004, the Government of Belarus transmitted to the Special Rapporteur information received from the Committee on Religious and Ethnic Affairs of the Council of Ministers of Belarus and according to which the purpose of re-registration is to bring the constituent documents, and particularly the charters, of religious organizations into accordance with the requirements of the new Act. Religious communities registered prior to the adoption of the new version of the Act are being re-registered by the State with the same minimum number of founders as was reflected in their charters before the entry into force of the Act. As of May 2004, out of the 2,936 religious organizations active in the country, more than 2,250 had successfully completed the re-registration procedure. This number of re-registrations includes 95 per cent of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic communities, about 70 per cent of Protestant communities and more than 80 per cent of Jewish communities. 36. According to article 14 of the Act, the charters of religious organizations must contain information about the location of the organizations. Moreover, article 8.4 of the Housing Code stipulates that the use of residential premises for another purpose is subject to an agreement with the local authorities and to compliance with town planning, public health and fire safety rules and regulations. A total of 2,035 out of 2,825 religious communities have their own buildings for worship and about 800 communities rent premises or use single-apartment blocks of houses for the purposes of worship.