Members Of Adelaja Church Write Obama Over His Persecution
By Tope Templer Olaiya
THE Christian religious community in Ukraine has written to the United States President, Barack Obama, with a passionate plea to help put to an end the persecution of the church and its senior pastor, Sunday Adelaja, by the state.
In a letter signed by the head of the board of The Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for all Nations, T. Maximenko and the CEO, O. Dobrovol'skaya, the members of the Christian religious community are calling on Obama to help stop the persecution.
"We are asking you to step in and solve the situation, which has emerged in our country concerning our pastor, Sunday Adelaja and the Embassy of God Church, in order for us to be able to continue our public and social activities for the good of Ukrainian people."
The letter reads: "Since 1997, our church has constantly been experiencing different forms of persecution and suppression, which have become especially strong and of a systematic character within the last year. Starting from November 2008, ungrounded and provocative accusations of Pastor Sunday Adelaja in his alleged complicity in financial fraud of the King's Capital Company by certain politicians and officials, and particularly by the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Y. Lutsenko, have repeatedly appeared in the mass media.
"We believe that in this way, the Minister of Internal Affairs have tried to influence the investigations and formed negative public opinion around the Embassy of God Church and its pastor. In fact, it is after the statements of Lutsenko that the persecution of Christian religious community started all over Ukraine.
The minister was once quoted in a statement published in the state Mass Media as saying, 'it scares me that the activities of Adelaja's church presents a threat to national security ... Sunday Adelaja is filthiness for Kiev."
Sunday Adelaja is the founder and senior pastor of the Embassy of God, an evangelical-charismatic mega church in Kiev, Ukraine. He migrated to the USSR and Belarus as a scholarship student from Nigeria in 1986 to study journalism. After graduation and the breakdown of the USSR, he started a couple of churches that he later handed over to other pastors before he moved from Belarus to Ukraine in December 1993.
Adelaja has faced criticism from local groups, other Ukrainian Evangelical churches, the Eastern Orthodox Church and from foreign-based Christian counter-cult organisations as well as accusations of involvement in fraud. His movement is also present in Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Latvia, Moldova, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, the United States and Uzbekistan.
The Embassy of God claims to have 25,000 members in Kiev alone. Adelaja's church is also expanding abroad, educating church leaders for Western Europe and Nigeria, with an emphasis on practical work to change lives, governments and cultures.
The Embassy of God Church, now 15 years old celebrates the results of more than 5,000 former addicts restored back to normal society, stopping with crime to become respectable citizens and leaders in society - holding own jobs and starting families of their own. 1,000 to 2,000 people are fed daily at feeding centres in Kyiv, and hundreds of homeless people have been taken off the streets and taught skills, also being restored back to normal life and work.
Over 2,000 children have been helped off the street, and are being instituted back to their families. Out of 25,000 people, several thousands testify of a restored family life, leading to further stability in the country. The church runs a 24 hour Hotline where 100,000 people to date have called in for help - many of these being rescued from suicide, family problems and numerous other difficulties.
In September, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine admitted that they had exhausted their possibilities in the criminal case against Sunday Adelaja. Since the Ministry of Internal Affairs has still delayed and refused to take the case to the court - probably because of lack of evidence - the Embassy of God Church and Sunday Adelaja had initiated a lawsuit against the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Police of Ukraine for unlawful accusation and libel. The judge had asked the Ministry of Internal Affairs to show their evidence for their accusation of fraud, but even after five court hearings they have still not provided any evidence to support their accusation.
As a result of the legal case against Adelaja, the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, has begun to make changes by ordering to clean up among the staff in the General Public Prosecutor's office, since he acknowledged that people who taks bribes instead of protecting the law works there, as well as in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, according to Yushchenko.
This is the 23rd legal case against Sunday Adelaja since he started the Embassy of God Church 15 years ago and he has won all the 22 previous cases, this one is still open.
On May 12, 2009 the Minister of Internal Affairs in Ukraine, Yuri Lutsenko, who led the accusations of fraud against Adelaja, sent in his resignation and pleaded that the Parliament consider this matter in his absence. Up to date, Lutsenko has not shown any evidence or documents at all proving his accusation of fraud against Adelaja.
Adelaja was accused in November 2008 of being involved in the dealings of King's Capital, a financial group led by a member of his congregation. The company promises as much as 60 per cent returns on investments and drew many of its investors from the church. Later, several church members went to the authorities saying they were unable to recover the money they invested, which left many of them bankrupt. Police later arrested one of King's Capital leaders, Aleksandr Bandurchenko, on suspicion of fraud.
Adelaja considers the police's decision to investigate him for involvement in the financial group's machinations as implementation of a political order. He has, therefore, said that the cause of the financial problems at the King's Capital financial group was the economic crisis rather than a deliberate fraud.
