Zdravomyslie, an organization that works to protest violations of the principal of the separation of church and state, filed an application with the Moscow Advertisement, Information and City Appearance Committee in September to put up ten billboards showing the quote: “Religious associations are separate from the state and equal before the law. – Constitution of Russia” against a plain white backdrop. But on October 5, the committee sent back a letter saying the request had been denied.

While no official explanation for the rejection was given in the letter, a press release from Zdravomyslie said that a member of the committee had told the foundation during unofficial talks that civil servants had found the text to be “provocational.”

In their press release, Zdravomyslie goes on to accuse the Moscow city authorities of lobbying in favor of the interests of religious organizations, and links this with the committee’s refusal to allow the foundation to erect the billboards. In particular, they pointed to mayoral deputy Sergei Baydakov, who has been awarded for his service to the Russian Orthodox Church. According to Zdravomyslie, Baydakov has proposed spending millions of rubles from the city budget on “state-church events.”

“In this way, the current Moscow leaders are continuing the old policy of merging state government with religious institutions, setting the abstract “feelings of believers” against the letter and spirit of the nation’s founding law,” says the foundation. “Even innocent quotations from the text of the constitution evoke wild irritation among civil servants and are, in fact, becoming victims of state censorship.”

The billboard campaign was undertaken as part of a worldwide campaign to speak out against the merging of church and state. It originated in Great Britain in 2008 when the British Humanist Association funded an advertisement on public buses that read “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” The campaign now includes countries from around the world, including the United States, Finland, Canada, Spain, and Germany.

“We aren’t prepared to look on upon civil servants’ gross violations of the principals of the secular state, insofar as we are certain that these principals are one of the basic guarantees of freedom of conscience and ideological diversity in our country,” Zdravomyslie concluded.

According to Rinpoche, the official response from Moscow cited the 65th anniversary of the Allied victory in World War II as a complicating factor in their decision. “A visit by the Dalai Lama to Russia would be taken particularly painfully by Beijing during the current anniversary year of our shared victory with China in the Second World War,” read the response.

Russia’s concern over preserving positive relations with China, a major economic partner, was also the basis of the 2004 visa debacle. At the time, China, which sees the Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist and routinely berates countries that allow him to visit, even issued a statement of approval of Russia’s refusal to grant the Buddhist leader’s visa. But following subsequent protests by Russian Buddhists, Moscow reversed its decision. This time around, said Rinpoche, “such a refusal is distressing, but we are not going to stop and will continue to work in this direction.”

But any reference to the World War II anniversary, which Russians celebrate annually as Victory Day with more fervency than almost any other national holiday, means that the Foreign Ministry is unlikely to relent. In addition to that, Rinpoche said that Moscow’s response cautioned that future discussions on a possible trip by the Dalai Lama to Russia would depend on “signs of an ease in tension in his relations with the official authorities of the PRC [People’s Republic of China].” Judging by the extent to which China lambasted the United States for the Buddhist leader’s February trip to meet with US President Barack Obama, no such ease is in sight.

In an interview with reporters on Wednesday, Former Captain Yevgeny Romanenko claimed that the management of Nizhny Novgorod Detention Facility No. 1 made the decision to fire him because employees of the prison were frightened of working with a Buddhist.

After returning to work on January 1 from vacation, Romanenko learned that another employee had called him a cult member at a year-end meeting for facility personnel. Two weeks later, prison head Colonel Vladimir Marmur called Romanenko into the guards’ locker room and found pictures of Buddhist iconography, including a left-facing swastika symbolizing perfection, among Romanenko’s personal belongings.

The colonel took the symbol for a Nazi swastika, and “that was the last straw,” said Romanenko.

The captain was then taken to Deputy Chief Konstantin Ivanov, who explained that workers in the facility were frightened of Romanenko and he would therefore have to be fired.

“Romanenko, we’re afraid of you,” Ivanov told the captain. “We’re not going to work with you. You have two alternatives: either immediately write a letter of resignation on your own accord, or we’ll attribute you as having contact with prisoners outside of your duties.”

It was not the first time Romanenko had faced discrimination for his religion. Colonel Marmur often expressed surprised that he abstained from using alcohol and tobacco. “Something’s not right about you,” Romanenko recalled the colonel saying.

Romanenko wrote a letter of resignation and is currently attempting to work with regional officials from the Federal Penitentiary Service to rectify his situation.