Jehovah's Witnesses News

By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service , and Geraldine Fagan, Forum 18 News Service

Russia continues to stop and search Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslim readers of Said Nursi’s works for literature banned under anti-extremism legislation. However, Forum 18 News Service notes that a new development is the use of the Traffic Police – which is not part of the ordinary police, but is also under the Federal Interior Ministry – to conduct such searches. In another new development, police officers seized a Nursi title which is not one of the banned titles on the Federal List of Extremist Materials. They justified this by claiming that the text is identical to a banned title. A legal case following the seizure is pending. Police refused to tell Forum 18 how they knew that three minibuses they stopped and searched contained Jehovah’s Witnesses, or how they knew that a person detained on arrival at Novosibirsk railway station would be carrying translations of works by Said Nursi. In another development, imports of every print edition of two Jehovah’s Witness magazines – “The Watchtower” and “Awake!” – and not just editions on the Federal List of Extremist Materials, have been banned in Russia. An official denied to Forum 18 that this is censorship. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1%

For Immediate Release
July 23, 2010

MOSCOW—The judgment of the Supreme Court of the Altay Republic that declared 18 Christian publications “extremist” was appealed to the Judicial Chamber for Civil Cases of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on July 13, 2010. The Local Religious Organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Gorno-Altaysk previously filed a supervisory appeal with the Supreme Court of the Republic of Altay, but the Court refused to consider it. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 6%

By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service , and Geraldine Fagan, Forum 18 News Service

Outdoor public religious activity by Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hare Krishna devotees and Protestants has resulted in harassment by the police, repeated bans, and in one case a refusal to defend a Protestant meeting against violent attack involving stun grenades, Forum 18 News Service notes. The categories of activity targeted subdivide into very small groups of people sharing their beliefs with others in conversation in the street – normally Jehovah’s Witnesses or occasionally Protestants – and outdoor public meetings or worship. By far the most common form of harassment takes place against pairs of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and can involve unduly severe treatment of elderly or infirm people. Hare Krishna devotees in both Smolensk and Stavropol regions have experienced repeated banning of outdoor meetings, on grounds such as that they “inconvenience tourists on the way to the drinking fountains”. Baptists in Rostov Region have experienced an attempted ban on a street library. Baptists in Tambov Region were banned from holding evangelistic concerts in a village, and when they were attacked with stun grenades by unknown people police did nothing to defend them. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1%

By Alexander Verkhovsky, SOVA Center for Information and Analysis

The conviction of art curators Yury Samodurov and Andrei Yerofeev is the most high-profile symptom of the problems flowing from Russian anti-extremism legislation, notes Alexander Verkhovsky, Director of the Moscow-based SOVA Center for Information and Analysis http://www.sova-center.ru, in a commentary for Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org. This legislation has been used to target religious groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslim readers of the works of Said Nursi, suggesting that these uses of anti-extremism law are not isolated instances – this is a system. Only indifference to religion prevents people worried by restrictions on freedom of speech from noticing the growing proportion of anti-extremism cases relating to religion. Particularly disturbing is the precedence given to the catch-all legal concept of ‘religioznaya rozn’ (religious discord) over the narrower ‘religioznaya vrazhda’(religious enmity), as this allows criminalisation of legitimate criticism of others’ worldviews. There must be, Verkhovsky argues, a re-examination of anti-extremism legislation, or at least a clear Supreme Court explanation conforming to international human rights standards. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 5%

For Immediate Release
July 14, 2010

A wave of harassment unleashed in Russia leads to dramatic consequences

NARTKALA, Kabardino-Balkaria—Unidentified masked assailants beat up the watchmen inside a place of worship, and after the watchmen lost consciousness, the intruders poured out ten liters of flammable liquid and set the building on fire. Fortunately one of the watchmen regained consciousness, pressed an alarm to alert a monitoring agency, and put out the flames with a fire extinguisher. The incident occurred on the morning of June 8, 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 9%

For Immediate Release
July 12, 2010

RUSSE, Bulgaria—The Administrative Court in Russe, Bulgaria, upheld human rights and religious freedom in Bulgaria when, on Monday, May 31, 2010, the court ruled that citizens of the country have the right to share their religious beliefs in public places. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 7%

Sean Higgins/Coolidge Examiner, Workers complete the interior of Arizona’s first Jehovah’s Witness assembly hall, currently under construction on McCartney Road just east of Interstate 10 in Casa Grande.

Construction is nearing completion for Arizona’s first Jehovah’s Witness assembly hall on McCartney Road in northeast Casa Grande.

The site, which is just east of Interstate 10, is home to a 45,000-square-foot weekend facility to be used by the denomination for biblical education.

Beginning in September, Jehovah’s Witness congregations, more commonly known as circuits, from across the state will make their way to Casa Grande for weekend-long educational instruction. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 18%

By Geraldine Fagan, Forum 18 News Service

Both the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Armenian-rite Catholic parish in Moscow have recently won legal victories in defence of their right to exist, Forum 18 News Service notes. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg rejected allegations that the Jehovah’s Witnesses destroy families and infringe the rights and freedoms of citizens and which were used to attempt to ban their community in Moscow. The ECtHR also found that the excessive length of court proceedings against the community violated the right to a fair trial. However the Jehovah’s Witnesses have submitted another complaint to the ECtHR, this time against a Supreme Court ruling outlawing 34 Jehovah’s Witness titles as extremist and dissolving their community in Taganrog. This paved the way for the current nationwide wave of raids, detentions, literature seizures and other violations of freedom of religion or belief against Jehovah’s Witnesses. Separately, Armenian-rite Catholics won a case in Moscow against a city decision not to register their parish. The city Justice Department has appealed in Moscow against the judgment, but no date has yet been set for the appeal hearing. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 6%

By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service , and Geraldine Fagan, Forum 18 News Service

Ilham Islamli, a reader of the works of Muslim theologian Said Nursi, has been held since 18 June on charges of inciting religious hatred for posting Nursi’s works on a website, Forum 18 News Service has learned. It is unknown when the case might reach court. “It will happen this year,” is all Investigator Vladimir Chernobrovin would tell Forum 18. Asked who might have suffered from Islamli’s posting of some works by Nursi, Investigator Chernobrovin responded: “Asking who suffered or not is not relevant. The investigation is based on the court decisions banning Nursi’s works.” Meanwhile, two Jehovah’s Witness women, Anna Melkonyan and Mariya Zubko, were freed on 1 July after 56 days’ pre-trial detention but are still facing prosecution on accusations of theft. The two women, their lawyers and Russia’s Jehovah’s Witness community insist that the two were not involved in burglaries which took place in the town of Lobnya in Moscow Region. Melkonyan’s lawyer, Natalya Medved, told Forum 18 that it is not clear whether the two women’s faith led the police to accuse them of the burglaries. “It could be that it’s not just because they are Jehovah’s Witnesses. The police can’t find the real criminals, so they believe that as foreign citizens the two women won’t have anyone to defend them.” Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 6%