The\u00a0Supreme Court approved Russia’s first region-wide ban of\u00a0the Jehovah’s Witnesses religious group, deeming them “extremist,” Interfax said.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0ruling, passed Wednesday, had been the\u00a0group’s final hope of\u00a0stalling the\u00a0ban in\u00a0the Samara region, which first passed by\u00a0a regional court in\u00a0May, but was later appealed.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Jehovah’s Witnesses can still appeal to\u00a0the European Court of\u00a0Human Rights in\u00a0Strasbourg, but have not indicated whether they plan to\u00a0do so.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0ban owes to\u00a0“extremist” literature having been found at\u00a0the regional branch of\u00a0the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the\u00a0prosecutors were cited as saying.<\/p>\n
Nearly 70 Jehovah’s Witnesses publications are included among the\u00a0Federal List of\u00a0Extremist Materials in\u00a0Russia.<\/p>\n
Most were blacklisted on\u00a0allegations of\u00a0having fanned “religious hatred” by\u00a0criticizing other branches of\u00a0Christianity.<\/p>\n
While this is the\u00a0first region-wide ban on\u00a0Jehovah’s Witnesses in\u00a0Russia, Moscow and\u00a0the southern city of\u00a0Taganrog have previously imposed bans against the\u00a0group’s city branches based on\u00a0claims of\u00a0extremism in\u00a02004 and\u00a02009, respectively.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0religious community was the\u00a0target of\u00a0an organized state crackdown in\u00a02009 and\u00a02010, when most of\u00a0the bans were passed, rights activists said at\u00a0the time.<\/p>\n
Critics linked the\u00a0campaign to\u00a0the Russian Orthodox Church, which tends to\u00a0take a\u00a0dim view of\u00a0new religious sects emerging in\u00a0Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The\u00a0Supreme Court approved Russia’s first region-wide ban of\u00a0the Jehovah’s Witnesses religious group, deeming them “extremist,” Interfax said. The\u00a0ruling, passed Wednesday, had been the\u00a0group’s final hope of\u00a0stalling the\u00a0ban in\u00a0the Samara region, which first passed by\u00a0a regional…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-news","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5696,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2406\/revisions\/5696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}