{"id":2839,"date":"2017-03-30T12:01:10","date_gmt":"2017-03-30T12:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/news\/2017\/03\/30\/russia-seeks-to-declare-jehovahs-witnesses-an-extremist-group\/"},"modified":"2021-08-18T10:25:30","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T07:25:30","slug":"russia-seeks-to-declare-jehovahs-witnesses-an-extremist-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/russia-seeks-to-declare-jehovahs-witnesses-an-extremist-group\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia seeks to declare Jehovah’s Witnesses an extremist group"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia’s justice ministry has\u00c2\u00a0filed a lawsuit with its supreme court\u00c2\u00a0to declare\u00c2\u00a0the national headquarters of\u00c2\u00a0the country’s Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses an extremist organization.<\/font><\/p>\n

The legal filing is noted on the court’s website with no date given for legal action.\u00c2\u00a0The group’s\u00c2\u00a0administrative center in\u00c2\u00a0Russia is located about 25 miles northwest of St. Petersburg.<\/font><\/p>\n

The press office for the Russian branch of\u00c2\u00a0the religion\u00c2\u00a0says\u00c2\u00a0on its website\u00c2\u00a0that such a declaration, if successful, would \u00e2\u20ac\u0153entail disastrous consequences for freedom of religion in Russia” and directly affect about 175,000 followers at more than 2,000 congregations in the country.<\/font><\/p>\n

“Extremism is deeply alien to the Bible-based beliefs and morality of Jehovah’s Witnesses,” the statement said. “Persecution of the faithful for peaceful anti-extremism legislation is built on frank fraud, incompetent\u00c2\u00a0individual ‘experts’\u00c2\u00a0and, as a result, a miscarriage of justice.”<\/font><\/p>\n

The Jehovah’s Witnesses first legally registered as a religious group\u00c2\u00a0in Russia in 1991 and re-registered in 1999, according to the organization’s\u00c2\u00a0international website.<\/font><\/p>\n

For almost two decades, however, Russian\u00c2\u00a0prosecutors in various localities have periodically sought to outlaw or curb the group, charging it is\u00c2\u00a0a cult that destroys families, fosters hatred and threatens lives.<\/font><\/p>\n

In response to the latest pressure, Vasily Kalin, chairman of the religious group’s steering committee, said members simply want\u00c2\u00a0to “peacefully worship their God,” according to the press office.<\/font><\/p>\n

“Unfortunately, after more than 100 years in\u00c2\u00a0power,\u00c2\u00a0Russia violates its own legislation that guarantees us that right,” he said. “In Stalin’s time, when I was a child, the whole family was deported to Siberia only because we were Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s a shame and sad that my children and grandchildren will be faced with something like that. “<\/font><\/p>\n

Jehovah’s Witnesses have come under growing pressure from Russian authorities in recent years, including\u00c2\u00a0a ban on distribution of church literature that authorities say violates anti-extremism\u00c2\u00a0laws.<\/font><\/p>\n

In February, investigators inspected the headquarters of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in St. Petersburg, the independent Russian\u00c2\u00a0newspaper\u00c2\u00a0Novaya Gazeta\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>reported. More than 70,000 pages of documents were confiscated for the General Prosecutor’s Office,\u00c2\u00a0according to\u00c2\u00a0Russia’s\u00c2\u00a0Sova Center of Information and Analysis, which monitors hate crimes and the enforcement of anti-extremist laws.<\/font><\/p>\n

The religious group’s\u00c2\u00a0press service said\u00c2\u00a0its religious programs do not include banned materials and that officials have notified authorities whenever anyone brings such literature into their building.<\/font><\/p>\n

In 2009,\u00c2\u00a0the Supreme Court of Russia upheld\u00c2\u00a0a lower court ruling that declared 34 pieces of Jehovah’s Witness literature as “extremist,”\u00c2\u00a0including their magazine\u00c2\u00a0The Watchtower<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0in Russian.<\/font><\/p>\n

Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses have been officially banned from the port city of Taganrog since 2009, after a local court ruled the organization guilty of inciting religious hatred by \u00e2\u20ac\u0153propagating the exclusivity and supremacy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of their religion,\u00c2\u00a0according to the British newspaper\u00c2\u00a0The Independent<\/em>.<\/font><\/p>\n

In 2015, a court in Rostov convicted 16 Jehovah’s Witnesses of practicing extremism in Taganrog, handing out jail sentences \u00e2\u20ac\u201d later suspended \u00e2\u20ac\u201d of more than 5 years for five of the defendants\u00c2\u00a0and stiff fines for the others.<\/font><\/p>\n

That\u00c2\u00a0same year, the supreme court of Russia banned the religion’s\u00c2\u00a0international website\u00c2\u00a0as\u00c2\u00a0“extremist.”<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/2017\/03\/16\/russia-moves-declare-jehovahs-witnesses-extremist\/99257116\/\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia’s justice ministry has\u00c2\u00a0filed a lawsuit with its supreme court\u00c2\u00a0to declare\u00c2\u00a0the national headquarters of\u00c2\u00a0the country’s Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses an extremist organization. The legal filing is noted on the court’s website with no date given for legal…<\/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-2839","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\/2839","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=2839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5668,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2839\/revisions\/5668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}