{"id":2853,"date":"2017-04-10T17:40:09","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T17:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/news\/2017\/04\/10\/special-report-russias-attack-on-religious-freedom\/"},"modified":"2021-08-18T10:25:30","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T07:25:30","slug":"special-report-russias-attack-on-religious-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/special-report-russias-attack-on-religious-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"SPECIAL REPORT RUSSIA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S ATTACK on RELIGIOUS FREEDOM"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/LKkppgE.png\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" width=\"300\" height=\"423\" align=\"right\" \/><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">The Ministry of Justice issued a directive to suspend immediately the activity of the national Administrative Center and all 395 legal entities, or Local Religious Organizations (LROs), of Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses. The directive effectively bans the religious activity of Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses until the Supreme Court makes the final determination.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">The Ministry of Justice filed a claim with the Supreme Court, demanding that the Administrative Center and all LROs be liquidated and deleted from the official State registry and that all property owned by the Administrative Center and all LROs, which includes all Kingdom Halls (houses of worship), be confiscated by the State.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">CRIMINALIZE 1 RELIGIOUS LITERATURE<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">The Federal Law on Counteracting Extremist Activity is used as the basis for charges of extremism against Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses. As amended in 2006, the law does not require calls to violent acts, only the vague concept of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153incitement of . . . religious discord.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">Law on extremism misapplied to Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">In 2008, the Rostov Regional Prosecutor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Office commissioned an expert study of the Witnesses\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 religious literature. The study concluded that Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses do not urge hostile action either in their literature or in carrying out their activities.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">However, the Rostov Regional Court focused on the experts\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 opinion that theological discussion in the Witnesses\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 literature had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the potential to undermine respect\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for other religions.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">The court concluded that this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153undermining [of] respect\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153aimed at inciting religious discord\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and considered it evidence of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153extremism.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">On 11 September 2009, the Rostov Regional Court ruled to declare 34 Witness publications \u00e2\u20ac\u0153extremist,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and these were eventually placed on the Federal<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">List of Extremist Materials . The court also declared the Taganrog LRO \u00e2\u20ac\u0153extremist\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and ordered federal authorities to liquidate it, ban its activity, place its name on a list of extremist organizations, confiscate its religious literature and its property.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">By the start of 2016, similar court actions had declared 88 religious publications \u00e2\u20ac\u0153extremist,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d liquidated three LROs, and confiscated at least one house of worship.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jw-russia.org\/sites\/default\/files\/russiareport_proof-3.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Continue to read here \u00c2\u00a0<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Ministry of Justice issued a directive to suspend immediately the activity of the national Administrative Center and all 395 legal entities, or Local Religious Organizations (LROs), of Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses. The directive effectively bans the&hellip;<\/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-2853","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\/2853","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=2853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5661,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853\/revisions\/5661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}