{"id":2952,"date":"2018-05-25T19:07:27","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T19:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/news\/2018\/05\/25\/russia-is-rounding-up-jehovahs-witnessesare-other-groups-next\/"},"modified":"2021-08-18T10:25:28","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T07:25:28","slug":"russia-is-rounding-up-jehovahs-witnessesare-other-groups-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/russia-is-rounding-up-jehovahs-witnessesare-other-groups-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia is rounding up Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses\u00e2\u20ac\u201dare other groups next?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"font-size: 12.16px\">It was just after sunrise on April 10 when the doorbell\u00c2\u00a0 rang at Anatoly and Alyona Vilitkevich\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s apartment in Ufa, an industrial city in central Russia. Their early morning visitors: masked police officers armed with automatic weapons. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Open up!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the officers shouted. Inside, the married couple hurried to get dressed and call their lawyer. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There were 10 of them, including plainclothes investigators,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Alyona, 35, tells Newsweek. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153One of them was filming everything. They said I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t allowed to use the telephone.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12.16px\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12.16px; text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/s.newsweek.com\/sites\/www.newsweek.com\/files\/styles\/full\/public\/2018\/05\/23\/jehovahs-cover-web-story.jpg\" border=\"0\" width=\"600\" height=\"600\" \/>\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12.16px\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12.16px\">After searching the apartment, the officers told Anatoly, a 31-year-old handyman, to pack some warm clothes. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They said he wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be coming home again,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Alyona says. Since the raid, he has been in police custody, and investigators have not permitted his wife to speak to him, she says.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12.16px\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12.16px\">The police\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tactics that morning were the type often used to detain dangerous criminals. But Anatoly isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a suspected terrorist, murderer or drug trafficker. Police arrested him because he and Alyona are members of the Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses, a Christian evangelical movement known for its members\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 door-to-door proselytizing. Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses are also committed pacifists who historically have been persecuted by governments all over the world for their refusal to perform military service or salute the flag. Some of the most brutal repression took place in Fidel Castro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cuba, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was just after sunrise on April 10 when the doorbell\u00c2\u00a0 rang at Anatoly and Alyona Vilitkevich\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s apartment in Ufa, an industrial city in central Russia. Their early morning visitors: masked police officers armed with&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-2952","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\/2952","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=2952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5611,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2952\/revisions\/5611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}