{"id":2957,"date":"2018-07-13T19:23:57","date_gmt":"2018-07-13T19:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/news\/2018\/07\/13\/stop-prosecuting-jehovahs-witnesses-in-russia-kremlin-advisers\/"},"modified":"2021-08-18T10:25:28","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T07:25:28","slug":"stop-prosecuting-jehovahs-witnesses-in-russia-kremlin-advisers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/stop-prosecuting-jehovahs-witnesses-in-russia-kremlin-advisers\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop prosecuting Jehovah&#8217;s Witnesses in Russia &#8211; Kremlin advisers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>MOSCOW (Reuters) &#8211; Advisers to President Vladimir Putin have questioned the legality of a slew of criminal cases opened against members of the Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses in Russia and asked the General Prosecutor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office to protect the group\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s freedom of belief.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Russia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Supreme Court ruled in April last year that the Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses were an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153extremist\u00e2\u20ac\u009d organisation and must disband, a move the group unsuccessfully appealed.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Since then, at least 19 members have been detained on criminal charges in Russia with one, Danish citizen Dennis Christensen, now held for more than a year and put on trial for extremism.<\/div>\n<div>\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/kRacTGP.jpg\" border=\"0\" width=\"650\" height=\"352\" \/>\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, which advises Putin but does not have policy-making powers itself, said it believed law enforcement agencies were flouting the constitution and misinterpreting last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ruling by locking people up for collective bible reading and praying.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It cannot but be a cause for concern because the criminal prosecutions and detentions have taken on a systemic character,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the council said in a statement which the Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses publicised on Thursday.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The situation evokes associations with the Soviet period when Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses suffered groundless repression because of their faith.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The fact that the council has intervened on the group\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s behalf does not necessarily mean that Putin will take up their cause though the subject is likely to be raised at the council\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s next meeting with the Russian leader.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcGLIMMER OF OPTIMISM\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses, a United States-based Christian denomination known for its door-to-door preaching and rejection of military service and blood transfusions, has around 170,000 followers in Russia.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The U.S. State Department on Monday said it was deeply concerned by what it described as the growing number of religious prisoners held in Russia, saying that people were being persecuted \u00e2\u20ac\u0153in retaliation for peaceful religious practice.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>And on Tuesday, more than 60 well-known Russian writers, historians and rights activists signed an appeal demanding the authorities stop prosecuting the group, describing the legal onslaught on its members as a test for Russian society.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Yaroslav Sivulskiy, a member of the European Association of Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses, said on Thursday the council\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s intervention had given his group \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a glimmer of optimism.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We hope that common sense will prevail and that someone wise &#8230; will say that this has all gone too far,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If the authorities can do this to us they can apply the same logic to do the same to anyone in Russia.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MOSCOW (Reuters) &#8211; Advisers to President Vladimir Putin have questioned the legality of a slew of criminal cases opened against members of the Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses in Russia and asked the General Prosecutor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office to protect&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-2957","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\/2957","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=2957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5607,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions\/5607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}