{"id":5532,"date":"2021-07-03T13:07:04","date_gmt":"2021-07-03T10:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/?p=5532"},"modified":"2021-08-18T10:25:28","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T07:25:28","slug":"russia-delivers-harshest-sentence-yet-in-crackdown-on-jehovahs-witnesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/russia-delivers-harshest-sentence-yet-in-crackdown-on-jehovahs-witnesses\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia delivers harshest sentence yet in crackdown on Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The United States on Thursday condemned Russia for handing down its harshest sentence yet on Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses amid the Kremlin\u2019s crackdown on those who practice the Christian denomination.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5533\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5533\" style=\"width: 768px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-5533 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/imgs-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"424\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/imgs-1.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/imgs-1-300x166.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5533\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aleksey Berchuk was sentenced by a Russia court to eight years imprisonment, the longest yet to someone convicted of charges linked to being a practicing Jehovah&#8217;s Witness. Photo courtesy of Jehovah&#8217;s Witness\/Website<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Both the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued statements of condemnation after Russia on Wednesday sentenced Aleksey Berchuk, 45, and Dmitriy Golik, 34, to eight and seven years imprisonment, respectively, for organizing extremist activity.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">We condemn a Russian court&#8217;s sentencing of Jehovah&#8217;s Witness Dmitriy Golik to seven years in prison and Aleksey Berchuk to eight years in prison &#8212; a new record length in Russia&#8217;s crackdown on the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses&#8217; peaceful religious practice.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ned Price (@StateDeptSpox) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/StateDeptSpox\/status\/1410693440262656000?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 1, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">James W. Carr, USCIRF commissioner, also condemned the arrests but called on the Biden administration to hold Russia accountable.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cWe urge the U.S. government to confront this brazen assault on freedom of religion or belief,\u201d he said via Twitter.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Russia has been arresting members of the Jehovah\u2019s Witness since its Supreme Court in 2017 banned and criminalized its activities as \u201cextremist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">According to the church, 58 of its members have been imprisoned in Russia and Crimea for practicing their religion with another 33 under house arrest. Russia has opened some 230 criminal cases involving more than 500 People since the Supreme Court\u2019s 2017 decision.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The church said that the Russian authorities began observing Golik in October of 2017 and in June of the next year opened a criminal case against Berchuk. A month later, the authorities raided the homes of seven Jehovah\u2019s Witness families and charged the two men with organizing extremist activities.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Last week, Berchuk told the court that his convictions are \u201cexclusively peaceful\u201d resulting in no victims with the prosecution failing to bring forth any evidence to prove otherwise during the case.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThe fact that I read the Bible, speak of biblical topics and pray to God with fellow believers \u2014 It is sad that the prosecution considers this to be extremism,\u201d he said, according to a copy of his statement to the court published by the Jehovah\u2019s Witness.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Russia handed down the convictions after having imprisoned other Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in recent months.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Notably, A Russian court in February sentenced Valentina Baranovskaya to two years imprisonment, its first woman to be jailed for practicing the religion.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The USCIRF has repeatedly condemned Russia\u2019s attack against Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, recommending in April for it to be listed among the State Department\u2019s Countries of Particular Concern over its treatment of religious minorities. It also called for sanctions to target government agencies and officials responsible.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The condemnations were made weeks after President Joe Biden held a high-profile summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin where the former said he pressed that latter concerning the Kremlin\u2019s human rights abuses.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The United States on Thursday condemned Russia for handing down its harshest sentence yet on Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses amid the Kremlin\u2019s crackdown on those who practice the Christian denomination. Both the U.S. State Department and the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5533,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5532","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=5532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5534,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5532\/revisions\/5534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}