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<\/p>\nThe U.S. and six other countries Friday issued a joint declaration condemning repression of the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, the evangelizing Christian denomination that has faced severe state opposition in many of the countries where it operates.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The statement, issued by the State Department\u2019s Office of International Religious Freedom, said the signatories felt \u201cgrave concern\u201d over how members of the denomination have been treated. Much of the tension revolves around the faith\u2019s pacifism and refusal to observe symbols of secular government authority such as oaths and national anthems.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe uphold the right of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses to practice their religion and their beliefs and their ability to adhere to being apolitical and pacifist without fear, harassment, discrimination or persecution,\u201d said the declaration by members of the International Religious Freedom of Belief Alliance. \u201cIn countries around the world, governments investigate, detain, arrest and imprison Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses on account of their religious beliefs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harassment, the statement said, included home raids of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, prison sentences for proclaiming their faith and discrimination.<\/p>\n
Brazil, Denmark, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia and the United Kingdom joined the U.S. government in issuing the statement.<\/p>\n
The statement did not single out any country for criticism, but Russia has long been of particular concern for the government\u2019s official hostility to the denomination.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court of Russia four years ago labeled the group an \u201cextremist organization,\u201d banned its activities in Russia and ordered its assets confiscated. The denomination says dozens of its members in Russia have been convicted of extremism or are in pretrial detention, and the European Association of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses recently estimated that between 5,000 and 10,000 of its members have fled Russia since the ban came into force, according to a report in June by Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. and six other countries Friday issued a joint declaration condemning repression of the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, the evangelizing Christian denomination that has faced severe state opposition in many of the countries where it operates.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5969","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=5969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5971,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5969\/revisions\/5971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}