{"id":6015,"date":"2022-01-21T15:41:06","date_gmt":"2022-01-21T12:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/?p=6015"},"modified":"2022-01-21T15:41:06","modified_gmt":"2022-01-21T12:41:06","slug":"russia-jails-more-jehovahs-witnesses-prompting-calls-for-strong-measures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/russia-jails-more-jehovahs-witnesses-prompting-calls-for-strong-measures\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia jails more Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, prompting calls for \u2018strong measures\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite a court ruling by Russian judges in October that seemed to endorse leniency for Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses arrested after their faith was labeled \u201cextremist,\u201d a recent rash of sentences against members of the faith group has prompted concern among human rights advocates that the government is continuing its earlier crackdown against the denomination.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Yevgeniy Korotun, a Jehovah\u2019s Witness who has been detained since July 2020, was recently given a seven year prison sentence. Photo courtesy of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More than 80 Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses are now in confinement in Russia, some awaiting trial and some imprisoned after being convicted.<\/p>\n

\u201cUSCIRF had hoped that a \u2026 2021 decision by the Russian Supreme Court banning the prosecution of Jehovah\u2019s Witness group prayer signaled a shift in official policy towards the group, but this is clearly not the case,\u201d said U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom commissioner\u00a0Khizr Khan\u00a0in a statement to Religion News Service.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russian government\u2019s persecution of the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses has gained renewed momentum in the last week,\u201d Khan said.<\/p>\n

On Thursday (Jan. 20), a court in Seversk sentenced Yevgeniy Korotun, a Jehovah\u2019s Witness who had been detained since July 2020, to seven years and Andrey Kolesnichenko to four. Their convictions occurred a day after Aleksey Yershov, a 68-year-old member of the religious group, was sentenced to three years in a penal colony.<\/p>\n

Korotun, according to the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, was charged on the basis of hidden recordings of him conversing about the Bible. The religious group said Kolesnichenko was recorded by someone who acted interested in the Bible and turned the recording over to authorities.<\/p>\n

Yershov, also accused based on recordings, was charged for \u201cextremist\u201d activities, including praying, singing religious songs and participating in worship services.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is the largest number of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses behind bars since the Russian Supreme Court banned as \u2018extremist\u2019 the whole Jehovah\u2019s Witness organization in Russia,\u201d said Rachel Denber, deputy director of Human Rights Watch\u2019s Europe and Central Asia Division, in an interview Thursday from Moscow, referring to the dozens of imprisoned members of the faith group.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that there are actually people behind bars for doing nothing more than worshipping or supporting worship is \u2014 it should be unthinkable in our times. And yet it\u2019s happening and yet it continues.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Russia, conviction of a charge involving \u201cgrievous bodily harm\u201d has a maximum prison sentence of eight years; kidnapping has a maximum of five years; and a rape conviction leads to a sentence of three to six years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe escalating discriminatory assault against Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses is putting a huge burden on a growing number of families to support themselves without the help of their husbands and fathers, who were often the family\u2019s primary source of income,\u201d said Jarrod Lopes, a spokesman for the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope that soon the callous persecution of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in Russia will end \u2014 families will no longer be needlessly separated \u2014 and they can worship freely in their home country as they do in over 200 other lands.\u201d<\/p>\n

The International Memorial Society, a judicial watchdog organization whose affiliated center published a list of political prisoners, including Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, was closed by Russian courts in late December,\u00a0according to The Washington Post. The crackdown on the group, known as Memorial, was condemned by USCIRF, which called it \u201can irreplaceable resource for monitoring severe persecution, including religious freedom conditions in Eurasia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked on Thursday how the closure would affect the situation with Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, Denber said: \u201cIt\u2019s certainly not good news for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In December, a dozen members of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, including the United States, issued a joint statement declaring their \u201cgrave concern\u201d about \u201cthe increased repression of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in a number of countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a virtual news conference on Wednesday where the religious freedom organization\u00a0Open Doors announced its 2022 World Watch List, Rashad Hussain, the\u00a0new U.S. ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, said in a prerecorded video, \u201cThe alliance has spoken out forcefully against repression of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses worldwide, Christians and other religious minorities at risk in Afghanistan, and of other oppressed religious minorities in several other countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cStrong diplomatic and political measures often follow these statements.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2019 Russian President Vladimir Putin\u00a0told\u00a0human rights advocates that assertions that Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses were classified as being part of a destructive or terrorist organization were \u201ccomplete nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJehovah\u2019s Witnesses are Christians too. I don\u2019t quite understand why they are persecuted,\u201d Putin said. \u201cSo this should be looked into. This must be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

But since that time, Denber said, \u201cThat didn\u2019t go anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite a court ruling by Russian judges in October that seemed to endorse leniency for Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses arrested after their faith was labeled \u201cextremist,\u201d a recent rash of sentences against members of the faith group…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6015","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\/6015","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=6015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6017,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6015\/revisions\/6017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}