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<\/p>\nIn two judgments rendered on February 22, the Strasbourg judges decided that the human rights of 14 Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses had been violated.<\/p>\n
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On February 22, 2022, Russia was hit by two judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The two judgments addressed six different cases concerning the mistreatment of 14 local Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses. Russia adopts a faulty notion of \u201cextremism,\u201d which allows for banning religious organizations as \u201cextremist\u201d even when they do not practice nor advocate violence, simply based on the fact that they present their faith as \u201csuperior\u201d to others, including the faith of the Russian Orthodox Church. Obviously, all religions believe that they offer a better path than others, including the Russian Orthodox Church itself. Nonetheless, the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses were considered \u201cextremist,\u201d and \u201cliquidated\u201d in Russia by the Supreme Court on April 20, 2017.<\/p>\n
Both before and after the 2017 Supreme Court decision, individual Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses and their local congregations were detained or subject to searches by the notorious Federal Security Service (FSB) and other police agencies, which tried to harass them in their normal religious activities and to seize \u201cextremist\u201d literature and other materials.<\/p>\n
In the case of Cheprunovy and Others v. Russia, the applicants were individual Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses and the local organization of the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in Kostomuksha, a town located in the Republic of Karelia, Russia, near the border with Finland. Both the individual believers\u2019 flats and the local organization were raided by the FSB between 2010 and 2012. \u201cBibles, magazines and books, and other personal items, such as computers, video-recordings, writing pads and notebooks\u201d were seized.<\/p>\n
In the case of Zharinova v. Russia, a Jehovah\u2019s Witness woman from Ivanteyevka, in the Moscow Oblast, called Yekaterina Nikolayevna Zharinova was stopped and taken to the local police station on March 17, 2011, while she was engaged in door to door preaching. She was released after some hours, but personal belongings and religious literature were seized. No record of her detention was drawn up.<\/p>\n