{"id":6218,"date":"2022-04-07T12:57:44","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T09:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/?p=6218"},"modified":"2022-04-07T12:57:44","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T09:57:44","slug":"the-european-court-of-human-rights-echr-found-that-belgium-violated-the-rights-of-jehovahs-witnesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/the-european-court-of-human-rights-echr-found-that-belgium-violated-the-rights-of-jehovahs-witnesses\/","title":{"rendered":"The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that Belgium violated the rights of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that Belgium violated the rights of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in failing to grant tax exemptions in a\u00a0ruling\u00a0Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6219\" src=\"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/European_Court_of_Human_Rights.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"750\" height=\"421\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/European_Court_of_Human_Rights.jpg 750w, https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/European_Court_of_Human_Rights-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The case of Assembl\u00e9e Chr\u00e9tienne Des T\u00e9moins de J\u00e9hovah d\u2019Anderlecht and Others v. Belgium concerned an application made by Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses for being denied property tax exemptions. Under legislation created by the Brussels- Capital Region 2018, the tax exemption applied to \u201crecognized religions.\u201d Belgium argued that this did not extend to applicant congregations, in which the Jehovah\u2019s Witness congregation disputed that failure to grant exemption was made on discrimination grounds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The courts assessed whether Belgium had violated Article 14 and Article 9 which prohibit discrimination and promote freedom of thought respectively. They found that the current regulations do not provide sufficient safeguard from discrimination for applicant congregations and that recognition is determined by the legislature, not the State. To review the claim on a minimum ground of fairness, the actions to not grant tax exemptions were not based on an \u201cobjective assessment of their claims.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The decision was unanimous that there was a violation of both Article 14 and 9, in addition to Article 1 Protocol No 1 which protects property under the European Convention of Human Rights. However, despite the applicant\u2019s request to receive EUR 1,000 for non-pecuniary damages from paying the property tax, the court did not award any money as a finding of a violation of human rights was sufficient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that Belgium violated the rights of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in failing to grant tax exemptions in a\u00a0ruling\u00a0Tuesday. The case of Assembl\u00e9e Chr\u00e9tienne Des T\u00e9moins de J\u00e9hovah d\u2019Anderlecht and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belgium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6218","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=6218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6220,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6218\/revisions\/6220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}