{"id":9793,"date":"2024-12-29T20:14:19","date_gmt":"2024-12-29T18:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/?p=9793"},"modified":"2024-12-29T20:14:19","modified_gmt":"2024-12-29T18:14:19","slug":"statistics-about-the-harsh-repression-of-jehovahs-witnesses-in-russia-in-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/statistics-about-the-harsh-repression-of-jehovahs-witnesses-in-russia-in-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Statistics about the harsh repression of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in Russia in 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the point of view of the Russian judicial system, Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses are more dangerous than any other religious group. Over 140 prisoners and record sentences of over 8 years.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Jehovah\u2019s Witness Rinat Kiramov speaks in court from behind bars (Credit: jw-russia.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As of December 16, 2024, since the beginning of the year, Russian security forces have conducted\u00a0at least 96 searches in the homes of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses\u00a0<\/strong>\u2014 17 in Crimea being the highest number.\u00a0The total number of raids since the ban in 2017 reached 2157<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

During 2024,\u00a041 persons were made defendants in new criminal cases<\/strong>, of which\u00a019 went through various types of detention, 15 of them are still behind bars.<\/strong>\u00a0Last year, criminal cases were initiated against 100 believers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sentences were handed down to 116 believers<\/strong>.\u00a043 of them (37%) were sentenced to imprisonment<\/strong>\u00a0(It is noteworthy\u00a0that this year nine people were sent to\u00a0<\/strong>forced labor as a punishment<\/strong>). Terms of more than five years were given to 24 people (or almost 56% of those sentenced to imprisonment).<\/p>\n

Since 2017, 842 people have already been prosecuted<\/strong>; 450 of them have spent at least 1 day in custody.\u00a0Currently, 147 prisoners of conscience are behind bars, either already convicted or awaiting sentencing<\/strong>.\u00a0Of the 27 prisoners released from colonies, 8 were released this year.<\/strong>\u00a0Although they have served their main sentence, most continue to experience numerous difficulties due to additional\u00a0restrictions\u00a0imposed by the court, which can last up to eight years or sometimes even more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cumulative numbers and severity of custodial sentences are increasing. To put it simply, during this year they imprisoned less, but more severely,\u201d Yaroslav Sivulskiy, a representative of the European Association of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, commented on the statistics.<\/p>\n

In 2024, the court handed down record-breaking sentences against three Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses. Khabarovsk residents Nikolay Polevodov, Vitaliy Zhuk and Stanislav Kim received eight years and six months, eight years and four months, eight years and two months in a penal colony, respectively<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

After about three months the court of appeal\u00a0changed\u00a0the punishment from imprisonment to a suspended sentence for shorter terms. Therefore,\u00a0the longest term in 2024 was given\u00a0<\/strong>to Alexander Chagan<\/strong>\u00a0from Tolyatti \u2014 eight years in a penal colony.<\/strong>\u00a0All in all, six believers have received such a harsh sentence since 2017.<\/p>\n

Over the seven years of mass persecution of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, the number of people sentenced has reached 543, and 186 believers have been imprisoned. Almost 61% of them (113 people) received terms of more than five years.<\/p>\n

In 13 regions of Russia, the average term of imprisonment is 6 years or more.<\/strong>\u00a0This is especially true with the southern territories \u2014 the Astrakhan, Rostov, Volgograd Regions, Crimea, and Sevastopol.<\/p>\n

For comparison: according to\u00a0the official statistics\u00a0of the Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of Russia for 2023, of the 1297 people convicted for intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm, only 0.85% (11 people) were sentenced to terms of five to eight years. Most were sentenced to terms of two to three years.<\/p>\n

It seems that from the point of view of the Russian judicial system, Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses are more dangerous than those who beat people to the point of disability.<\/p>\n

This is confirmed by a recent report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) titled \u201cReligious Freedom Challenges for Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

Sentences for Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses continue to increase in severity. In June 2024, a court in Khabarovsk sentenced Nikolai Polevodov to eight years and six months, Vitaliy Zhuk to eight years and four months, and Stanislav Kim to eight years and two months in prison, surpassing the record length of eight years\u2019 imprisonment for a Jehovah\u2019s Witness.<\/em><\/p>\n

Other punishments for Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses include fines and compulsory labor. In March 2024, a Teykovo court fined four Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses a collective 3,450,000 rubles ($37,048) for their religious activities. And in January 2024, a court in Tolyatti sentenced Sona Olopova to two years of forced labor for having a religious gathering.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

At the same time, hundreds of trials against Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses accused of extremism have not confirmed a single fact of extremist activity on the part of the believers.<\/p>\n

International Support<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n

In the summer 2024, the\u00a0European Court of Human Rights<\/strong>\u00a0ruled in favor of\u00a0<\/a>16 Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses who were subjected to illegal searches, arrests, and convictions for their religion in Russia. Although Russia withdrew from the European Convention on\u00a0Human Rights<\/a>\u00a0back in 2022, the Russian Federation is still obliged to pay compensation assigned to believers.<\/p>\n

On October 24, 2023, the\u00a0UN Human Rights Committee<\/strong>\u00a0issued two opinions in favor of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses regarding the rulings to liquidate the local religious organizations (LROs) in Abinsk and Elista. In Russia, these rulings became precedent for the beginning of religious persecution, and a former member of the Abinsk LRO, the elderly Aleksandr Ivshin, is serving time for his faith in a penal colony.<\/p>\n

The UN Human Rights Committee emphasizes that there are no calls for violence or other information inciting hatred in the literature of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses. In both cases, Russia violated the right of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses to \u201cfreedom of thought, conscience and\u00a0religion\u201d and \u201cthe right to freedom of assembly\u201d (Articles 18.1 and 22.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights).<\/p>\n

The Committee ordered Russia to reconsider the decisions on the ban and ordered it to \u201ctake all necessary steps to avoid similar violations in the future.\u201d During 2024, hearings were held in Russia on this issue, but the Committee\u2019s orders were never carried out. Moreover, after the publication of the Opinion of the Human Rights Committee on the liquidation of a religious organization in Abinsk, local security forces initiated a criminal case against\u00a0Valeriy Baylo, 66 at that time, \u2014 for participating in the activity of the Abinsk LRO. The court sentenced the believer to two and a half years in a penal colony. Now he is in custody and is awaiting the decision of the court of appeal.<\/p>\n

Noteworthy is that very few media outlets in\u00a0Europe\u00a0echo such religious repression and that groups hostile to Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses pretending to defend human rights turn a blind eye to that persecution by Putin\u2019s regime<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the point of view of the Russian judicial system, Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses are more dangerous than any other religious group. Over 140 prisoners and record sentences of over 8 years. As of December 16, 2024,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9794,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9793","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\/9793","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=9793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9795,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9793\/revisions\/9795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}