Isabella
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f 21 Jehovah's Witnesses convicted of "extremism" charges since late July 2020, six were given jail terms and 13 suspended sentences. Receiving a suspended sentence means a convicted person must live under restrictions specified by the judge, regularly register with probation authorities, and avoid conviction for any other offence during the probationary period or risk being sent to prison. "A suspended sentence means that you need to live under stress for many years," Jehovah's Witnesses note.
A total of 21 Jehovah's Witnesses have been convicted of "extremism" charges since late July 2020. They include the oldest Jehovah's Witness yet to be found guilty of alleged extremism offences (at the age of 73). Among the punishments imposed are both the largest fine and the longest suspended sentences since prosecutions began following the 2017 liquidation of the Jehovah's Witness Administrative Centre.
Six of the 21 have received jail terms. The four defendants in one case in Bryansk Region will not be imprisoned as they had already served the time in pre-trial detention. Two men in another case in Kemerovo Region, however, will spend more than a year in jail if their appeal is unsuccessful.
Thirteen of the 21 have received suspended sentences, most recently Sergey Ledenyov in Kamchatka on 24 November. The two others were given large fines (see below).
Although not enough cases have ended to draw any definitive conclusions, it appears that, in 2020, courts have been moving towards suspended sentences for Jehovah's Witnesses, although prosecutors continue to request real prison terms in most cases. It remains unclear why this might be.
Receiving a suspended sentence means that a convicted person is not imprisoned, but must live under a set of restrictions specified by the judge, regularly register with probation authorities, and avoid conviction for any other offence during the probationary period or risk being sent to prison (see below).
The 21 individuals convicted since July are among more than 400 Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslim readers of theologian Said Nursi's works who have been convicted, are on trial, or remain under investigation across Russia, mostly on accusations of "organising" or "participating in the activities of a banned extremist organisation". -
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Madonna is trending on Twitter after fans mistakenly thought she died instead of Maradona
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London (CNN)Scotland has become the first country to allow free and universal access to menstrual products, including tampons and pads, in public facilities, a landmark victory for the global movement against period poverty.
The Scottish Parliament voted unanimously in favor of the Period Products bill on Tuesday, months after lawmakers had initially signaled their support.
It means period products will be available to access in public buildings including schools and universities across Scotland. According to the new rules, it will be up to local authorities and education providers to ensure the products are available free of charge.
Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/24/uk/scotland-period-products-vote-scli-gbr-intl/index.html
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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Masked law enforcement officers carried out mass raids on the Jehovah’s Witnesses across Russia on Tuesday and made a number of arrests as part of a new criminal case against the group, the Investigative Committee said.
The law enforcement agency said it had opened an investigation as it suspected the Christian denomination was organising the activity in Moscow of its national centre and affiliates.
Yaroslav Sivulskiy, a spokesman for the European Association of Jehovah’s Witnesses, denied the centre had resumed its activity and said the group was being targeted in a campaign of persecution.
Russia’s Supreme Court ordered the Jehovah’s Witnesses to disband in 2017 after labelling it extremist, and some of its adherents have since been jailed or hit with criminal charges in a crackdown.
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Moscow — Russian authorities have carried out dozens of raids and detained several people as they pursue a new criminal case accusing the country's Jehovah's Witnesses of extremism, the national Investigative Committee said Tuesday. The Christian denomination is suspected of illegally resuming its work in Russia despite an official ban.
The country's Supreme Court ruled in 2017 that the group, founded in the United States and claiming almost 9 million followers globally, was an "extremist" organization and ordered it to disband. The decision led to the conviction of scores of followers across the country.
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Football legend Diego Maradona, one of the greatest players of all time, has died at the age of 60.
The former Argentina attacking midfielder and manager suffered a heart attack at his Buenos Aires home.
He had successful surgery on a brain blood clot earlier in November and was to be treated for alcohol dependency.
Maradona was captain when Argentina won the 1986 World Cup, scoring the famous 'Hand of God' goal against England in the quarter-finals.
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UNITED NATIONS, November 18. /TASS/. The Third Committee of the UN General Assembly has Wednesday adopted the Ukraine-sponsored resolution condemning alleged human rights violations in Crimea, as the resolution was supported by 63 countries, 85 abstained and 22 opposed it. The document has been considered annually since 2016 and is not mandatory.
The resolution in particular calls on Russia "to take all measures necessary to bring an immediate end to all violations and abuses against residents of Crimea." The document notes "discriminatory measures and practices, arbitrary detentions and arrests, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, sexual and gender-based violence, including to compel apprehended persons to self-incriminate or ‘cooperate’ with law enforcement" among these abuses.
Moscow is urged "to repeal laws imposed in Crimea by the Russian Federation that allow for forced evictions and the confiscation of private property, including land in Crimea, in violation of applicable international law."
The resolution also calls on Russia "to respect the right to freedom of religion or belief and guarantee its enjoyment by all residents of Crimea, including but not limited to parishioners of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Muslim Crimean-Tatars and Jehovah’s Witnesses."
Russia’s response
Russia’s deputy permanent envoy Gennady Kuzmin said that "the resolution co-authors had been trying to punish Crimea’s population for their free choice in favor of Russia by shedding "crocodile tears" about Crimeans."
Full article here: https://tass.com/world/1225305
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The ten largest gold mines in the world:
1. South Deep gold mine, South Africa2. Grasberg gold mine, Indonesia
3. Olimpiada gold mine, Russia
4. Lihir gold mine, Papua New Guinea
5. Norte Abierto gold mine, Chile
6. Carlin Trend gold mine, USA
7. Boddington gold mine, Western Australia
8. Mponeng gold mine, South Africa
9. Pueblo Viejo gold mine, Dominican Republic
10. Cortez gold mine, USA
https://www.mining-technology.com/features/feature-top-ten-biggest-gold-mines-south-africa/
Leading countries in gold production in Latin America in 2019
https://www.statista.com/statistics/873931/top-latin-american-countries-gold-production/
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Prisoners of conscience Jehovah's Witnesses Sergei Filatov and Artyom Gerasimov are being denied letters sent to them. Muslim prisoner of conscience Renat Suleimanov is being denied letters sent in his own language of Crimean Tatar. He has been held for ten months in Kamenka Labour Camp's closed zone, in a cell holding 10 prisoners, but may be released in December. All were transferred illegally to jails in Russia.
One of the three Crimean prisoners of conscience jailed in Russian labour camps for exercising freedom of religion and belief in Crimea is expected to complete his prison term at the end of December, more than three years after his October 2017 arrest. Muslim prisoner of conscience Renat Suleimanov has spent the ten months since January 2020 in the closed zone ("strict detention conditions") of Kamenka Labour Camp in Russia's Kabardino-Balkariya Republic.
"If the labour camp has about 1,000 prisoners, the closed zone has about 10, and they are held all in one cell," relatives of Suleimanov told Forum 18. "It's like a prison within a prison." A labour camp official would not explain why Suleimanov is held in the closed zone (see below).
Visits from relatives and friends is made difficult by the Russian authorities having moved Suleimanov so far from his home, against the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (known as the Mandela Rules – A/C.3/70/L.3) (see below).
Letters from relatives have been handed on after being censored, but only if they are in Russian. Letters in the Crimean Tatar language are not given to Suleimanov, but he does have access to a copy of the Koran and can pray openly (see below).
One of the two cases Suleimanov's lawyer lodged to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is about the illegal transfer to a Russian prison (see below).
Even once he completes his prison term, Suleimanov will have to live under restrictions for another year, while his bank accounts will remain blocked for many more years (see below).
"It is difficult for Renat's mother, who is in her eighties," one of Suleimanov's relatives told Forum 18. "She survived the deportation of all the Crimean Tatars [in 1944] and then to have this at the end of her life." She last met her son in a meeting in the Investigator's office in the Crimean capital Simferopol in summer 2018 (see below). -
More than 400 Jehovah’s Witnesses have been charged or convicted in Russia since the country banned the religious group as an “extremist” organization three years ago, the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia has said.
Since the April 2017 ban by Russia’s Supreme Court, law enforcement officers raided the homes of 1,166 worshippers’ families, the Jehovah’s Witnesses said
Authorities have opened 175 criminal cases into “extremism” against worshippers as of late October 2020, with 148 of them still in progress, the Christian denomination said on its website.
More than half of the 400 worshippers spent between several days to three years in detention while awaiting trial. Some 310 have lost their jobs, businesses, pensions and bank accounts as a result of the “extremist” label.
Four Jehovah’s Witnesses have died while under investigation.
The Jehovah's Witnesses religious group has been banned in Russia as an "extremist" organization since April 2017
- TrueTomHarley and The Librarian
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And this is microscopic 😅
A team of physicists at a university in the Netherlands have 3D-printed a microscopic version of the USS Voyager, an Intrepid-class starship from Star Trek.
The miniature Voyager, which measures 15 micrometers (0.015 millimeters) long, is part of a project researchers at Leiden University conducted to understand how shape affects the motion and interactions of microswimmers.
Microswimmers are small particles that can move through liquid on their own by interacting with their environment through chemical reactions. The platinum coating on the microswimmers reacts to a hydrogen peroxide solution they are placed in, and that propels them through the liquid.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/08/us/star-trek-3d-microscopic-spaceship-scn-trnd/index.html
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American Airlines is planning customer tours of the Boeing 737 Max and calls with its pilots in the coming weeks to boost the public’s confidence in the plane after two fatal crashes.
The jets were grounded worldwide more than a year and a half ago after the two crashes — Lion Air Flight 610 in October 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019. All 346 people on board the flights were killed.
Following repeated setbacks, the Federal Aviation Administration is at the tail-end of its recertification process for the jets though it has not signed off on the planes officially.
“The FAA continues to follow a thorough process, not a prescribed timeline, for returning the aircraft to service,” it said in a statement.
Boeing has made several changes to the planes’ software including making a flight-control system that pilots struggled against in both crashes less aggressive.
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A campaign that highlights how mankind’s quest for good governance would be attained has been launched by Jehovah Witnesses worldwide .
Anchored on the Lord’s Prayer wherein Jesus asked his followers to pray for God’s Kingdom to come, the global campaign intends to reaffirm the Bible message that it is only the kingdom government under Christ’s rulership that will usher in global peace and address myriad of other problems currently facing mankind.
As part of the global campaign the witnesses will be distributing the November 2020 issue of its flagship Watchtower magazine, entitled “What Is God’s Kingdom?”
“The answer to that question has captivated the attention of people from many different faiths for centuries.
“Jehovah’s Witnesses will distribute the magazine to the general public, business owners, local and national government officials, as well as court officials.
” The campaign will proceed using methods in accordance with local health protocols. This may include distributing the magazine and making visits via electronic means.
“Many people pray for God’s Kingdom to come. But they often wonder what that Kingdom is, when it will come, and what it will do.
“This magazine explains how the answers to these questions can readily be found in the Bible. We are confident that the Bible’s promises about God’s Kingdom will bring readers comfort and hope for a world free of pain and suffering. An electronic copy in over 369 languages is available on the official website of Jehovah’s”, states Folarin Odebode, spokesperson of Jehovah’s Witnesses .
https://leadership.ng/jehovahs-witnesses-initiate-global-campaign-on-gods-kingdom/
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The presidential candidate for the Ghana Freedom Party Akua Donkor has vowed to sack all members of the Jehovah's Witness Church from all government institutions and send them to the markets.
According to her, effective December 7, if she wins the presidential election, there is no way Jehovah's Witness members will work in the government sector during her regime.
She explained that it beats her imagination how a group of people whose religious principles frown on voting to elect a government will eventually benefit from that government after others have voted to form it.
Akua Donkor said this in an interview with Kofi Adoma, stressing that the religious group must not reap where they did not sow.
“When I become president, no member from the Jehovah's Witnesses will be allowed to have government work, you don’t want to vote, who should vote for you to go and work at the government office,” she questioned.
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I can't see the original post
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Rustamjon Norov, a 22-year-old Jehovah's Witness from the capital Dushanbe, is being held in the northern city of Khujand awaiting trial to punish him for refusing military service on grounds of conscience. No trial date has yet been set. Prosecutors accuse him of falsifying his medical history to evade military service, charges he denies. He had offered to perform an alternative civilian service, but Tajikistan does not offer this. He faces two to five years' imprisonment if convicted.
The Assistant to Saidali Rakhmanzoda Chair of the Supreme Court's Military Collegium, refused to comment on its rejection of Nurov's appeal against pre-trial detention. He also refused to put Forum 18 through on 5 November to the Chair or the Judges who made the decision. He referred it to the international section of the Supreme Court (see below).
Asked why Tajikistan still has no alternative to compulsory military service and why the authorities continue punishing conscientious objectors, Khaydar Kadyrov, Chief of the Supreme Court's international section, replied: "I cannot comment on these questions because they are political. Our section is not competent to answer such questions" (see below).
The prosecution of Norov comes as another jailed conscientious objector, fellow Jehovah's Witness Jovidon Bobojonov, was freed on 1 November under a presidential prisoner amnesty. He had served nine months of a two-year prison term. His sentence was deemed to run from January 2020, even though he had been in army detention from October 2019, during which time he was tortured. That torture remains unpunished (see below).
Shodigul Moyonshoyeva, the responsible official for complaints from citizens at the General Prosecutor's Office in Dushanbe, declined to say why complaints about Bobojonov's torture were not investigated and why the responsible military officials have not been put on trial. "Sorry we are in the midst of disinfection works because of the pandemic," she told Forum 18 (see below).
Military service of two years is compulsory for almost all able-bodied young men between the ages of 16 and 27 (see below).
Jehovah's Witnesses are conscientious objectors to military service and their beliefs do not allow them to undertake any kind of activity supporting any country's military. But they are willing to undertake an alternative, totally civilian form of service, as is the right of all conscientious objectors to military service under international human rights law.
In defiance of its international human rights obligations, and despite repeated requests from the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee and UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Tajikistan has not introduced a possibility for a genuinely civilian alternative service to the military conscription imposed on young men (see below).- TrueTomHarley and Melinda Mills
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Watch the moment Puerto Rico's famous Arecibo Observatory collapses
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