In Russia, the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses begins all over again

[Guest Kurt]

9 March 2017

A Jehovah’s Witness in London. ‘These were some of the most persecuted Christians of the 20th century.’ 

The small Siberian town of Birobidzhan is set in a mosquito-infested swampland on the far eastern end of the Trans-Siberian railway. It was to places such as this that the Soviets exiled various undesirables. In April 1951 more than 9,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses were rounded up and sent to Siberiaon Stalin’s instruction. They were allowed to take 150kg of their possessions with them. Everything else was confiscated by the state.

You may walk past embarrassed as Jehovah’s Witnesses try and hand you cringeworthy religious literature on the high street. But these were some of the most persecuted Christians of the 20th century. And their persecution continues.

A couple of months ago, the Russian police raided the Birobidzhan branch of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and “discovered” extremist literature. The Jehovah’s Witnesses describe the incident thus: “Masked special police disrupted a religious meeting and planted literature under a chair in the presence of the attendees.” The police ordered the place to be permanently closed.

A few weeks later, the Russian ministry of justice demanded that the Jehovah’s Witnesses HQ hand over all information on their 2,277 Russian congregations. After a brief examination of what the police allegedly found, it concluded that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were showing signs of “extremist activity”. Congregations in Belgorod, Stary Oskol and Elista have all been shut down. Bibles have been 

impounded at customs, their literature banned. Many expect that the Russians are gearing up for an outright ban.

“Unfortunately, in today’s Russia, the will to confine Russians to restricted and state-determined religious beliefs has proved increasingly strong,” is how Andrew Wood, former British ambassador to Russia, described what has been going on. “Fabrication is always both repellent and a sign of desperation at the absence of credible proof of extremism.”

So what is it about Jehovah’s Witnesses that the Russians find so objectionable? This week, I decided not to avoid the eye of the couple who hand out literature at my tube station. So many times I’ve ignored them, and their Olympic smiling endurance, brushing past grumpily. Reading about their history, I now feel guilty about my lack of respect.

On open display was What Does the Bible Really Teach?, the book that the Russian authorities often plant in kingdom halls as an excuse to shut them down. I flicked through. It’s really not my thing. And the graphics are criminally cheesy. But it’s pretty bog-standard Christian fundamentalism, with an emphasis on the end of the world.

“What makes the Jehovah’s Witnesses different?” I asked the smiling man.

“We take the Bible literally,” he replied.

“But so do others. What makes you distinctive?”

“Take ‘thou shalt not kill,’” he replied. “We don’t participate in war.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses were taken to Nazi death camps for that very reason. They 

refused to swear loyalty to a worldly government and refused to serve in the military. They wouldn’t say Heil Hitler either. So within months of the Nazis coming to power, their meetings were ransacked and a Gestapo unit was set up to register all known Jehovah’s Witnesses. Their children were taken off them to receive a proper patriotic German education. And they were given their own purple triangle to wear as identification. In 1942, Wolfgang Kusserow was beheaded in Brandenburg prison by the Nazis for refusing to fight. “You must not kill,” he said at his trial. “Did our creator have all this written down for the trees?”

Jehovah’s Witnesses are right to fear what is happening to them again, right now, in Russia. They have seen it all before. It should be a warning to all of us that the idea under which they are now being persecuted is that of “extremism”. It’s a word that draws its persuasive force from those who would use their religion to plant bombs and sever heads. So anti-terror legislation is now also being used to target those whose faith is only “extreme” in terms of its commitment to non-violence. The Russians are using the fear of Islamism as an excuse to crack down on all religious activity that refuses to bow the knee to Mother Russia.

“My parents were exiled to Siberia,” said Yaroslav Sivulskiy, a spokesman for the Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses. “They worshipped even while they were in those camps. We will continue too.” Respect, I say.

Anti-terror legislation is being used to target those whose faith is only ‘extreme’ in terms of its commitment to non-violence. It should be a warning to us all.

theguardian

 

Russia: alleged "missionary activity" prosecutions continue

[ARchiv@L]

@Kurt thank you for the "updates" ....

[greetings]

[Arauna]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2017/mar/09/in-russia-the-persecution-of-jehovahs-witnesses-begins-all-over-again

[JW Insider]

@Arauna Yes, that was a good article. Tying it to the Nazi era might play a bit on current public Russophobia, but it's an excellent point to make to show the terrible potential. I wish the author had stated in the actual article that the link went to the video of Russian authorities planting the literature. I'm sure more people would click on it, and understand the situation better, if it were worded better inside the article.

[Guest Kurt]

World Religion News (14 Mars 2017)

JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES ARE LATEST RELIGIOUS GROUP BEING PERSECUTED IN RUSSIA

[Guest Kurt]

15 March 2017

RUSSIA: Justice Ministry seeks complete Jehovah's Witness ban

By Victoria Arnold, Forum 18

With no public announcement, Russia's Justice Ministry lodged a suit at the Supreme Court today (15 March) to declare the Jehovah's Witness Administrative Centre "extremist", to liquidate it, and to ban its activity. If successful, this would ban all Jehovah's Witness activity across Russia.

Russia's Justice Ministry has submitted a suit to the Supreme Court to declare the Administrative Centre of Jehovah's Witnesses an "extremist" organisation, order it liquidated, and ban its activity. If the Justice Ministry wins the administrative suit, Jehovah's Witness activity would be banned across Russia. The suit reached the Supreme Court today (15 March) and was included in the list of forthcoming cases on the Court website late in the afternoon Moscow time.

If successful, this would be the first time a court has ruled a registered centralised religious organisation "extremist".

The Justice Ministry made no public announcement that it had lodged the suit.

The liquidation suit, which reached the Supreme Court on 15 March, was handed the same day to Judge Nikolai Romanenkov. "Once he has examined the case, the Judge will determine when the hearing will begin and whether it will be open or closed," a Court secretary told Forum 18 from Moscow on 15 March. "All the information will be posted on the court website."

Should the suit succeed, the Administrative Centre's property would be forfeit to the state and all its activity would be prohibited. The local religious communities for which it is responsible would also be dissolved, and their members would be liable to criminal prosecution if they continued to meet for worship. This would end Jehovah's Witnesses' open public life in Russia.

An official of the Justice Ministry involved in an exhaustive inspection in February of the Administrative Centre's entire activity had refused to tell Forum 18 on 11 March if such a suit was imminent (see below).

Liquidation "would be a disaster"

Jehovah's Witnesses claim nearly 172,000 adherents in Russia, with a peak of nearly 300,000 attending their most important annual commemoration, the Memorial of Christ's Death. There are at present 397 registered local organisations and more than 2,500 unregistered religious groups.

"Considering that the religion of the Jehovah's Witnesses is professed by hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens, [liquidation] would be a disaster for rights and freedoms in our country," Administrative Centre representative Yaroslav Sivulsky said in a 15 February statement upon the commencement of a Justice Ministry inspection of the organisation (see below). "Without any exaggeration, it would put us back to the dark days of persecution for faith, which are still fresh in the memory of the older generation."

Last-ditch appeal

On 1 March, Administrative Centre head Vasily Kalin wrote to Mikhail Fedotov, chair of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, asking him to intervene in what he describes as a "catastrophic" situation. He pointed out that, in seven out of eight appeals by local religious organisations against liquidation orders, the Supreme Court had "automatically" upheld the lower court decisions.

Kalin also cited a 2 September 2016 article on Life.ru (a media outlet close to the security services), which claimed that Jehovah's Witnesses would be "tracked" as part of preparations for the 2018 World Cup, alongside football hooligans and "terrorists".

2016 warning, 2017 exhaustive inspection

The Justice Ministry submitted its suit to the Supreme Court less than two weeks after the expiry of a one-year warning "of the inadmissibility of extremist activity" issued to the Administrative Centre in March 2016.

On 27 February 2017, the Justice Ministry completed an exhaustive inspection of all aspects of the Administrative Centre's structure and activities. In its 32-page report, seen by Forum 18, the Ministry's department for religious organisations concluded that "despite the 2 March 2016 warning issued by the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, structural subdivisions of the [Administrative Centre] engage in extremist activity, which violates the rights and freedoms of man and citizen and inflicts harm on persons, public order and public security" (see below).

[Martha Braun Amistadi]

Hats off to the Guardian for taking notice of Jehovah's Witnesses.