Russia rounds up Jehovah’s Witnesses

[The Librarian]

Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox leader, supports President Putin’s ban on “imported” religionsALEXEY NIKOLSKY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Armed police officers have arrested at least 17 JehovahÂ’s Witnesses during raids on their homes across Russia.

A court ruled last year that the Christian denomination was an extremist organisation, placing it on a par with Islamic State and neo-Nazi groups, and its followers face up to ten years in jail.

Roman Markin, 44, was detained after officers with automatic weapons broke down his door in the Arctic city of Murmansk. “They forced him and his 16-year-old daughter to the floor at gunpoint,” Yaroslav Sivulskiy, a spokesman for the European Association of Jehovah’s Christian Witnesses, said. The police are alleged to have tried to force followers to renounce their faith in exchange for their freedom.

Read more:https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-rounds-up-jehovah-s-witnesses-s3rsd97b8

View the full article

[Jack Ryan]

An article in The Times, selling around 445,000-copies each day, it is most widely distributed 'quality' print newspaper in the UK.

---

Russia rounds up JehovahÂ’s Witnesses

The Times (UK), Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - page 31

Armed police officers have arrested at least 17 JehovahÂ’s Witnesses during raids on their homes across Russia.

A court ruled last year that the Christian denomination was an extremist organisation, placing it on a par with Islamic State and neo-Nazi groups, and its followers face up to ten years in jail.

The Ministry of Justice claims that Russia’s 175,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses pose a threat to “public order and security” and government officials have accused them of preaching the “exclusivity and supremacy” of their beliefs.

The Russian Orthodox Church supports the ban and an aide to the church’s head, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, called it “a sect that destroys families”.

Some analysts said that the arrests were part of the Kremlin’s confrontation with the West. In 2016 President Putin approved a law that banned missionary work and forbade people from sharing their religious beliefs in public. The law has so far only affected followers of “imported” religions, such as Mormons, Hare Krishnas and Baptists.

“There were no grounds at all to bar the Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Alexander Verkhovsky, an expert on anti-extremism legislation at the Sova human rights centre in Moscow, said. “No one has even accused them of any specific extremist actions.”

READ FULL ONLINE ARTICLE:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-rounds-up-jehovah-s-witnesses-s3rsd97b8