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Russian officials treat Bible as extremist literature

RUSSIAN CUSTOMS OFFICERS SEIZE BIBLES IMPORTED BY JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES SUSPECTING BOOKS OF "EXTREMISM"

Portal-credo.ru, 16 July 2015

 

Russian customs agencies at the border with Finland confiscated 2,016 copies of the Bible that Jehovah's Witnesses were importing for free distribution among Russian citizens. While customs agents seized three Bibles and sent them for expert analysis for manifestations of indicators of "extremism" in them, the press service of the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia reports on 16 July.

 

At the same time, in the record of the seizure, sacred scripture in a durable binding of 1,790 pages, with silver edges, was described as a "brochure."

 

Commenting on this incident that is unprecedented since soviet times, Mikhail Odintsov, a famous religious studies scholar and Ph.D., declared: "I consider this a very dangerous and unpredictable attempt to find the Bible 'extremist,' even if it is an edition that is distributed by only one of the Christian confessions, the Jehovah's Witnesses. The Bible is a sacred item that is esteemed or respected by believers of two world religions."

 

"Here is the apotheosis of an insane, unprofessional, and frenzied struggle with imaginary extremism," says Yaroslav Sivulsky, a representative of the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia, "when they call white black, and black white. It began with the ruling as extremist of several publications of the Witnesses for a sincere paraphrasing of biblical teachings. And here now law enforcement agents are trying to deliver a blow to the very foundation of civilization." (tr. by PDS, posted 18 July 2015)


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