JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES' OFFICIAL SITE BANNED IN RUSSIA
Official website of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia, 27 July 2015
Seven months after the Supreme Court of the Russian federation declared the official website of the Jehovah's Witnesses, jw.org, extremist, Russian authorities have prohibited it. The ban took effect on 21 July 2015, when the Ministry of Justice of the Russian federation entered the jw.org website into the federal list of extremist materials. Throughout the country, Internet providers are blocking access to this site, and encouraging its use on the territory of Russia is considered a criminal offense. Russia is the only country in the world where the jw.org site is prohibited.
What led to the ban of the jw.org website?
Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia did not know that in 2013 authorities of the city of Tver, targeting this site, began secret judicial proceedings. The city prosecutor filed in the Central district court a lawsuit with the petition to ban the jw.org website on the grounds that several Jehovah's Witnesses publications that had earlier been ruled by Russian courts to be extremist were posted on it. On 7 August 2013, the district court granted the prosecutor's petition and, without informing Jehovah's Witnesses about this, declared the jw.org site extremist.
Jehovah's Witnesses learned about this decision only several months later from reports of local news media. Immediately after this, the Witnesses appealed this decision and voluntarily took care that in Russia visitors to the site could not access publications that were the occasion for the judicial proceedings. On 22 January 2014 the Tver provincial court struck down the decision of the court of first instance, ruling that the lower court did not have legal grounds for prohibiting the jw.org website and that the court should have involved the owner of the site in the court proceedings.
Dissatisfied with the decision of the provincial court, a deputy prosecutor general, S.G. Kekhlerov, filed an appeal in the Supreme Court of the Russian federation. The Witnesses were not informed of the upcoming hearing in the proper form. Therefore, on 2 December 2014 the court considered the appeal of the prosecutor in the absence of the defense side.
The Supreme Court confirmed that after the judicial decision issued in August 2013, the Jehovah's Witnesses, within a short time, removed from the website publications that had been ruled extremist. At the same time, the Supreme Court, without any rational basis, concluded that these publications might again appear on the site. Thus the court struck down the decision of the provincial court and restored to legal force the decision of the court of the first instance that had ruled the jw.org site extremist. The Jehovah's Witnesses filed in the Supreme Court a supervisory appeal challenging this decision, but the court rejected it. They also filed an appeal with the president of the Supreme Court, who rejected it on 8 July 2015.
Court's decision threatens freedom of religious confession
In the opinion of Jehovah's Witnesses, the decision of the Supreme Court did not have any reasonable bases inasmuch as since the autumn of 2013 in Russia there was no access to publications that had been ruled extremist. Following this decision, Russian authorities gave an order to Internet providers to block the jw.org website on the territory of the country. Because of this, people lost the possibility of reading the Bible in more than 130 languages and publications based on it in more than 700 languages, including Russian and the Russian Sign Language. Those who encourage others to use this site are subject to administrative or criminal punishment for so-called extremist activity. Because of this prohibition, more than 170,000 Jehovah's Witnesses are deprived of access to a resource thanks to which they could daily satisfy their spiritual needs.
The decision of the Supreme Court became for Russian bureaucrats yet another occasion to prevent the peaceful religious activity of Jehovah's Witnesses. So long as some bureaucrats are illegally applying the law "On combating extremist activity," freedom of religious confession will be under threat in Russia. Jehovah's Witnesses sincerely hope that impartial representatives of authority will protect the basic human rights guaranteed by international agreements and the constitution of Russia: the right to freedom of conscience and religious confession, as well as the right to just judicial proceedings.
Information about the jw.org website:
The website is accessible in more than 600 languages;
Publications on the site are accessible in more than 700 languages;
The number of visits per day throughout the world: 2,060,000;
Average number of visits each day in Russia in 2014: 285,000;
Average number of downloads each month in Russia in 2014: 2,600,000;
Number of downloads in Russian Sign Language in 2014: more than 3,500,000.
Consequences for the hearing and visually impaired:
The website contains materials in 79 sign languages. The number of videos in the Russian Sign Language alone exceeds 700. The site also has access to videos and other materials intended for the visually impaired. The ban on the jw.org website is a great loss for those who have such restrictions. Here is what two persons say who had constantly used the site:
"Because my Mama and I are deaf from birth, we have never heard Russian speech and we do not understand very much information in written form. For us, only the Russian Sign Language is understandable. It is possible to get access to the indicated materials in this language exclusively on the Site. [. . .] The Bible and other materials in Russian Sign Language that exist on it are really necessary to preparing for worship services and confessing and spreading the faith."
"I have had difficulties with sight since childhood. In 2004 I became completely blind. […] The possibility to use biblical publications on the www.jw.org website permits me to study independently any questions of the Christian life. The constant updating of the website gives the possibility of being up-to-date on all events of the international brotherhood and to feel unrestricted as a disabled person and full-fledged participant in the life of Jehovah's Witnesses." (tr. by PDS, posted 29 July 2015)
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