RUSSIA RELIGION NEWS


Appeals court confirms lower court's ban of Jehovah's Witnesses' Bible

APPEAL OF BAN OF BIBLE IN JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES' TRANSLATION REJECTED

SOVA Center for News and Analysis, 21 December 2017

 

The Leningrad provincial court confirmed the decision to ban the Bible in the New World Translation and an additional three brochures of Jehovah's Witnesses.

 

On 21 December 2017 there appeared on the website of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia a report that on 20 December 2017 the Leningrad district court rejected an appeal of four foreign organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses against the recognition that the publication "Sacred Scripture. New World Translation" (2015) and also the brochures "The Bible and its Main Topic," "Science instead of the Bible?" and "How to Improve Health. 5 Simple Rules" are extremist materials. Thereby the decision about their prohibition, issued by the Vyborg city court on 17 August 2017, was confirmed.

 

We have already written in detail about the decision of the Vyborg city court and the incompetent expert conclusion that lay at its base.

 

We consider that recognizing both the Bible in the Jehovah's Witnesses' translation and the others of their publications to be extremist is incorrect and we regard such bans as a manifestation of religious discrimination. In addition, in this case the prosecutor's office and the court, without necessary grounds, circumvented the law forbidding finding the sacred scriptures of world religions to be extremist, which is itself a sad precedent, which opens the possibility in the future to prohibit other translations and renderings of sacred books. (tr. by PDS, posted 21 December 2017)


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