EXPERT DESCRIBES ROLE OF JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES IN KERCH TRAGEDY
by Aleksei Nechaev
Religious studies scholar Roman Lunkin commented on the growth in the internet of negativity with regard to the religious group of Jehovah's Witnesses after the Kerch tragedy. Violence contradicts their worldview and they even cannot hold a weapon in their hands, he told the Vzgliad newspaper.
Religious studies scholar Roman Lunkin thinks that the negative wave that rose in the net with respect to Jehovah's Witnesses after the tragic events in Kerch relates to the unsubstantiated accusations that have dogged this group in the last few years.
He said that in the Jehovah's Witnesses' worldview, it is forbidden to hold a weapon; they are pacifists. "According to their worldview, they, as a rule, refuse service in the army. In Russia, before their prohibition, at least some Jehovah's Witnesses were sent for alternative civilian service," the expert recalled.
As the newspaper Vzgliad reported, Vladislav Rosliakov, who planned the bloody attack on the Kerch Polytechnical College, burned a Bible across from his home on the day before the attack. News media also explained that Rosliakov's mother worked as an orderly in an oncology hospital and was considered to be a member of Jehovah's Witnesses, who were included in the list of extremist organizations last year.
On Wednesday, Vladislav Rosliakov detonated a bomb and fired a gun in the Kerch college. Twenty persons were victims of the attack. The shooter killed himself. (tr. by PDS, posted 21 October 2018)
KERCH MURDERER SURROUNDED BY ADEPTS OF TOTALITARIAN SECTS
by Alexander Bilibov
Psychologists are now seeking the roots of the Kerch tragedy in the childhood of Vladislav Rosliakov. According to his teachers, the child was limited literally in everything, including communication with peers. His mother, an activist of the sect of Jehovah's Witnesses (who are forbidden in Russia), forced her son to also live in accordance with the rules of the forbidden organization. People who managed to break away from there are now posting on their pages in social networks condolences to relatives of the victims and they believe that everything that happened is the consequence of pseodoreligious upbringing.
The so-called house of worship of Jehovah's Witnesses (who are forbidden in Russia) in Kerch is located at this address. A small one-story structure is lost within the private sector in the lanes of the city. Judging by everything, the sectarians have not conducted their meetings there for a long time. The territory is overgrown with shrubs and the lock on the gate has already rusted.
There is desolation also within the meeting place of the Jehovists--the rooms, where only a couple of hangers remain, along with a pseudoreligious poster. But with the closing of the only den of sectarians, about which one can find information in public sources, the work of the Jehovah's Witnesses in the city has not ceased to exist; it merely went underground.
The ranks of the adherents of the forbidden organization include the mother of Vladislav Rosliakov, who did the shooting in the polytechnical college, Galina. This is confirmed by those who lived next to her.
"The faith is not ours; its some kind of American one. I cannot say exactly; I know that it is not ours. They met somewhere; they went somewhere," a neighbor of Galina Rosliakova, Aleksei, reported.
"She left. They burned religious books there. He extinguished them again. Books of the sectarians. And they say that his mama joined that sect. They burned them early in the morning, on the day of the tragedy," Liubov Kasperova, a neighbor of Galina Rosliakova, explained.
She is a single mother who worked as an orderly in an oncology dispensary, who probably dreamed about something better. She was an easy victim for Jehovah's Witnesses. They say that she even took her son with her to meetings several times.
This is what one of the former adepts of the sect, Sergei Marchenko, describes about the methods of processing novices. "They influence the psyche of a person. At first they describe the world in such colors that all the world is cruel. But there is another side. And there on that side you will be able to get an eternal future and some kind of happiness," he says.
The Jehovah's Witnesses and organizations like them flourished in bright colors on the peninsula back when it was part of Ukraine. Kerch was no exception. When Crimea became Russian, the financing ceased and adepts went underground, but ties with the head organizations in the independent section did not cease.
"They consider themselves to be citizens of a single theocratic state and consequently they can fight only for their own state, which is still not on the earth, but which, when Jehovah's army descends from heaven, will begin the destruction. They emphasize that they are not pacifists," explains Alexander Dvorkin, an expert on matters of modern religious sectarianism.
In Ukraine the Witnesses feel at ease to this day. There are several subdivisions in large cities, including in the capital. They also were in Kerch in their day. As it turns out, offices of various sects surrounded Vladislav Rosliakov, in a literal sense of the word.
Here is a building with white columns, the district house of culture. Quite recently here the followers of one of the destructive sects rented the premises. And across the road from it is the very same polytechnical college where Rosliakov studied and where he went to kill.
The den of sectarians was not just next to Rosliakov's place of study. From the house where he lived along with his mother it is only a few steps to yet another affiliate of a pseudoreligious organization.
There were two of them together, the "Bread of Life" church of Christians of Evangelical Faith (which is forbidden in Russia) and a certain Methodist church (which is forbidden in Russia). Now only the signs are left and there is a lock on the doors and the building is empty.
"I was amazed by how much the city of Kerch was seized by this movement of a different type, different. And I suspect that they recruited; they went house to house and brought literature and gave it out free; let's say, they had a very soft touch," Archpriest Valentin explains.
Prayer for the repose of the victims of the Kerch tragedy was lifted up today in the Orthodox church of the Myrrh-bearing Women. It is right across from the polytechnical college. Its rector, Father Valentin, was one of the first to rush to help the wounded and he took them to hospitals himself. The rector says that if Vladislav Rosliakov fell under the influence of the Jehovah's Witnesses, then the sectarians could have put terrible thoughts into his head.
"You see, peers do not accept you and so they do not see in you a leader. You will show them. They do not want to see you as you are, but act so that they will remember for a long time," Archpriest Valentin imagines.
Rosliakov's links with various destructive sects have probably already been confirmed by investigators. But there still are no official announcements on this account. If the young man really was an adept of one of such organizations, then the case of the Kerch tragedy may take a completely different turn. (tr. by PDS, posted 21 October 2018)
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