WHAT HAS CHANGED IN RUSSIA'S RELIGIOUS LIFE AFTER
SENTENCING OF DENNIS
CHRISTENSEN?
Jehovah's
Witnesses in Russia, 13 May 2019
A genuine explosion of arrests for the faith began after
a court
sentenced a Jehovah's Witness to imprisonment for the first time
in modern
Russia. The sentence was issued by a district court of Orel on 6
February 2019.
In the following three months, in 25 Russian cities, similar
cases were opened
(in 20 regions of Russia) and 74 believers were indicted or
suspected, of whom
29 were put behind bars (some of the measures of restriction
were later
mitigated). One hundred forty-one families of believers were
subjected to
search in their own residence. At least seven believers
complained of torture,
including the use of electronic shock devices.
Arrests, searches, and interrogations in the past three
months occurred
in the following chronological order:
6 February: Saransk, Urai (Khanty-Mansi autonomous
oblast), Berezovskii
(Kemerovo oblast);
15 February: Surgut (Khanty-Mansi autonomous oblast);
19 February: Arkhangelsk;
25 February: Kurilsk (Sakhalin oblast);
27 February: Ulianovsk;
28 February: Nefteiugansk (Khanty-Mansi autonomous
oblast);
13 March: Severodvinsk (Arkhangelsk oblast);
17 March: Luchegorsk (Primorie territory);
20 March: Magadan, Yalta (Crimea);
21 March: Zeya (Amur oblast);
26 March: Kirov, Cheliabinsk;
3 April: Porkhov (Pskov oblast);
10 April: Abakan;
16 April: Karpinsk (Sverdlovsk oblast);
19 April: Minusinsk (Krasnoiarsk territory), Sharypovo
(Krasnoiarsk
territory), Partizansk (Primorie territory), Novosibirsk;
22 April: Inozemtsevo (Stavropol territory);
25 April: Smolensk;
29 April: Dagomys (Krasnodar territory).
"The sentencing of Dennis Christensen evoked an
international
resonance and called attention to the illegitimacy of the brutal
persecution of
Jehovah's Witnesses on the part of the state," notes Yaroslav
Sivulsky of
the European Association of Jehovah's Witnesses. "It is possible
that we
have observed the last desperate attempt to yet find something
illegal in the
activity of the Jehovah's Witnesses. However our believers are
as far from
extremism as heaven is from earth."
Meanwhile, raids have continued. On 8 May 2019, in Omsk,
about five new
searches occurred in homes of Jehovah's Witnesses. The total
number of Russians
subjected to criminal prosecution for their faith is 188
persons.
Law enforcement personnel erroneously take the religious
profession of
citizens as participation in the activity of an extremist
organizations. This
problem has received the attention of prominent public figures
of Russia, the
Council on Human Rights under the president of the RF, the
president of the RF,
and also international organizations—the Foreign Policy Service
of the European
Union, observers at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe, and
the office of the United Nations high commissioner for human
rights. Jehovah's
Witnesses have nothing at all to do with extremism and they
insist on their own
complete innocence. The government of Russia has often declared
that the
decisions of the Russian courts for the liquidation and ban of
organizations of
Jehovah's Witnesses "do not make an assessment of the religious
teachings
of Jehovah's Witnesses and they do not contain a restriction or
a ban on the
profession of the aforementioned teaching individually." (tr. by
PDS,
posted 13 May 2019)
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