FINLAND
MASSIVELY
REFUSES ASYLUM TO JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES FROM RUSSIA
by
Svetlana
Niberliain
Finnish
authorities
report that the total number of requests for getting asylum in
Finland that
have been submitted is around 250 refugees, Jehovah's Witnesses
from Russia. So
far, according to information from Finnish authorities, about 90
requests have
been processed. And 90 percent of applications have been
refused. Idel.Realii has
investigated why there are refusals and what they mean for those
who have been
refused.
According
to the
influential daily Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat of 17
April 2019, the
Finnish migration service has turned down the majority of
petitions of Russian
Jehovah's Witnesses (an organization that has been banned in
Russia since May
2017) for granting asylum that it has reviewed. In the service's
estimation,
Russia is a secure country for the majority of Jehovah's
Witnesses.
Russian
Jehovah's
Witnesses have submitted to Finland a total of about 259
applications for
granting asylum, of which almost 90 have been processed, Anu
Karppi, the
director of a department of the Finnish migration service, told
the newspaper.
Only ten percent of applicants received a positive response.
"According
to
information we have at our disposal, violations of the law with
respect to
Jehovah's Witnesses do occur in Russia, but the risk of serious
and
prosecutable crimes is relatively low," Karppi states. "There
are
about 170 thousand Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia in all, and the
majority of
them so far are living and professing their religion. Certainly
an atmosphere
of fear reigns there, but as of the present a small number of
violators of the
law have been prosecuted.
"THESE
DECISIONS SHOW POLITICAL WILLPOWER"
What is
happening in
Finland was described for Idel.Realii by the elder Ruslan (the
name has been
changed) from Moscow, who is 47 years old. He fled here with his
family about
two years ago.
--Here
other
Jehovah's Witnesses, including refugee elders, and I are trying
to act
together, supporting one another. And there are many of them,
because it is the
elders who are the main object for prosecution. That is, whereas
now in Russia
there are more than 200 criminal cases, it can safely be said
that it is elders
who make up the majority, for example, like Dennis Christensen,
who recently
was sentenced by an Orel court to six years in a penal colony.
It is they whom
the Russian authorities accuse of arranging the activity of an
extremist
organization that has previously been banned by a court.
Searches and raids are
organized and nothing is spared—by tortures and threats to
elicit information
about who are the elders in the congregations. Therefore the
elders are
prosecuted in the first place. Apparently it is said loudly that
I control the
situation in Finland. But my fellow believers and I are
monitoring the
situation and we are trying to do something in the legal area.
I agree
that
approximately 90 percent of the decisions of the migration
service of Finland
with respect to Jehovah's Witnesses from Russia are refusals to
grant asylum.
That is, asylum is granted to one in ten. Until recently—after
the ban of the
organization in April 2017 up to, say, February-March 2019—there
was not a
single positive decision at all with regard to a single
Jehovah's Witness from
Russia. I think that, by and large, it is a lottery in which it
is difficult to
detect the logic of Finnish authorities. Believers who are in
practically
identical circumstances receive opposite decisions."
--How
many person
are affected by refusals?
--By
our
calculations, already well more than 100, somewhere around 130
to 150 persons.
It is difficult to say exactly now. As regards the decisions
themselves: you
see for example personally I waited about a year and a half for
the decision of
the migration service. While my friends received a negative
decision. But my
wife and I, a positive one.
The
reason for
refusals—this is the politicization of the decision of the
immigration service.
And here the issue is not at all the fear of Finnish authorities
in the face of
Russian authorities, but rather simply the reluctance to provide
asylum. Most
likely this is caused by the fact that they understand: the
country borders
Russia, and if pressure by Russian autoimpohorities on Russian
Witnesses increases,
then many will flee. Whereas as of now there are in Finland
about 300 refugee
Witnesses from Russia, this number could increase exponentially
if it were to
be known that asylum is being granted here. This is its own kind
of defense
against a flood of Witness refugees, that's what I think.
As I
said earlier,
these decisions are obviously political. The decisions of the
migration
services and, consequently, of the courts that support the
decision of the
migration service. Because the decision must be unbiased. The
migration agency
must make an assessment of each refugee that is proper and based
on law, international
law. And to provide a legal basis for the decision and not such
as one wishes
and which does not correspond to the requirement of legislation,
do you
understand? These decisions regarding Witnesses obviously show
political willpower.
The desire or the reluctance to grant, that is not the law. And
any lawyer who
is more or less informed on these matters would be able to
confirm this.
Listen, in England there are 100% positive decisions. In Germany
those who
receive negative decisions from the migration service call this
the "slow
positive," because they know that they will receive a positive
decision
through the courts nevertheless. Even the Czech Republic, which
does not want
to take refugees, grants positive decisions. Even Austria, which
is considered
a problematic country regarding the acceptance of refugees—even
it gives
positive decisions. But Finland does not give them. The Finns
resort to threats
of expulsion. Because they do not issue these decisions on the
basis of law but
on the basis of some personal preferences. On the basis of
willingness or
reluctance to accept refugees. And this is a politicized
decision.
How are
the refusals
rationalized? They steadfastly do not want—if we are talking
about the legal
aspect—to recognize that in Russia Jehovah's Witnesses are
persecuted as a
group and that the fears of those who request asylum are
objectively justified.
That each Witness, if the authorities identify him as a Witness,
is already
under threat of criminal prosecution. As of the present, there
are more than
200 criminal cases [known to Witnesses in Russia]. Incidentally,
the Finnish
migration service sent its own representatives to Russia who
supposedly
investigated the matter involving the Witnesses and upon their
return a report
was published. They themselves acknowledge—these figures are in
this
report—that there are more than 200 criminal cases against
Jehovah's Witnesses
in the RF. While practically all criminal cases are article 282,
parts one and
two. A very serious article—extremism. Up to ten years
imprisonment. But the
migration service steadfastly does not want to admit that
Witnesses are
persecuted as a group. It writes in its refusals that say no:
nothing is
threatening you; return home.
The
refusals
themselves reach the absurd. For example, they write to one
elder: 'You serve
as an elder, but you are risking nothing. Nothing horrible.' And
they give him
a negative response. For another, in essence the same kind of
elder, they
write: 'Indeed, you serve as an elder. You run the risk of being
held
accountable for arranging the activity of a forbidden
organization, and we will
give you a positive response.'
Of
course I am exaggerating, but it's something like that. That is,
one and the same
arguments lie at the basis for both positive decisions and
negative ones.
Or they
write:
'Indeed, the order of the plenum of the Russian Supreme Court
really gives law
enforcement agencies the possibility of denying parental custody
of children
because they take them to religious meetings of a forbidden
organization. And
therefore you face the risk of losing custody of your children.
We will grant
you asylum.'
To
others they write
the same thing and say: 'No, we will not grant asylum, because
they still have
not taken children from anybody. We have not heard of this.'
That
is, there is a
kind of cynicism in these decisions. There is no logic in them.
We have the
opportunity to review many decisions, you understand. Many have
already received
both positive and negative decisions, and we see all of them and
compare. There
simply is no logic. Well, in some decisions it is mentioned of
course about
personal persecutions, some were arrested by police and had
threats and
interrogations, and some were prosecuted as criminals or,
perhaps, even held in
a SIZO.
But
those who
actually were put into a SIZO and were miraculously able to
escape are unique.
You can count them on one hand. Because when the Russian
authorities bring
criminal cases, they impose restrictions on leaving the country
and then a
person cannot emigrate, cannot leave the country. The main
stream of refugees
are those who are potentially at risk of facing prosecution.
Perhaps they were
not put into a SIZO and there still has not been a criminal case
opened
regarding them. But when people have left, it is because
something happened in
their city, in their congregation, or in a neighboring
congregation. They have
done this because they feel a reasonable fear of prosecution on
the basis of
the fact that their fellow believers are being prosecuted. They
do not want to
become the next victim. Understand? Therefore they flee. And the
European
legislation on refugees gives such a possibility—to receive
asylum on the basis
of reasonable fear. They cite some absurd statistics: there are
165 thousand of
you there and only 200 criminal cases. The chance of being
prosecuted is
supposedly slight. But listen. There are relatively few cases
because the
Witnesses have gone underground.
"IMAGINE
WHAT
KIND OF STRESS THERE IS FOR PEOPLE"
There
was a decision
of the Supreme Court of the European Union in Luxembourg on 5
September 2012.
In it the court explained: if a person cannot freely and
publicly perform any
actions connected with his religious confession, with his
religion, and he is
threatened with criminal prosecution for this, that is already a
serious basis
for considering that this is persecution and for granting
asylum.
Is it
possible to
say that my fellow believers in Russia can publicly and freely
profess their
faith? No. We cannot talk about this at all, in principle; 200
criminal cases,
that we have today regarding Jehovah's Witnesses, this is the
consequence of
the deepest cover up. Of the fact that my fellow believers have
gone
underground. I have heard, for example, that they are even
conducting meetings
in vehicles. And if the authorities find out that somebody is
doing something
publicly somewhere, there will instantly be arrests and criminal
cases, and if
today Jehovah's Witnesses were publicly to profess their faith
in the RF, the
criminal cases would not be 200, but tens of thousands. But
nobody—not the
Finnish migration service, not Finnish courts—wants to use in
considering our
cases those precedent-setting decisions of the Supreme Courts of
the European
Union, which exist, because these decisions are "inconvenient"
for
them.
There
is another
very interesting matter. The fact is that the corps of lawyers
in Finland are
paid for refugees at government expense. And you see, these
lawyers—and we reviewed
an enormous number of their appeals, which they file, appealing
the decision of
the migration service in courts—perform very badly. You know,
surely a student of
the first year of law school would write ten times better. These
appeals are
about nothing at all. They simply assemble general phrases. We
do not know why
it happens this way. Perhaps they do not want to do their work
efficiently or
they do not want, say, to fight the state by defending our
interests. In fact,
the appeals are about nothing at all. Therefore we are making a
greater effort
in order to gather this legal material and process it. We have
gotten lawyers,
and paid them for their work from our own means, and we
controlled their work.
We have tried to do something. Now we hope that the situation
will change.
We have
phoned and
written to many rights advocacy organizations. To Amnesty
International, and to
Human Rights Watch, and to a number of other organizations. To
London, Stockholm.
Oslo, Geneva, New York. . . . We wrote to the parliamentary
ombudsman in
Finland about the situation, who monitors the observance of
human rights. We
have written and phoned often to the Office of the United
Nations High
Commissioner on Refugees. This is their direct purpose: to help
those refugees
who are in such situations. But we have been unable to reach
them. Everywhere,
by and large—do you know how they speak Russian?—the runaround.
They have just
fallen behind. Nobody wants to pay attention to what is
happening in the
Finnish legal system.
There
is another
question, in that the courts that consider the cases of refugees
are required
to consider the facts of the case not at the time when the
migration service
made the decision but at the time when the court itself is
considering the
case. That is, to conduct a prospective investigation. And the
courts do not
want to do this at all. They do not care at all. They simply
repeat in their
decision some phrases from the decision of the migration service
and also issue
negative decisions.
--What
do the refusals
mean for people?
--I
will speak about
those who have appealed the decision of the migration service in
court and have
already received refusals in administrative courts. You probably
are including
them in your question. As of now, I know about seven families.
Four families
are families of elders. You see, the administrative courts
issued refusals to
them, that is, they left the decision of the migration service
in force.
There
is this
interesting judicial system here that after the first instance,
in an
administrative court, there is the threat that you will simply
be expelled from
the country. It is possible to file an appeal in a higher
administrative court,
but in practice the higher court rarely cancels the expulsion.
They prefer to
send a person to their country and let them await there the
decision of the
higher court. And this is in the event the higher court takes
the appeal for
review. It can simply refuse and not take it for review. Such
justice is
interesting. Therefore at the same time as in the first
instance, the
administrative court, a person received a negative decision and
there
immediately arises the risk of his deportation. We have sent
appeals for
suspension, for prevention of deportation, to the European Court
of Human
Rights. We submitted appeals to the Supreme Court. Now we are
waiting decisions
in both places. The police in one region can come to those who
received a
refusal in court and they say 'well, we will wait for the
decision, no problem,
everything is fine.' They are loyal that way. In another place
they came and
said: 'Now you have some deadline from day to day and if the
court does not
suspend your deportation, then we will take up your expulsion to
your
homeland.' One thing is clear: a person very soon after the
first refusal of a
court becomes an object for the police, who must expel him from
the country as
fast as possible.
The
police came to
one family—just now, in the morning of 9 May, I checked with
them—and they
said: 'We will expel you either to St. Petersburg or to Moscow,
and we will
transfer you to the police department.' And they ask: 'So they
will put us in
jail. What will happen to us and who will take on himself the
responsibility
for this?' And the police said: 'That does not concern us. It is
not our jurisdiction.'
And this is against the background that in a special report on
the situation of
Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia, which was published by the
Finnish migration
service, it is written in black and white: in fact Jehovah's
Witnesses who will
be deported to Russia will be placed under special threat on the
part of the
police and the FSB. They may be watched, they may have serious
troubles. The
Finnish migration service realizes this and the police are
threatening not just
deportation to Russia but transfer into the hands of the Russian
police.
Imagine what kind of stress this is for people!
In
general, here the
courts—this is an interesting subject requiring a separate
conversation. In
Finland they do not summon to the court session those whose case
they are
considering. Neither the applicants themselves nor their
attorneys. That is,
the judge makes the decision with only the papers in hand.
Neither the person
nor his lawyer are heard. The Finnish legal system thinks that
this is a proper
state of affairs. Although this contradicts European
legislation. That is, a
person has the full right to be present in the court if the case
impacts him.
But in Finland the courts say: 'You had your say in the
migration service; your
interview is recorded, which you gave them. That is enough for
you.' You see,
there is this violation simply because nobody takes them to be
serious,
reasonable claims. Of course they act very ugly in this matter.
So that now, as
I already told you, we are waiting for the outcome, we are
waiting on the ECHR.
We are waiting on the Supreme Court. We are waiting to see
whether they stop
the expulsion of these families. We have made all the efforts we
can. The next
word is up to these courts. And to the Finnish authorities.
"THIS
IS BY AND
LARGE A LOTTERY"
--You
have a
positive decision. Why? Were you just lucky?
The
immigration
service realized that the Russian authorities were persecuting
me for religious
reasons. But I consider, as I said earlier, that it does not
matter; it is by
and large a lottery. For one of my fellow believers it was
written in the
decision that they recognize that the authorities were
persecuting her for
religious reasons, but at the same time they gave her a negative
decision. In
the majority of cases the circumstances of those who were
granted asylum do not
differ especially from the circumstances of those to whom they
do not give
asylum.
--What
are the
prospects for those Witnesses to whom they gave a posibive
decision? Is it for
some time, or for good? Can it be reconsidered?
--A
positive
decision can, in principle, be reconsidered, of course. But for
that there
needs to be very weighty circumstances and it is done through
the courts. This
mainly happens when a person, who has been recognized as a
refugee, commits a
crime or something similar. In general it is granted, so far as
I know, for
four years. That is, in principle, this gives the possibility of
getting a
permanent residency permit after several years, and after
another year, Finnish
citizenship. Well now, to lead a full life and to enjoy such
support on the
part of the Finnish government: language classes, some resources
for the time
until we find work.
--You
say that you
are doing much on your private initiative. And does the
Jehovah's Witnesses
organization do something on its level? The central office is
located in
America and the Jehovah's Witnesses are in Finland. Can they
do anything?
--Nobody
has
authorized me to speak in the name of the organization; I will
say a bit on my
own. Of course, there is help. It consists, for example, in
spiritual and
emotional support. Representatives of the organization visit
Russian-speaking
groups and the congregations support the refugees. There is also
help through
local congregations, if there is a need, including material
need. The Finnish
congregations are always ready to extend a helping hand and we
are sincerely
grateful to them. But you understand, a religious organization
is not an
instrument for political struggle. We have no staff of migration
lawyers, for exmple.
We cannot influence the political system of Finland. And nobody
will intervene.
Christians will not intervene in political processes. Even if it
is necessary
to suffer. Understand? Therefor, undoubtedly, on a certain level
the
organization will help and support. But to participate in
struggle, to put
pressure on politicians so that refugees receive here some
rights—this would be
a violation of Christian principles. The organization of
Jehovah's Witnesses
never intervenes in political matters. (tr. by PDS, posted 18
May 2019)
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