PUTIN AND JEHOVAH'S
WITNESSES
by Viktor Vladimirov
Russian experts on why
the prosecutions
of the religious minority are continuing despite the Russian
president's
statement
The Russian rights
advocacy organization
Memorial has recognized several more representatives of the
religious
organization of Jehovah's Witnesses as political prisoners who
are being persecuted
for political reasons. The total number of adherents of this
religious
denomination who are being prosecuted in Russia for their
convictions has
exceeded 200 persons.
As representatives of
Memorial note, the
declaration that organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses are
extremist is baseless
and is a violation of the right to freedom of conscience and to
freedom of association,
and the criminal prosecution of followers of this peaceful
religious teaching
is illegal and discriminatory.
The rights advocates are
calling for the
immediate release of all Jehovah's Witnesses who are in custody
or under house
arrest and for the termination of their criminal prosecution.
We recall that in Russia
Jehovah's
Witnesses were subjected to criminal prosecution for their
religious
convictions after the decision of the Supreme Court of 2017 that
ruled them to
be an "extremist organization."
In December of last year,
at a session
of the Council on Human Rights under the Russian president,
Vladimir Putin,
commenting on the situation of Jehovah's Witnesses, called it
"complete
nonsense" and he agreed that it is necessary to deal with this,
promising
to discuss this topic with the head of the Supreme Court,
Viacheslav Lebedev.
"Jehovah's Witnesses also
are
Christians, and I also do not really understand what they are
being prosecuted
for," Putin said at the time.
After the president's
statement, the
repressions abated somewhat, but then they were revived with new
force. In the
Siberian city of Surgut, rights advocates identified the use of
tortures
against believers, which received widespread public resonance
both in Russia
and throughout the world.
The U.S.A. imposed
sanctions against
officers of Russian investigative agencies who are suspected of
torture of
Jehovah's Witnesses who were in custody. The State Department
declared that
interrogations were conducted under the supervision of these
officers, during
which at least seven believers were subjected to suffocation,
electric shock,
and brutal beatings.
The chief editor of the
magazine
"Religiia i Pravo," Anatoly Pchelintsev, in an interview with a
correspondent of the Russian Service of Voice of America, noted
that when
believers are tortured, as happened in the case of Jehovah's
Witnesses, and are
imprisoned, it becomes clear that freedom of conscience in
Russia has finally
become a myth. Pchelintsev said this constitutional norm of the
law has been
forgotten in the country.
"Of course, such
circumstances
require solidarity with the international rights advocacy
community," he
added. "And if this topic is insufficiently covered in our news
media due
to certain reasons, then it must be widely presented abroad.
Continual pressure
should be exerted on Russian authorities so that they will
reconsider their
position."
If it is impossible in
practice to
organize pressure on the inside, then it is necessary to do this
from abroad,
Pchelintsev thinks.
As regards Putin's words
about Jehovah's
Witnesses, in Pchelintsev's opinion they "just hung in the air."
"Hence the question arises: who is managing the government
today, the
president or law enforcement agencies?" the expert summed up.
The announcer of the
religious section
Daily Journal, Svetlana Solodovnik, in a commentary for the
Russian Service of
Voice of America, emphasized that repressions of the Jehovah's
Witnesses have
been ratcheted up, and now it is difficult to restrain the law
enforcement
system. "This is happening throughout the country, mainly in the
provinces
and not in the capitals. And some time must pass in order to
rein in extremely
zealous officials and to reduce everything to a more or less
normal
framework," Solodovnik notes.
According to the
newswoman, in order for
Putin's remark to take effect it was necessary to reinforce it
with appropriate
decisions and documents, but this was not done.
"It is possible that
Putin does not
fully control the process. On the other hand, he is not trying
to do so. It
seems to me that the president is satisfied with what the
investigative bodies
and the F.S.B. are doing and he thinks that they have the right.
In any case,
it is not evident that he has corrected their work in any way,"
Svetlana
Solodovnik concludes. (tr. by PDS, posted 7 October 2019)
MEMORIAL RECOGNIZES
ANOTHER 53 JEHOVAH'S
WITNESSES BELIEVERS AS POLITICAL PRISONERS AND AS PROSECUTED FOR
POLITICAL REASONS
Website of Rights
Advocacy Center
Memorial, 1 October 2019
The total number of
Jehovah's Witnesses
being prosecuted for faith at the present time has reached 206.
In May, when we last
updated the list of
Jehovah's Witnesses who are being prosecuted, it included 154
names. Memorial
knows of 25 new defendants who are being held in custody. A
measure of
restriction in the form of house arrest has been chosen for 4
believers. We
know of another 24 Jehovah's Witnesses who are at liberty, but
are being subjected
to criminal prosecution for the peaceful profession of their
religion.
The total number of
Jehovah's Witnesses
in Russia who are political prisoners as of 1 October 2019 is at
least 66, of
whom 38 persons are in custody and 28 are under house arrest.
Besides this, at
least 140 believers are being prosecuted for political reasons
while they are
not in custody and the prosecution of three believers has
concluded with
amnesty or suspension of sentences not connected with
imprisonment. Thus, since
the start of widespread repressions in April 2018, at least 209
Jehovah's
Witnesses have been held criminally accountable, and this number
is growing
without interruption.
A trend of a relative
decrease in the
rate of the growth of the number of those in custody, that was
noticed in the
spring of 2019, was reversed by the beginning of autumn. At the
same time, it
has become rarer for political prisoners under house arrest to
be released on
their own recognizance, which allows one to speak about an
intensification of
the repressive policy with respect to Jehovah's Witnesses and
other religious
minorities.
The list of those
prosecuted on a charge
of belonging to the Jehovah's Witnesses, which is regularly
updated, has come
to our website.
Since May, seven
defendants in cases
against Jehovah's Witnesses have received sentences in two
judicial
proceedings:
On 4 July, the
Ordzhonikidze district
court of Perm sentenced Alexander Soloviev, indicted on the
basis of part 2 of
article 282.2 of the CC RF (participation in the activity of an
extremist
organization), was fined 300,000 rubles;
On 19 September, the
Lenin district
court of Saratov sentenced 6 Jehovah's Witnesses, indicted on
the basis of part
1 of article 282.2 of the CC RF (arranging the activity of an
extremist organization)
to imprisonment for terms of from 2 to 3.5 years. Konstantin
Bazhenov and
Aleksei Budenchuk were sentenced to 3 years 6 months in a penal
colony of
general regime, Feliks Makhammadiev was sentenced to 3 years,
and Roman
Gridasov, Gennady German, and Aleksei Miretsky were sentenced to
2 years in a
penal colony of general regime. All of the convicts were given
an additional
punishment in the form of prohibition of holding office in
public organizations
for a period of 5 years and of limitation of freedom for one
year, after which
the defendants were placed in custody in the courtroom.
The position of Memorial
with respect to
the prosecution of Jehovah's Witnesses:
We still consider the
declaration of the
organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses to be extremist to be
baseless and a
violation of the right to freedom of conscience and the right to
freedom of
association and we consider the criminal prosecution of
adherents of this
peaceful religious teaching to be illegal and discriminatory.
We continue to consider
all of those
Jehovah's Witnesses who are in custody or under house arrest to
be political
prisoners and we call for them to be released immediately.
We also demand the
termination of
criminal prosecution of those believers who are under other
measures of
restriction.
Recognition of a person
as a political
prisoner does not mean either that the rights advocacy center
Memorial agrees
with the views and statements of persons recognized as political
prisoners or
approves of their statements or actions. (tr. by PDS, posted 7
October 2019)
Editorial disclaimer: RRN does
not intend to certify the accuracy of information
presented in articles. RRN simply intends to certify the
accuracy of the English translation of the contents of the
articles as they appeared in news media of countries of
the former USSR.
If material is quoted, please give credit to the
publication from which it came. It is not necessary to credit
this Web page. If material is transmitted electronically, please
include reference to the URL,
http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/.