ARREST OF JEHOVAH'S
WITNESSES IN SOCHI
WAS ACT OF INTIMIDATION
by Svetlana Kravchenko
Kavkazskii
Uzel, 21 October 2019
The Jehovah's Witnesses*
from Sochi do
not admit their guilt of participation in an extremist
organization and their arrest
is an act of intimidation of believers, noted attorney Anton
Bogdanov. In the
opinion of a representative of the European Association of
Jehovah's
Witnesses,* Yaroslav Sivulsky and the rights advocate Lev
Levinson, the
security forces who arrest believers are fulfilling instructions
from above.
As Kavkazskii Uzel wrote,
on 17 October,
investigators reported the arrest of two Jehovah's Witnesses* in
Sochi. The
investigators suppose that a 45-year-old and a 68-year-old, who
are residents
of Adler, over the course of two years organized meetings and
religious
performances, drawing new members into an organizations that a
court has ruled
to be extremist and prohibited in Russia. Searches also were
conducted in homes
of other believers. After this, they were forced to abandon open
meetings.
On 20 April 2017, the
Russian Supreme
Court satisfied the demands of the Russian Ministry of Justice
to liquidate all
organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses* in the country as
extremist, and on 16
August of the same year the Administrative Center of Jehovah's
Witnesses in
Russia* and also all of its local affiliates were placed in the
list of
forbidden organizations. In Krasnodar territory, as of 30 March
2017, there
were 39 local religious organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses*
active, according
to the article "Jehovah's Witnesses—Extremists or Victims of
Lawlessness?" prepared by Kavkazskii Uzel.
"On 21 October the
Krasnodar
territorial court will consider an appeal of an order by a Sochi
judge of the
Central district court . . . which on 11 October, late at night,
placed in
custody, after a search, two Sochi residents, 68-year-old
Nikolai Kuzichkin and
45-year-old Viacheslav Popov, until 24 November 2019. The men
are suspected of
extremism because of their faith. Just what charges may be made
against them
are unknown. Other Jehovah's Witnesses* are not in custody,"
Anton
Bogdanov, an attorney for the detainees, told a Kavkazskii Uzel
correspondent
on 20 October.
In his opinion, "the
searches and
arrests in Sochi are acts of intimidation of believers."
"My clients are
conducting
themselves entirely calmly and confidently. . . . These people
are not guilty
of anything and they do not acknowledge their guilt of
participating in an
extremist organization. As their attorney, I consider that their
accusation is
groundless and is an act of intimidation," Bogdanov said.
He said
that before
their arrest, his clients had no inkling that a criminal case
had been opened
against them a month earlier.
"It is
impossible to quote anything from the criminal case because they
did not let us
acquaint ourselves with the case. Just that an investigation is
going on. The
materials presented by the investigator to the court do not
contain any
specifics or episodes on the basis of which one could judge just
what
68-year-old Nikolai Kuzichkin and 45-year-old Viachslav Popov
are accused of
and just what extremism they committed and how it was
expressed," Bogdanov
noted.
Sivulsky
called the
searches in the homes of the Jehovah's Witnesses* a calculated
action. The
representative of the European Association of Jehovah's
Witnesses, Yaroslav
Sivulsky, said that since 2017, more than 600 searches in homes
of believers in
Russia have been conducted, 40 persons are behind bars, and
seven have been
convicted.
"The
longest
term was received by the Danish subject Christensen. . . . The
state of his
health has deteriorated. He is in a hospital with pneumonia
after the start of
the cold weather," he explained for a Kavkazskii Uzel
correspondent.
In
February 2019 a
court sentenced the Danish follower of Jehovah's Witnesses*
Dennis Christensen,
who was living in Russia, to six years imprisonment.
According
to
Sivulsky, relatives of the Jehovah's Witnesses detainees in
Sochi do not wish
to talk with news media, since they are very upset. "The spouse
of the
45-year-old man is extremely frightened, as are relatives of the
68-year-old
man," he noted.
Sivulsky
thinks that
the searches in nearly 20 homes of Sochi Jehovah's Witnesses*
are an action
that was previously designed at the order of someone up above.
On 11
December 2018,
at a session of the Council on Human Rights, a transcript of
which was
published on the Kremlin website, Russian President Vladimir
Putin promised
"to examine carefully" the classification of the Jehovah's
Witnesses*
as extremist organizations. Despite this promise, repressions
only intensified,
the representative of the European Association of Jehovah's
Witnesses, Yaroslav
Sivulsky, indicated in May.
Lev
Levinson, an
expert of the Institute of Human Rights, called the searches and
arrests of
Jehovah's Witnesses* "lawlessness."
"This
lawlessness has continued from the moment of the illegal
liquidation of all
religious organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses* and it has
specific territorial
characteristics. How it is a certain way in one region and a
different way in
another may be detected in various similar criminal cases. In
one region, for
one crime they give a suspended sentence and in other regions
for the same
'crime' they give real time," he told a Kavkazskii Uzel
correspondent.
In his
opinion, the
reasons for the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses* may lie in
the large
numbers in the organization, which may constitute competition to
other
religious denominations, as well as in their anti-militarism.
"Why
the
organization in Russia is considered extremist while it exists
without problems
throughout the world, and numbers more than 20 million
followers, is an
interesting question. Formally it happened this way: local
courts in the hinterlands
made decisions to the effect that their literature is extremist.
All these
decisions were absolutely groundless. Official experts issued
such baseless,
blown out of proportion conclusions of expert analyses. . . . At
the same time,
Jehovah's Witnesses and their attorneys did not even know about
the existence
of such decisions, because nobody informed them. Therefore these
decisions were
not appealed, and Jehovah's Witnesses themselves learned of
their existence
only after links to them were published on the website of the
Ministry of
Justice," Levinson noted.
As
regards the
persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses* in Sochi, in his opinion
their arrest is
due to a desire "to decapitate the organization." "Law
enforcement has all their contacts, since they were not
forbidden earlier. They
had their leaders, meeting places, and lists of Jehovah's
Witnesses.* All these
people were rather well known, since they operated legally. Now
they are
pursuing the leaders, trying to decapitate the organization. I
would like to
note that the Jehovah's Witnesses* always stick together. They
provide lawyers
and do not abandon those who are arrested. But even the
strongest lawyers
cannot get justice. . . . A task was placed before security
forces and they are
carrying it out," Levinson thinks.
*396
organizations
of Jehovah's Witnesses were ruled to be extremist and their
activity is
forbidden in Russia by court decision. (tr. by PDS, posted 21
October 2019)
Related articles:
Another arrest of Jehovah's Witnesses
for evangelism
October 17, 2019
Nineteen Jehovah's Witnesses' homes
penetrated
October 21, 2019
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