Jehovah’s Witnesses accuse Russia of human rights violations
The Jehovah’s Witnesses organization has filed 37 statements in European courts concerning human rights violations against members of their religion in Russia and the Crimea.
This statistic was reported by Calisto Walker, a representative of the Jehovah’s Witnesses head office in New York, in a comment to Krym.Realii TV.
According to Walker, the Jehovah’s Witnesses HQ in New York is convinced that, despite criminal persecution in Russia and Crimea, adherents will continue to preach and to hold services.
“Jehovah’s Witnesses will always believe in God and worship him. Of course, now, in order to read the Bible and sing songs, people will gather in small groups and be very careful. But they will still continue to believe in the Kingdom of God,” Walker said.
On November 16 in Dzhankoy, Crimea, Russian FSB agents conducted searches and made arrests at several dozens of addresses of people suspected of being Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religion which is prohibited in Russia and the Russia-annexed Crimea. According to a correspondent of Radio Liberty’s Russian service, the leader of the local Witnesses group, Sergey Filatov, was arrested. The group was registered in 2015 and abolished in 2017 following the ban on the religion in Russia.
On April 20, 2017, the Supreme Court of Russia declared the administrative center of the Jehovah’s Witnesses "an extremist organization".
According to the Memorial advocacy center, 39 adherents of the religion have been prosecuted in Russia since April last year. In August 2018, Memorial recognized 29 such adherents as political prisoners accused of extremism, and demanded their immediate release.