Jehovah’s Witnesses Still Banned in Russia

Earlier I wrote about a Moscow court’s decision to ban the Jehovah’s Witnesses in that city. Now, an appeals court has upheld that ruling and the six-year battle over their status seems to be at an end: they can’t rent premises, print literature, officially assemble, or perhaps even gather in private homes and share their beliefs with friends.

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

The group has angered a succession of Russian governments by its refusal to celebrate national holidays or perform military service. Its tough intracommunity discipline and an assertive style of proselytizing new converts has also irritated authorities. One of the first Russian Jehovah's Witnesses, Semyon Kozlitsky, was exiled to Siberia by Czar Alexander III in 1891. Thousands died in Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's Gulag prison camps, but the organization was legalized as the Soviet Union was collapsing in 1991.

Mikhail Odintsov, an official liaison with public associations on behalf of the Kremlin's Human Rights Ombudsman, says many other religious groups are deeply worried by the ruling. "It's my personal opinion that this ban is likely to stimulate similar processes in the Russian provinces," he says. "I think other religious groups feel they're on a hot frying pan right now, though they're not likely to tell you that because they're scared." ... "The decision against the Jehovah's Witnesses is more political than legal," says Anatoly Pchelintsev, director of the official Institute of Religion and Law in Moscow. He says the same charges could be applied to any religion that advertises itself as the "true" one. "We are repeating the actions of Hitler and Stalin in banning them. It's a very bad precedent and it will have ill consequences for other confessions," Mr. Pchelintsev says.

This is going to create some bad press for Russia, even though the ban doesn’t apply to the entire nation (it only seems to involve Moscow itself). At the same time, it is unlikely to create a major incident because most people just don’t care about the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Most people seem comfortable when small groups like this experience some oppression because it doesn’t affect anyone they know, like, or can relate to.

Read More:

• Separation of Church and State 101
• Religious Intolerance & Bigotry