The court agreed to involve the Jehovah's Witnesses community in the process of banning the Bible

The Vyborg City Court involved the community of Jehovah's Witnesses in the process to ban the "Holy Scripture in the New World Translation" and postponed the hearing to April 2016.

On March 15, 2016, the Vyborg City Court began considering a lawsuit filed by the Leningrad-Finland Transport Prosecutor's Office to recognize as extremist material the "Holy Scripture in the New World Translation" (2007 edition), that is, the Bible in the Russian translation of Jehovah's Witnesses. The court agreed to involve the community of Jehovah's Witnesses in the process as an interested party and postponed the hearing to April 26.

The circulation of the Bible was detained by customs in July 2015, and in February 2016, the prosecutor's office filed a lawsuit in court to recognize the publication as extremist.

We do not know the motivation for the claim, however, from our point of view, the "New World Translation" does not contain any signs of extremism. In general, we regard the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia under anti-extremist articles and the banning of their literature as religious discrimination.

It should also be recalled that in Russia there is a law prohibiting the recognition of sacred scriptures and their fragments as extremist.

Sources

• The meeting on the recognition of the Bible as extremist material was postponed to April 26 // Business News Agency. 2016. March 15.