Have freedom of conscience

The European Union opposed the ban in Russia of Jehovah's Witnesses and called on the freedom of assembly. This is stated in a statement published on the official EU website.

“This ban has already led to the criminal persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as to police raids in their prayer houses, arson and other forms of discrimination,” the Jehovah's witnesses, like all other religious groups, should be able to freely use freedom of meetings without intervention, guaranteed by the Russian Federation, as well as international obligations of Russia and international standards in the field of human rights. "

The activities of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia were suspended on March 23 , as an interim measure before considering the Ministry of Justice’s claim to ban the activities of a religious organization. On April 20, the Judge of the Armed Forces Yuri Ivanenko satisfied the claim of the department. The decision, indicated that in terms of the termination of the management center and all local communities, it is subject to immediate execution, that is, it comes into force before consideration of the appeal.

On Monday, the collegium of the Supreme Court as part of Galina Manyukhina, Vladimir Zaitsev and Vladimir Popov confirmed the decision to recognize the managerial center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia with an extremist organization and its ban. It entered into force in full

Believers will appeal this decision in the ECHR, as well as appeal to other international organizations. What kind of structures are in question, they did not explain.

The management center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia unites 2277 local communities, which include 175 thousand believers. Now all of them can be held accountable under Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code (organization of activities of an extremist organization or participation in it).

At the end of May, it became known about the initiation of one of such cases in Orel. In this case, Dennis Kristensen citizen was arrested . Part 1 of Article 282.2 as the "organizer of an extremist organization" threatens from 6 to 10 years in a colony. The case is conducting the regional head of the FSB.

Against a number of believers, even before the prohibition of the management center, cases were fabricated under Article 282 of the Code (arousal of hatred or enmity). So, one of these cases - against the 69 -year -old Arkadi Akopyan, the chairman of the Jehovah's community in the city of Prokhladni, Kabardino -Balkaria - is now listening in a local court.

In addition, after the decision of Judge Ivanenko, in different regions of the country , attacks on chapel houses and dwellings of Jehovah's witnesses began. Incidents in Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg, Penza, the Moscow Region, the Rostov and Tula regions, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Komi and Udmurtia were reported. In particular, on April 30, in the village of Lutsino, the Odintsovo district of the Moscow Region, a drunken local resident who previously expressed against Jehovah's witnesses threw Molotov’s cocktail into the house where the family of followers of this denomination lived. As a result, two houses and a car burned. The criminal was detained.

On May 2, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at a meeting with Vladimir Putin, urged him to use his influence to protect the rights of Russian Jehovahors.