Nationwide crack-down on Jehovah's Witnesses threatened

[Guest Kurt]

WARNING ISSUED TO KALUGA JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES

by Nikolai Akimov

 

Late last year the prosecutor's office of the city of Kaluga conducted a verification of compliance with legislation on combating extremist activity of temporary structures—the stands with literature in the center of the city which have references to an extremist website on the Internet.

 

During the verification on one of these stands, literature of several titles that have been ruled to be extremist and included in the appropriate federal list was discovered. In addition, in one of the books there was a reference to the website of the religious organization of Jehovah's Witnesses, which also has been ruled by court decision to be extremist.

 

Therefore the prosecutor's office imposed an administrative fine on the leader of the local religious organization of Jehovah's Witnesses and warned him about the impermissibility of violating the federal law "On combating extremist activity" and threatened that in the event of violation of federal legislation stricter measures of prosecutorial reaction might be adopted against him

 

Kaluga's Jehovists have been handled more mildly. Recently the Belgorod provincial court, on a lawsuit from the prosecutor's office, found two of the largest local congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses to be extremist and adopted a decision to liquidate them. The supervisory agency says that representatives of this cult "have violated the integrity of the family," and they have distributed texts with citations to forbidden literature. The reason for liquidation was refusals of blood transfusions by devotees of the organization, distribution of extremist literature, and encouragement of the break up of families. All of this, in the opinion of the court, were manifestations of extremist activity.

 

The decision regarding liquidation of Jehovah's Witnesses organizations in two of the largest cities of the province—Belgorod and Stary Oskol—were made on the same day, 11 February 2016, and took effect immediately.