Jehovah's Witnesses and Orthodox play cat-and-mouse games

[Guest Kurt]

JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES LEAVE THEIR BOOKS AT "BOOKCROSSING" NEAR TULA KREMLIN
Tulskie Novosti, 27 July 2016
 
According to information from the news agency Tulskie Novosti, a few days ago extremist literature of the Jehovah's Witnesses was discovered at the "Bookcrossing" site near the Tula Kremlin. More than 10 forbidden publications of this organization had been left at the book exchange site.
 
The press service of the evangelism department of the Tula diocese commented on what happened:
 
"Volunteers of the evangelism department of the Tula diocese regularly conduct raids to check on the contents of the book boxes. And with enviable regularity they discover there publications whose circulation on the territory of Russia is illegal. To become convinced of this is not hard: in accordance with article 13 of the federal law 'On combating extremist activity,' the Russian Ministry of Justice publishes and posts on the Internet the Federal List of Extremist Materials."
 
The last "catch" by the Tula Orthodox volunteers confirms that the Jehovists continue their illegal activity. As Aleksei Yarasov, the deputy director of the evangelism department, explained, among the books whose circulation is prohibited by the Russian Ministry of Justice, more than a dozen publications of the Jehovah's Witnesses sect were found, and there also are publications of other religious organizations, but in a lesser amount.
 
Aleksei Yarosov noted: "It turns out that people know quite well that they are violating the law of the Russian federation, but they do not abandon their goals—to lure our fellow citizens into the sect. And here this Jehovist pamphlet 'The end of false religion is near,' which slanders the ministers of traditional religions, ha been forbidden in our country since 2009. Since it is difficult to tear hard covers off of books, the sectarians use different methods of 'camouflage': they crudely rip out the interior pages with publishing data." Several of the forbidden brochures are missing covers for the same reason. It was simply torn off roughly.
 
Volunteer Sergei Kuprin explained that he and friends discovered in Kremlin Square a whole collection of resources of the Jehovah's Witnesses sect from the division (congregation) of this sect that is located in the Proletarsky district of the city of Tula, which can be learned from the signature: they simply forgot to erase it. Since all these publications have long been in the category of extremist, one cannot find them in the possession of the sectarians themselves, and here they have decided to distribute them in this way: they offer them to our fellow citizens for reading, for people of various ages, including youth.