Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia intensifies and targets children

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Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia intensifies and targets children

By LAUREN MARKOE Religion News Service

First Published 5 hours ago    •    Updated 4 hours ago

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Members of Jehovah's Witnesses wait in a court room in Moscow, Russia, on Thursday, April 20, 2017. Russia's Supreme Court has banned the Jehovah's Witnesses from operating in the country, accepting a request from the justice ministry that the religious organisation be considered an extremist group, ordering closure of the group's Russia headquarters and its 395 local chapters, as well as the seizure of its property. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

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Teachers have humiliated Jehovah's Witness children in front of their classmates. Arsonists have burned Witnesses' homes. Security forces have raided their meeting halls.

Since the Russian Supreme Court on April 20 declared the Jehovah's Witnesses an extremist group, the faith's members have faced increasing harassment from both authorities and suspicious neighbors.

And last week, for the first time since the decision, a Jehovah's Witness has been not only detained by police, but also jailed by a judge.

"He read the Bible. That's why he was arrested," said Yaroslav Sivulskiy, a representative of the Jehovah's Witnesses in St. Petersburg.

For about a month the Witnesses had not felt the full force of the court decision, which calls for the liquidation of the Jehovah's Witnesses organization — not only its Russian headquarters in St. Petersburg, but also the 400 or so Kingdom Halls where more than 100,000 Jehovah's Witnesses across the nation meet.

 

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Yet worship had continued at many of these Kingdom Halls.

Within the past few weeks, however, intensifying persecution has prompted most congregations to move group worship to private homes, Sivulskiy said.

Most worrisome to many Witnesses are the recent instances in which schoolteachers, principals and police have turned on children.

"Officials who were already minded to take action against Jehovah's Witnesses are now emboldened, and ordinary people who have long disliked them are also emboldened," said Felix Corley, a Norway-based religious rights activist who edits the Forum 18 News Service, which tracks abuses in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Sivulskiy, speaking from St. Petersburg, tells the story of an 8-year-old girl recently forced by her school principal to sing a patriotic song at school in front of her classmates.

Jehovah's Witnesses, an evangelical Christian group founded in Pittsburgh in the late 19th century, see themselves as representatives of God's kingdom and remain neutral in politics. They pay taxes but do not recite patriotic pledges, sing nationalistic songs or join the military.

Witnesses also report an incident, near Moscow, of another 8-year-old girl, whose parents were brought to her school after she had sung a Jehovah's Witness song and talked about God to classmates. In the presence of the school's psychologist and director of security, the principal handed the parents a document informing them that if this behavior continued, the school would no longer educate the girl.

In Bezvodnoye, northeast of Moscow, two sixth-grade girls were humiliated by a music teacher who defended her actions by noting that Jehovah's Witnesses are "banned." She reportedly said to the girls' mother: "You are now extremists and there will be no mercy."

The encounter with the music teacher is one of 50 detailed in a May 25 report the Witnesses — whose world headquarters are outside New York — released on harassment against their co-religionists in Russia.

The report also describes:

• Physical attacks, including one in Belgorod, just north of the Ukrainian border, where the perpetrator shouted "you have been banned" and repeatedly punched a Witness in the head, face and upper body.

• Arson, including an incident in Zheshart, in the northwest, where a building used for religious services was destroyed and a Molotov cocktail was found at the scene. Another attack occurred in Lustino, near Moscow, where the home of a Witness family burned to the ground.

• Disruption of religious services, such as one that took place in a private home in Pavlovskiy Posad, 42 miles from Moscow. Police officers in plainclothes told Witnesses that the court decision meant they could no longer gather and worship.

http://www.sltrib.com/home/5358906-155/persecution-of-jehovahs-witnesses-in-russia

[TrueTomHarley]

The U.S. Supreme Court in the 1940's decreed that Witness children could be required to salute the flag. It unleashed a wave of violent reprisals, ordinary citizens suddenly unashamed to be thugs, so that many legal types began to rethink their decision. It was reversed within the year, as [separate] men of conscience could not abide what they had unleashed.

"

"The first court to hear the case, the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia refused to follow the precedent of the Supreme Court decision and ruled in favor of the Witness children:

"Ordinarily we would feel constrained to follow an unreversed decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, whether we agreed with it or not...the developments with respect to the Gobitas case, however, are such that we do not feel it is incumbent upon us to accept it as binding authority...The tyranny of majorities over the rights of individuals or helpless minorities has always been recognized as one of the great dangers of popular government. The fathers sought to guard against this danger by writing into the Constitution a bill of rights guaranteeing to every individual certain fundamental liberties...We are clearly of the opinion that the regulation of the Board requiring that school children salute the flag is void insofar as it applies to children having conscientious scruples against giving such salute...

"The issue was again appealed up to the Supreme Court, and this time that body reversed itself. By a 6:3 majority, the Court ruled that compulsory flag salute was unconstitutional. Their verdict was announced on June 14, 1943, Flag Day."

Perhaps there will be some men of conscience in Russia, as well, who cannot abide what they have unleashed.