http://www.jw-media.org/rus/20100226.htm
For Immediate Release
February 25, 2010
Jehovah’s Witnesses address their fellow citizens
RUSSIA—On February 26-28, 2010, throughout Russia, from the Chukchi Peninsula in the east to Kaliningrad in the west, a special campaign is taking place. For these three days, tens of thousands of Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses are offering their fellow citizens a tract entitled Could It Happen Again? A Question for the Citizens of Russia . Twelve million tracts will be distributed.
Why did they decide to address this particular question? The Chairman of the Presiding Committee of the Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia, Vasily Kalin, said: “Sixty years ago in the Soviet Union, Jehovah’s Witnesses experienced an unprecedented wave of persecution and repression. Lately, a new wave, a systematic campaign of harassment is being carried out against Jehovah’s Witnesses; this time, some want to classify our literature and activity as extremist. Our meetings for worship are raided; worshippers are illegally detained, questioned, and searched. Their personal possessions are confiscated. In view of the seriousness of this situation, we, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia, consider it necessary to provide our fellow citizens, not excluding government officials, with accurate information about ourselves, as well as about cases of the religious intolerance that we have encountered.”
International concern has been expressed over the growing intolerance of religious freedom in Russia even though the Russian Constitution guarantees this fundamental human right. On January 20, 2010, an appeal, signed by more than 40 human rights experts in Russia and throughout Eastern Europe, was sent to the highest Russian authorities, urging an end to the harassment and repression that Jehovah’s Witnesses are subjected to.
The last page of the tract states: “The tactics of innuendo and slander need not work on you. We hope that youwill make the effort to see through such empty talk.”
The tract can be read online in English and in Russian.
Media contact information:
In Russia: Yaroslav Sivulsky, +7 911 087 80 09
In the United States: J.R. Brown 718-560-5600