Moscow: JW charged over refusal to allow her 11 y.o. son to receive a transfusion

by behemot 13 Replies latest jw friends

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  behemot

  Jehovah’s Witness Charged

  08 October 2010

  A Jehovah’s Witness member faces a year in prison over her refusal to allow her son to receive a blood transfusion that might have prevented his death in August, Interfax reported Thursday.

  Ilya Orlukovich, 11, was hospitalized in Moscow on Aug. 9 after being hit by a car, and he died two weeks later, a spokesman for the city branch of the Investigative Committee told Interfax.

  He said the boy’s mother forbade doctors from offering a blood transfusion because of a Jehovah’s Witness teaching that prohibits such operations. Now the woman, who was unidentified, has been charged with failing to assist a person in danger, the spokesman said.

  source: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/jehovahs-witness-charged/418987.html
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  isaacaustin

  I am very happy to see governments stepping in on this!
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  OnTheWayOut

  Well, the brothers can tell her she is being persecuted for righteousness' sake.
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  isaacaustin

  Exactly OTWO, like Job lost all...this lady has lost her son and freedom....all for the sake of the 'good news'!! What greater honor can there be??
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  zoiks

  So sad. Another young life sacrificed to Houghton Mifflin. Or was it Random House... I can't remember which. I get all those publishing companies mixed up.
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  believingxjw

  The news report is short on details. The child dies 2 weeks after the accident and the Russian authorities blame the cause of death on his mother's refusal to allow a blood transfusion? So...in Russia the JW literature is banned, their meetings and assemblies disrupted, some JWs arrested and harrassed etc, but a JW woman is allowed to let her son die for lack of blood? Makes no sense.

  We're talking Russia here where freedom of the press and religion is being strangled. Witnesses are vilified in Russia, their religious beliefs are not respected. Surely their blood beliefs are also disregarded when it comes to minor children. The mother is being used as an example, imo, nothing more.

  I'm no longer a Witness but that does not mean I go along with the human rights violations and repressive actions of governments against the Witnesses or any other religious belief. Journalists who dare to speak the truth about the Russian government are being targeted in Russia and some have been killed. The world does not revolve around the Witnesses only. Sure their beliefs are wanting but every religion and every government is to varying degees wanting as well. JWs kill themselves and their children by refusing blood transfussions, other religions have killed others for merely refusing to convert and governments have at times killed their young men and women merely for political reasons or foolish posturing.

  People are the same wherever we go.
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  Scully

  The child was not a JW, but a child of a JW - even the WTS makes that distinction. His mother did not have the right to martyr him for her religious beliefs.

  I have to wonder where the kid's father was.
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  undercover

  I'm no longer a Witness but that does not mean I go along with the human rights violations and repressive actions of governments against the Witnesses or any other religious belief.

  I can agree with that.

  But speaking of rights violations and repressive actions... What about that boy's rights to proper medical care? Who violated his rights and repressed actions that would've maybe saved his life?
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  carla

  Scully brought up my point- couldn't a jw parent use that to allow blood? if the child is not baptized he/she is technically not a jw right? That's what my jw always asks whenever I would point out some crime by a jw, 'was he baptized?' to the outside world it doesn't matter, if you go to the kh and go in fs you ARE a jw. To a jw though one must be baptized to be considered a 'real' jw.
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  PSacramento

  What she was charged with was just perfect !

  "Failure to assist a person in Danger".

  Well done.