http://www1.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=812200
Moscow's Jehovah's Witnesses could face new ban
AFP [ WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2002 7:06:42 AM ]
OSCOW: A Moscow court on Tuesday began hearings to decide whether to ban Jehovah's Witnesses from practising in the Russian capital in a case brought on the grounds that the group harms its members' life and health. An appeals court last May overturned a lower court's ruling allowing them to operate in Moscow.
The appeal was brought by the state prosecutor's office and a group called "Defence Committee against Sects," made up of relatives of people belonging to the organisation. After a trial lasting over two years, a Moscow court in February last year refused to ban the city's branch of Jehovah's Witnesses despite support for such a move by experts. The Moscow branch has been accused of "breaking up families, inciting its members to suicide and harming their life and health" through not allowing its members to have blood transfusions.
The group says its members number 250,000 in Russia, some 10,000 of them in Moscow. The latest trial began on November 10 but was suspended because one of the layman jurists needed to be replaced. On Tuesday, the whole process started again from scratch, a spokesman for the US-based religious group, Yaroslav Sivulsky, told AFP. The judge agreed to accept as evidence a letter signed by 10,395 members of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia.
Addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov, the letter says the signatories "never asked" prosecutors to defend them against the sect, which did "not violate their rights." But the court refused to suspend the trial, as lawyers for the Jehovah's Witnesses had asked, citing appeals lodged with the Russian Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights. These appeals can proceed in parallel, the head of the tribunal said, according to Sivulsky.
A Russian law from 1997 recognises only four traditional religions (Orthodoxy, Judaism, Buddhism and Islam) and forbids proselytizing by religions seen as recently implanted in Russia.