Hello everybody,
I wonder if someone experianced the same as I did. A few years ago I tried to get financial and some organisational information of the WTBTS. I thought: of course there must be something of that kind, it will be asked dozens of times by journalists and publishers.
So, in a letter to our Dutch branche in Emmen I told (by the way in a respectable and not agressive manner) I had donated all my live to the WTBTS and it would be in my opinion just to ask my branche to give me the yearfigures of last year. And because every year the board of the WTBTS is been summit, I would also like to get information like: where I could read the meeting minutes, how these members are chosen or how could someone or I myself been chosen as a member of this board. Of course I was very naive and thought answers to these questions were gladly given.
But to my disappointment some weeks after sending the letter I was summoned to come in the Sweating-room after the meeting to discuss the matter. The question was if it was correct I had asked the WTBTS some questions about finance and organisation. "Of course" I said to the three elders confronting me. "If you like, I will give you a copy of the letter I have send". Well, the matter was, the elders received a letter of the branche, ordering them to discuss with me "firm but kindly" about the good manner our Organisation functioned. But, so was told in the letter, they were prohibited to show me the letter the branche had send to them. In stead of that, they decided to read it aloud. The letter told that if they liked, they could point me to the yearfigures given each year in the january issue of the Watchtower (the figure of money spend to missionary activities) or show me the congregation administration. Furthermore they could show me some issues of the Watchtower wherein the Organisation was discussed. These information "must be enough to inform common brothers and sisters" (I quote litterally, it is marked in my memory). That was that. I was told to be an "common brother", and thats gives me no rights at all.
You will understand, from that moment on I never again donated anything in the conventionhall or to the WTBTS. But now I wonder if some other "common brother or sister" (I understand every brother and sister is "common" in the eyes of the Watchtowersociety) has tried the same as I did and what the response of the WTBTS was.
David Post
