[...] Moscow city prosecutors have been trying to shut down the church for nearly six years, charging that the Witnesses are subversive foreign cultists intent on breaking up Russian families, endangering children and inciting religious discord. A ruling on a final appeal of the case is due Wednesday [...] http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/8921517.htm?1c
Moscow Rule on JW Ban for this Wednesday
by Gerard 13 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Gerard
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shamus
Hey Gerard,
Your link is broken. I really would like to read the article in full.
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avengers
Maybe this will help?
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Gerard
Your link is broken. I really would like to read the article in full.
You just have to sign in...anyway here's the article:
Posted on Mon, Jun. 14, 2004 Ruling due on effort to shut Moscow Kingdom HallBy MARK MCDONALD
Knight Ridder NewspapersMOSCOW - They don't believe in abortion, homosexuality, blood transfusions or the fires of hell. But some hellish portents are facing the Jehovah's Witnesses in a Moscow courtroom this week.
Moscow city prosecutors have been trying to shut down the church for nearly six years, charging that the Witnesses are subversive foreign cultists intent on breaking up Russian families, endangering children and inciting religious discord.
A ruling on a final appeal of the case is due Wednesday, and it promises to be a test of Russia's tolerance for an open, pluralistic society. The Kremlin has been widely criticized for its harsh restrictions on independent news media, its manipulation of recent elections and a disregard for human rights in Chechnya.
The legal defeat of the Jehovah's Witnesses would be "worrisome as a precedent that could be used against any religion," said Lawrence Uzzell, the president of International Religious Freedom Watch.
"The prosecution is an embarrassment to the new democratic Russia and flies in the face of Russia's commitment to religious freedom," said Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., the chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, a federal agency that monitors progress on rights issues.
The Witnesses say they're merely practicing their faith as they do elsewhere in the world, knocking on doors and handing out literature in an attempt to recruit new believers. Russians may find the practice strange, but the Witnesses say they're protected by the 1993 Russian Constitution. They accuse the Russian Orthodox Church of engineering the campaign against them.
"This is going to be dangerous for democracy," said Vasilii Kalin, the Jehovah's Witnesses' most senior official, as chairman of its presiding committee. "If they liquidate us in Moscow, they'll do it all over Russia. And they could ban other religions, civic organizations and political groups. Russian society is going backward."
A decision against the Jehovah's Witnesses would apply only to its operations in Moscow. The church, which claims 11,000 followers in the capital and 133,000 nationwide, would be legally barred from publishing its literature or renting facilities for meetings. Public gatherings for worship also would be prohibited.
But many fear the Moscow case could be cited as precedent by local prosecutors wishing to move against a minority religion.
Proselytism has become something of a dirty word in Russia, and it's a particularly sore point for the Russian Orthodox Church, which sees itself as the state religion. The church seems to believe it's the default religion for the nation, with proprietary rights to the souls of millions of post-Soviet Russians.
Orthodoxy is by far the largest religion in Russia, although polls show that some 90 percent of Russians aren't active or regular practitioners of any specific faith. President Vladimir Putin and his wife are Orthodox believers, and the president is known to use a private Orthodox chapel inside the Kremlin walls.
The Orthodox Church grew rapidly after the Soviet Union fell but lately has stalled in attracting new followers, especially among young people. The church today is seen as rich, conservative, well-connected, suspicious of the West, patriotic, protectionist and stodgily inept at spreading its message. The Orthodox liturgy, for example, is still recited in Old Church Slavonic, a language virtually incomprehensible to most Russians.
Meanwhile, the Protestant faiths - many of them American imports - are the fastest growing, no doubt because their missionaries tend to be young, energetic, well financed and well trained. They arrive with easy-to-read Bibles in modern Russian, tapes of Christian rock music and snazzy, inspirational DVDs.
The recruitment activities of the Jehovah's Witnesses clearly worry the Orthodox Church. In turn, the Witnesses accuse the Russian church of encouraging the case against them.
"It's no mystery that this is coming from the Orthodox Church," said John Burns, lead attorney for the Witnesses.
Vassily Chernov, an Orthodox Church spokesman, denied any connection to the Moscow case, although he said the church did have concerns about the Witnesses' prohibition of blood transfusions. (The Witnesses believe one's soul resides in the blood.)
That ban on transfusions is a key part of the Moscow court case. Prosecutors charge that the practice endangers the lives of Witnesses and their children.
Another of the charges is that the Witnesses proclaim that their religious beliefs are the true and proper ones. Prosecutors contend that this claim incites interfaith discord.
"We say we have the best religion," Witnesses spokesman Christian Presber said. "But what religion DOESN'T say that?"
Chernov, the Orthodox spokesman, also denied numerous reports that Orthodox priests attack the Jehovah's Witnesses in their sermons.
"The Moscow patriarchate (of the Russian Orthodox Church) does indeed preach against the Jehovah's Witnesses," said Uzzell, an expert on the state of religion in the former Soviet Union. "It has actively sought to have its competitors suppressed by the state, flagrantly ignoring the excellent religious-freedom provisions of Russia's 1993 Constitution."
Despite those safeguards, a 1997 federal law re-established state control over religion and recognized just four traditional religions: Russian Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Islam.
The law has led to bureaucratic difficulties for the Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics, independent Baptists, evangelicals, Hare Krishnas, Scientologists and other "marginal" religions. They've faced obstacles renting halls, building churches, establishing seminaries and getting visas for their priests, pastors and missionaries. Religious scholars say it amounts to religious suppression cloaked in the habit of state bureaucracy.
At the same time, many church leaders, including those from the Jehovah's Witnesses, say they have good relations with the Russian federal government. The troubles come at the local levels.
The Witnesses claim their numbers are increasing in Russia by 7 percent a year. Their recruitment methods, for most Russians, remain unconventional at best.
The obligatory preaching of their members - the "witnessing" - can seem suspicious, hilarious or brazenly alarming to many Russians. This active and public proselytizing is a weird, new phenomenon for Russia, especially the handing out of literature on city streets in the dead of winter. Equally bizarre for Russians is the Witnesses' intrepid stair-climbing through drab concrete tenements to knock on the doors of complete strangers.
One man was so unnerved by a Witness appearing at his door that he attacked her. He broke two of her ribs, then successfully sued her for invasion of privacy.
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Atilla
One man was so unnerved by a Witness appearing at his door that he attacked her. He broke two of her ribs, then successfully sued her for invasion of privacy.
Oh, I love that line. I'll have to remember that one for the next visit. Of course that would never work here in the good old U.S. I would get sued and sent to Guantanomo or something.
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johnny cip
it seems the russians being under mind control for 80 years can see right tho the wts. hope they ban the craptower , and show other liberal counties how to do it... who said the russians are backwards? john
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dh
One man was so unnerved by a Witness appearing at his door that he attacked her. He broke two of her ribs, then successfully sued her for invasion of privacy.
hahaha
i'd like to say i cared about jw's in russia, but i don't, they will surely be falsifying the numbers of 7% per year, and who wants them knocking on the door anyway? maybe they should ban jw's entirely from the world they hate so much, and give them a state of their own to live in.
russian democracy? putin is an old style dictator!
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johnny cip
what really gets me is . alot of posters cry they hate the wt, mind control, shunning , waste of life serving the wt, they didn't get the right education , and every thing else the wt helped screw up in their lives family etc. then come back and say the wt shouldn't be banned when some country bounces the wts. when i fact the russians have just saved millions from this destructive cult. god bless the russian court. john
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Joker10
johnny, its descrimination. Why don't they target the evil Rssian Orthodox Church or the followers of violent Islam?
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johnny cip
joker maybe you would like a one way plane ticket to moscow. we can start taking up a collect here. and get you a few cases of wt's in russian to stand infront of red square. i'm sure we get get enough $$ for that plane ticket in a few hours. then about a year from now they may put your picture on an awack mag. about the JOKER that got 30 years hard labor in siberia. for following jehovah (wtbts) be a man and join your russian jw's in that spritual paradise . the GOLUGE.