candidlynuts

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Posts by candidlynuts

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  17

  jehovah's witnesses can serve as police??

  by candidlynuts in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i know this is from 2003 but i havent been here that long.

  anyone recall this or comment?

  secret order banishes religious minorities from police.

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  candidlynuts

  a follow up article..

  Police reinstate Jehovah's Witness

  By Felix Corley

  Forum 18 News Service (25.04.2003) / HRWF Int. (24.04.2003) - Email: [email protected] - Website http://www.hrwf.net - A Jehovah's Witness who was sacked from her job with the police in the wake of a secret December decree requiring members of minority faiths to be removed from the police (see separate F18News article) has regained her job. After Zemfira Voskanyan from Stepanavan in Armenia's northern Lori Region challenged her dismissal in court the police backed down. "We reinstated her in her job," Colonel Arshaluis Budagyan, deputy head of the Lori regional police personnel department who had originally sacked her, told Forum 18 News Service on 25 April. "She is back at her desk." He blamed a "mistake" for Voskanyan's dismissal, saying the order to remove non-Armenian Apostolic Church members from work in the police applies only to serving officers, not to support staff.
  
  However, Drew Holiner, an American lawyer who works for the Jehovah's Witness centre near the Russian city of St Petersburg, who represented Voskanyan in court, remains concerned that she could still be removed from her job for her faith.

  Voskanyan, who was sacked on 20 February as head of the accounts department of the Stepanavan police, had worked for the police for nearly two decades. She earns 23,000 drams (297 Norwegian kroner, 38 Euros or 42 US dollars) a month and says it is the only means of supporting her 13-year old son.

  The police legal department's written decision to fire Voskanyan stated that she "is a member of Jehovah's Witnesses' religious and sectarian organisation. After work she participates at the religious lessons." It added that the dismissal followed Labour Code regulations for dismissing an employee when "incompatibility with the work status is detected".
  
  "Your being a Jehovah's Witness and working in the police is incompatible," Colonel Budagyan reportedly declared.

  Holiner reported that at the first hearing on 9 April at the Lori regional court Budagyan admitted that Voskanyan had been dismissed solely on the basis of her faith as a Jehovah's Witness. He based the dismissal on Order 551-A, issued by the head of the Armenian police, Lt-Gen. Haik Harutunyan on 3 December. Although Voskanyan's legal team asked the court to instruct the police service to make the text of this order available to them, the court refused. The case was then adjourned.

  At the second hearing on 22 April, the police brought an order unilaterally restoring Voskanyan to her position and providing her with back pay for the months she had not been at work. "There's a certain aspect to this, though," Holiner warned. "The court terminated the proceedings saying there was no further basis for them." He told Forum 18 that Voskanyan was reinstated only on a formality: that the police had failed to consult her trade union. "It fails to remove the threat to her job caused by this discriminatory order," Holiner insisted. He said she is now considering a further appeal.

  Members of religious minorities in Armenia - especially Jehovah's Witnesses - face strong popular dislike. The dominant Armenian Apostolic Church enjoys extensive influence over public policy.

  Source: F18News http://www.forum18.org/
• 
  17

  jehovah's witnesses can serve as police??

  by candidlynuts in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i know this is from 2003 but i havent been here that long.

  anyone recall this or comment?

  secret order banishes religious minorities from police.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  candidlynuts

  i know this is from 2003 but i havent been here that long. anyone recall this or comment?

  Secret order banishes religious minorities from police

  By Felix Corley

  Forum 18 News Service (25.04.2003) / HRWF Int. (29.04.2003) Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email [email protected] - Human rights activists, the Baptists and the Jehovah's Witnesses have criticised a secret order issued by the head of the police service last December banning members of religious minorities from working for the police. "This order is unconstitutional and violates human rights," Mikael Danielian, chairman of the Helsinki Association, told Forum 18 News Service from the Armenian capital Yerevan on 25 April. Officials are reluctant to discuss the issue. Asked by Forum 18 whether in the light of the order members of religious minorities can work for the police, Edik Kazaryan, chief of staff of the police service, responded: "This is the first I have heard of it, so I cannot reply to the question." He declined to answer any further questions over the telephone but promised an official response in writing.

  Forum 18 contacted the secretariat of the police service in Yerevan on 25 April, but they declined a telephone interview with Lt-Gen Hayk Harutyunyan, the head of the police service who signed the order.

  Colonel Arshaluis Budagyan, deputy head of the personnel department of the Lori regional police who had originally sacked Jehovah's Witness Zemfira Voskanyan in February on the basis of the order, told Forum 18 on 25 April that it applies to serving police officers, not to "technical staff" employed by the police. However, he refused to answer questions on why members of religious minorities cannot serve as police officers. "I haven't seen this order," he claimed. "I'm new in this job." He then put the phone down.

  Echoing Danielian's criticisms of the order was Asatur Nahapetyan, general secretary of the Baptist Union. "We regard this order as very negative," he told Forum 18 from Yerevan on 25 April. He said he had first learnt about it back in January from Baptists who work in the police but had not seen a copy of the text. He regarded the order as part of a general pattern of obstruction to the activity of any religious group apart from the dominant Armenian Apostolic Church.

  Drew Holiner, a Jehovah's Witness lawyer who defended Voskanyan in court, also vigorously condemned the order. "It is clearly discriminatory," he told Forum 18 from Yerevan on 23 April. "It requires dismissal in pretty unambiguous terms of those who belong to other groups than the Armenian Apostolic Church." He declared that such discrimination violates the Armenian Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European human rights convention.

  The order, No. 551-A, signed by Lt-Gen Harutyunyan on 3 December, was apparently sent to all police departments. Employees of the police appear to have been given it to read soon after it was issued and some were required to sign it to say they had read and understood it. However, the order has not been published and Forum 18 has so far been unable to obtain a copy of it from the police service, from human rights community or from diplomatic sources in Yerevan.

  On 18 April, local journalist Vahan Ishkhanyan published on the news website ArmeniaNow what he said were extracts from the order. He said that the order specified that police department employees who are members of any religion other than the Armenian Apostolic Church must be identified and those who do not recant their faith are subject to dismissal. According to the order, "unlike the Armenian traditional national Church, new religious movements and organisations represent corrosive totalitarian cults or sects. Their activities are directed against individuals and families as well as society."

  Attempts by the Jehovah's Witnesses to obtain a copy of the order through the court failed. Likewise the Helsinki Association failed. "Our branch in Vanadzor asked the local police verbally for a copy of the order but they refused," Danielian declared.

  Holiner objected not only to the content of the order but to the fact that it was unpublished. "Article 6 of the Armenian Constitution says that normative acts which are not published have no legal effect," he declared. "There is a question as to whether this order is valid."
  
  Rustam Khachatryan, a Yerevan-based Jehovah's Witness lawyer, told Forum 18 on 23 April that Voskanyan is the first and so far only Jehovah's Witness to have been sacked as a result of the December order. "Some other Jehovah's Witnesses have left their jobs in the police because of the atmosphere, though not specifically because of the order."

  Nahapetyan told Forum 18 that to his knowledge no Baptists had so far been dismissed from the police as a result of the order. "No-one has had any problems yet, but maybe that will come soon." An official of the Baha'i community in Yerevan also confirmed to Forum 18 on 25 April that none of their members had encountered problems as a result of the order. Nor had the Helsinki Association learnt of anyone apart from Voskanyan who had been sacked in the wake of the order.

  The Helsinki Association plans in the coming days to work on having the order revoked, Danielian reported. "It is difficult to say whether we will be successful."

  Source: http://www.forum18.org
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  1

  condemned unwilling witnesses

  by candidlynuts in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  isa.

  43:10-12; 62:2; rev.

  " (isa.

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  candidlynuts

  Isa. 43:10-12; 62:2; Rev. 12:17."
  

  1. The witnesses of this passage cannot be the self-styled "Jehovah's Witnesses" for the following reasons:
  2. The witnesses of this passage are ransomed by the price of Egypt, Ethiopia and Seba. (vs. 3). J.W.'s claim to be ransomed by the body of Christ.
  3. The witnesses of this passage are condemned: "Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob; but you have been weary of me, O Israel! . . . But you have burdened me with your sins, you have wearied me with your iniquities." (Isa. 43:22,24, R.S.V.). When have J.W.'s merited this description?
  4. The witnesses of this passage are condemned for not bringing sheep for sacrifice or honouring God in their sacrifices. (vs. 23). This verse cannot apply to J.W.'s since they have never offered animal sacrifices.
     
• The witnesses of this passage are unwilling witnesses. They witness to the truth of God's prophetic Word (Isa. 41:22,23) in their persecution, scattering and regathering. (Deut. 28; Lev. 26; Jer. 32:37). But the J.W.'s claim that one who is not a willing witness is "not with the organization".2
  
• Similarly the "new name" of Isa. 62 is "Hephzibah" (Isa. 62:4) and not "Jehovah's witnesses". It is the name of a city - Jerusalem (vs. 7), not an organization.

i found this discussion at http://www.wrestedscriptures.com/a05jw/isaiah43v10.html and had never put this much thought into why the name "jehovah's witness" came to be. or how inaccurate it could be to use that name. i dont k now what the wrestedscriptures.com website is or what its belief is but i found this article interesting.