Moscow Court Vindicates Jehovah's Witnesses After Years of Persecution

Russia: Effort to outlaw the group is dismissed. Action is called a victory for religious freedom. 
By Robin Dixon

2001 February 24 -- MOSCOW--Earlier generations of Yaroslav Sivulsky's family were persecuted as Jehovah's Witnesses in the Soviet Union, and then the state still sought to ban the group as a dangerous cult--even in democratic Russia.

     Finally, in what was called an important victory for religious freedom in Russia, Sivulsky saw justice done Friday when a Moscow court threw out a case that sought to outlaw the group in the capital.

     In 1998, an anti-cult group called the Committee to Save Our Youth pushed for action against the Jehovah's Witnesses. Prosecutors in Moscow's northern district launched the case in early 1999 based on Russia's controversial 1997 law on religion, designed to limit the activities of foreign religious organizations. [Since Russian Molokans and Doukhobor are not foreign, they are no longer being harassed in Russia.]

     For Sivulsky, the case was a flashback to the repressive Stalin regime 50 years ago when his parents, grandparents and thousands of other Jehovah's Witness families were exiled to Siberia. His father got seven years in a labor camp, he said.

     "The accusations were basically the same," he said Friday. "The accusation was that their religion ran counter to the ideology of the Communist Party."

     Sivulsky, 33, was jailed for 18 months in 1987 for refusing to serve in the Soviet army. Believers do not accept blood transfusions, refuse to salute any national flag or do military service. [Russian Molokans have not resisted the draft much since Communism.]

     "In court [in 1987], I refused the services of a lawyer because the lawyer, the prosecution and the judge all played on the saroup, said the Moscow case was based on absurdities.

     She cited a "stupid accusation that my clients don't celebrate the [Russian] Orthodox Christmas--but Muslims or Jews don't celebrate it either."

     Russian Orthodox Deacon Andrei Kurayev, professor of theology at St. Tikhon's Institute and Moscow State University, insisted that it was clear that the Jehovah's Witnesses are "a totalitarian sect" that must be resisted strongly by the Orthodox Church's anti-missionary program.

     "This sect tries to control people's consciousness," he charged. "They very strictly limit all the information that their followers get. Thus, they are a threat not only for the state but for individuals as well."

     But he said he feels that it is up to the Orthodox Church to struggle against such groups.

     "We should work hard and struggle for people's souls rather than wait for courts to ban them," he said.

     The Russian Orthodox Church, which bitterly opposes missionary activities, was one of the main proponents of the 1997 religion law, which forced many denominations to go through a difficult registration process. The only ones excused were those defined as "traditional" to Russia: Russian Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. [And Molokans, and Doukhobors]

     The Salvation Army's registration was rejected by the city of Moscow in 1999, and it has been struggling since then to have the decision overturned. 

Sergei L. Loiko of The Times' Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times

Also see: Russia Relaxes Jehovah's Witness Policy

Orthodox activists burn books again

2001 April 9 -- Associated Press TBILISI, Georgia - Georgian Orthodox Church activists have burned books printed for the local Jehovah's Witnesses community while police stood by and watched in the second such incident in a month. 

The book burning last week by members of the Christian Society, an Orthodox group, took place near the outdoor market in the city of Rustavi, about 30 miles west of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

Christian Tresber, an adviser for Jehovah's Witnesses in Georgia, said the Orthodox activists stole the books after breaking into an apartment building where Jehovah's Witnesses gathered for prayer. 

Local police did not intervene as the activists burned books for about three hours, Rustavi-2 television reported. 

Earlier in March, a defrocked Orthodox priest and several dozen followers broke into a printing house and burned copies of a book printed for a Jehovah's Witness community, news reports said. The same group burned several tons of Baptist literature in the town of Mtskheta. 

Jehovah's Witnesses have sought to be recognized as an official religious denomination in Georgia, and they were registered by a district court in Tbilisi. But another court later annulled the registration, and the Supreme Court upheld that ruling this month. 

The Supreme Court said no religious group can be registered in the absence of a Georgian law on religion, which remains in the works.

Church leaders in Georgia, Russia and other predominantly Orthodox Christian countries of the former Soviet Union have decried the influx of foreign religious groups since the 1991 Soviet collapse.