Nineteen houses of Jehovah's Witnesses searched in Taganrog

In the Rostov Region, after August 25, operative groups of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) and the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) searched the houses of 19 Jehovah's Witnesses. This was reported by Gregory Martynov from the press service of the Administrative Centre of this religious organization.

"These law-abiding Christians are deeply shocked," he said. "Innocent people, including elders and children, are suffering solely from the fact that they are Jehovah's Witnesses."

"A criminal case was initiated, which relies of the 2009 decision to liquidate the local religious organization of Jehovah's Witnesses named 'Taganrog'.

Now this decision is pending assessment at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). It is noteworthy that a similar ban imposed in 2004 on the Moscow community of Jehovah's Witnesses by the Golovin Court in Moscow was recognized by the ECtHR as a gross violation of human rights and believers' freedoms," said Gregory Martynov.

Earlier, the lawyer Victor Zhenkov had stated that "the judicial decision on liquidation of the legal entity in Taganrog could not abolish the constitutional right to the freedom of religion." "It could not force the local Jehovah's Witnesses to become atheists or move to some other faith. Now the authorities have apparently decided to act on them in another way – by criminal prosecution. This is very similar to criminal prosecutions for faith in the Soviet Union," he said.

For reference: The Jehovah's Witnesses is an international Christian religious organization established in the second half of the 19th century. Today, they run their religious activities in 236 countries and have about seven million members. The governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses is Brooklyn (USA). In Russia, the organization exists for about 100 years (initially it was officially registered in 1913) and now has more than 158,000 members.