Moscow Police detains Jehovah’s Witnesses during the Memorial of Christ’s Death
April 14th, 2006 | Posted in: , JWs vs. the World | Keywords: Jehovah, Russia, Moscow | 175 Comments
“They burst in at the height of the service, when the symbols were being passed,” Kanin, the spokesman of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia said, referring to the bread and wine used to symbolize Jesus Christ’s body and blood. “They wouldn’t even allow them to finish the ceremony. There was nothing secretive going on there.”
The Memorial was attended by about 200 Jehovah’s Witnesses. The police, who arrived in 10 squad cars after Moscow citizens reported the meeting, detained 14 Jehovah’s Witnesses and questioned the detainees between two and four hours before they were released.
The police told the worshipers that they were violating a 2004 ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses in Moscow.
In June 2004, the Moscow City Court barred the denomination from engaging in religious activities, citing a law that bans religious groups deemed to incite hatred or intolerance.
Kalin, the spokesman of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, said the ban applied to Jehovah’s Witnesses only as a legal entity and that the Russian Constitution guaranteed members freedom of assembly.
The U.S. State Department’s 2005 report on religious freedom, released in November, said that “some federal agencies and many local authorities” in Russia “continued to restrict the rights of various religious minorities” and cited specifically the 2004 ban of Jehovah’s Witnesses activities in Moscow.
The report cited “indications that the security services, including the Federal Security Service, increasingly treated the leadership of some minority religious groups as security threats.”
Criticism concerning the lack of religious freedom has been repeatedly dismissed by government and Russian Orthodox Church officials.
There are about 10,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses in Moscow and 142,439 in whole Russia, according to Watchtower statistics.
Sources used: MOSNEWS.COM and The Moscow Times.


