Showing posts with label Moscow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moscow. Show all posts

Tuesday 19 April 2016

Russia's battle against the Jehovah’s Witnesses

Last Friday Russia’s Supreme Court declined to ban the Jehovah’s Witnesses of Tyumen as extremist organization, RAPSI, the Russian Legal Information Agency, reports from the courtroom.

Already 12 years ago a Jehovah’s Witnesses group in Moscow was charged of recruiting children, encouraging believers to break from their families, inciting suicide and preventing believers from accepting medical assistance and had to be dissolved and banned.

In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights overturned that court ruling and ruled that Russia should pay 70,000 euros to the defendants.

Late December 2013 already the leader of thereligious group in Tobolsk, Siberia was charged with extremism and the prevention of a blood transfusion that nearly led to the death of a female member of the group.

In January 2014, after one year of debates the court in Kurgan ruled in favor of a lawsuit filed by the prosecutor’s office of Kurgan in the Urals to declare the Jehovah’s Witnesses book Keep Yourselves in God’s Love and the booklet Resist the Spirit of a Changing World extremist.
The decision was  forwarded to the Justice Ministry for inclusion in the ministry’s list of extremist materials.

The books talk about how to have a happy life, what you can hope for, how to develop good relations with God and what you should know about God and its meaning.

In March 2015, a court in Tyumen fined the organization 50,000 rubles ($752) and seized prohibited literature.

The Tyumen Regional Court ordered the liquidation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses branch in 2015. The court granted a motion filed by prosecutors and declared the group extremist.The Supreme Court thus reversed the lower court’s ruling.

According to a representative for the Jehovah’s Witnesses branch, the case has been framed up.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have had many legal problems in Russia.



>
Find to read:

Jehovah’s Witnesses literature declared extremist

Jehovah’s Witnesses website, books declared “extremist” in Russia

 

+++

Thursday 9 April 2015

Meeting to focus on humanitarian issues for Syria

English: Bashar al-Assad under pressure
English: Bashar al-Assad under pressure (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The war in Syria is going on already much too long, having demanded lots of innocent civilians and having made the rebel fundamentalist groups stronger but also more divided. In the four years the battle is going on there seems to be more loosers than gainers.
Neither President Bashar al-Assad's government or his opposers seem any nearer to resolving the conflict.

After the US-Iranian (nuclear) deal, and (US Secretary of State) it will be the first meeting whereby John Kerry declined to rule out talking to President Bashar al-Assad, to come to discuss and to find a solution to end the Syrian civil war.

With key opposition figures absent, little progress is expected on resolving the shifting conflict.
Instead, the discussions are expected to focus on humanitarian issues and serve as a way for Russia, a main backer of the Syrian regime, to build its profile as a potential mediator in the conflict.

+++