Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of more than 8.3 million adherents involved in evangelism and an annual Memorial attendance of more than 20 million. Jehovah's Witnesses are best known for their door-to-door preaching, distributing literature such as The Watchtower and Awake! and refusing military service and blood transfusions.
Russia’s Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal launched by Jehovah’s Witnesses against the group’s ban in the country. It took a panel of three judges of the Supreme Court less than an hour of conference in order to leave without change the decision made earlier by Judge Yury Ivanenko for liquidating and banning of all registered organizations of this religion without exception. In April, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the justice ministry which, a month earlier, had declared Jehovah’s Witnesses an extremist organization. The denomination says it has 175,000 members in Russia - a country where it was persecuted during the Stalin era.
A survey from the independent polling agency Levada indicated that 79 percent of Russians supported the ban, though more than half of the respondents admitted they knew nothing about the case. The ban also had the powerful support of the Russian Orthodox Church, which counts more than 70 percent of the country's population as followers.
The international spokesman for Jehovah's Witnesses, David A. Semonian, said that the verdict in March did not come as a surprise. “While we were prepared for a negative ruling, it is still very disappointing,” he said in a statement. “It is very concerning that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, powerful elements within Russia continue to frame our organization as extremist. We can only hope a fair evaluation of the facts will eventually prevail and our right to worship in Russia will be legally restored.”
The group's Russia spokesman, Yaroslav Sivulskiy, told gathered journalists in the packed courtroom that “religious freedom in Russia is over. It's a very sad situation for our country. As you could see today, there were no real facts of any extremism on part of Jehovah's Witnesses. It's all about bad literature and intolerance. Now anyone who studies the Bible can be jailed.”
Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses will be required to hand over all its properties, known as Kingdom Halls, to the Russian government. According to Russia’s government, holy texts of this religious group violate an anti-extremism law, effectively placing it in the same category as groups like the Islamic State (ISIS).
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