Wednesday March 28 7:18 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010328/wl/georgia_jehovah_s_witnesses_1.html
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - Georgian Orthodox Church activists on Wednesday burned books printed for the local Jehovah's Witnesses community as police stood by and watched in the second such incident this month.
The book burning by members of the Christian Society, an Orthodox group, took place near the outdoor market in the city of Rustavi, some 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 Tuesday 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 this month, 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.