For Immediate Release
September 29, 2001
Date set for Moscow retrial aimed at banning Jehovah's Witnesses
MOSCOW—The retrial aimed at banning Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow is scheduled to start on October 30, 2001, in the Golovinsky Intermunicipal District Court. At the preliminary hearing on September 24, Judge Vera Konstantinovna Dubinskaya directed the parties to prepare for a further expert study of the religious literature of Jehovah's Witnesses.
An application is before the Supreme Court in Russia to review the appellate Moscow City Court's ordering of a retrial. Russian lawyer Galina Krylova commented: "If the Supreme Court will only consider the evidence of the appeal court's blatant bias, it will agree with the conclusion of the trial court and all previous investigators - there is no basis to ban Jehovah's Witnesses."
Since 1995 the Moscow's Prosecutor's Office, acting on the persistent complaints of an anti-cult extremist group entitled The Committee for Salvation of Youth From Totalitarian Sects, has been pursuing a lengthy prosecution of the Religious Community of Jehovah's Witnesses in both criminal and civil proceedings. Investigatory and judicial bodies in Moscow on six separate occasions have established that there is no evidence of any illegal acts on the part of the Community and its members.
During the trial in the Golovinsky Court, the prosecutor stated she wanted a ban on Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow and throughout Russia. The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation reregistered the "Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia" on April 29, 1999. Under Russia's 1997 law On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations, Jehovah's Witnesses have successfully registered 382 communities in 71 regions of Russia. However, Moscow has repeatedly denied reregistration to Jehovah's Witnesses. Applications by the Witnesses to lower courts are delayed or dismissed on dubious technical grounds. John Burns, a Canadian human rights lawyer, asked, "Why is Moscow, in its attempts to ban religious minorities, allowed to act independently of the rest of the Russian Federation?" He added, "The whole process can only be described as prosecutorial abuse and harassment of a religious minority."
The Religious Community of Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow was registered by the Moscow Justice Department on December 30, 1993. Today it is made up of approximately 10,000 practicing Jehovah's Witnesses.
Contacts: Russian-speaking, Jaroslav Sivulskii, Mobile Telephone: + (7) 8 902 682 8197
English-speaking, Paul Gillies, Mobile Telephone: + 44 7775 833880