These neophytes should read their own literature more carefully. Their leaders only promise spiritual health. They are not guaranteed protection from physical harm while following their beliefs - believers must be willing to endure beatings, imprisonment, starving, or bleeding to death. Until paradise, of course. Then everything will be all right.
The Watchtower
, January 1, 1964, p. 13: "Hitler, a Roman Catholic, the arm of his church in Germany, forbade Jehovah's witnesses to preach the kingdom of God, and these modern-day Christians had to say to Hitler's Gestapo police: 'Whether it is righteous in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, judge for yourselves.' They kept preaching even though
10,000 of them were put in concentration camps and over
4,000 died there. The rest nearly starved to death. The war's end aided their survival."
http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/howmany.htmI wrote to the Society for an assignment in Utah. We moved and served where the need was great on a starvation diet with two little boys. We started the work in Beaver and worked with Cedar City and later with the Bountiful Congregation when we almost starved to death in those small Mormon towns. In the Salt Lake area it was very slow to have the brothers accept us. I had to make an impression with my record of success to prove I was worthy of their recognition. - Phil Benson
http://www.exjws.net/pioneers/benson.htm
..Though outlawed, the 22,000 Witnesses in Malawi still refused to buy cards and still moved from hut to hut extolling the Kingdom of God......According to Awake, the official publication of the sect in New York, between ten and sixty Witnesses were killed in Malawi and another 350 died in the squalid conditions of the Zambia refugee camp...
http://archive.thenation.com/Summaries/v217i0002_08.htm
Even months before Malawi gained its independence on July 6, 1964, the Christian witnesses of Jehovah, from January to March 1964, experienced a wave of brutal violence and ruthless persecution because of their stand in this matter. At that time 1,081 of their homes and more than 100 of their Kingdom Halls were burned down or otherwise demolished. Also, 588 fields of maize (corn), millet, beans, casava and cotton were destroyed. Many Witnesses were hospitalized, women were raped, and eight Witnesses died from beatings or were killed outright. For weeks many of these persecuted Christians had to sleep out in the open wilderness bush with hardly anything to eat, while enduring the rigors of the rainy season and the threat of snakes and other wild animals.
http://www.jwfiles.com/malawi.htm
Dr. Carl J. Saphier led a study at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, NY, of the maternal death rate among Jehovah's Witnesses. The report indicates a death rate of 521 deaths per 100,000 live births--a rate nearly 44 times higher than that among the general US population. The precision of that number is in doubt because it was based on only two deaths. Sr. Saphier said "The findings imply that special care is required for women who are Jehovah's Witnesses, including special counseling prior to delivery, methods of minimizing the blood loss at delivery, and fast treatment for any hemorrhage."
http://www.religioustolerance.org/medical2.htm
In June 1985, 10 year-old boy by the name of Dai Suzuki died of blood loss. His parents were Jehovah's Witnesses. Dai was hit by a dump truck and sustained open fractures of both legs with rapid blood loss. The parents refused blood transfusion against doctor's advice. Dai died in 5 hours after the accident. This was not the first case of death due to refusal of blood transfusion by Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan. Still, this case gathered nation-wide attention, mainly because of the age of the child and the way the media dealt with the case. The way these parents defended their decision appeared incomprehensible to the general public in Japan. Many critical articles and books on this religion appeared around that time. This incidence gave a wake-up call to Japan where the number of Jehovah's Witnesses were already exploding. After this incidence, there have been a number of media reports regarding the deaths of Witnesses and their family due to refusal of blood transfusion.
http://www.jwic.com/historyj.htm
Threats Against Lawyers Wife and Young ChildrenIt is believed that the Uzbek authorities are behind anonymous night-time telephone calls and continuing threats being made against the wife and young children of Rustam Satdanov, a lawyer forced to flee Uzbekistan and seek political asylum in the USA for his work defending Jehovah's Witnesses. Satdanov received political asylum on 11 May. His wife, Asiya Satdanova, and their young children, who are still in Tashkent, told Forum 18 News Service that they are being anonymously threatened with "serious difficulties" if Satdanov does not return immediately to Uzbekistan. He himself told Forum 18 that if he returns the authorities would, using fabricated criminal charges, punish him for defending religious believers.
www.persecution.org
