MEMBER OF PRESIDENTIAL COUNCIL IS SURE THAT E.C.H.R. WILL REQUIRE RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES TO RETURN BUILDINGS TO JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
The decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (E.C.H.R.) regarding the liquidation of the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses and their societies in Russian regions are obviously predictable: the Strasbourg court will support the believers. This opinion was expressed on 29 May by a member of the Council on Human Rights under the president of the Russian Federation, attorney Vladimir Riakhovsky, Religiia i Pravo reports.
In the opinion of Vladimir Riakhovsky, the Russian Federation has again stepped on the very same rake, making reckless decisions regarding an effective ban of a whole religious movement. Subdivisions of Jehovah's Witnesses and their Administrative Center were liquidated on 20 April 2017 on the basis of a single indicator of extremist activity, namely "propaganda of their own exceptionality and superiority." This accusation can be made against any religious organization, which means that it is a clear demonstration of discrimination on religious grounds against the Witnesses.
In the soviet period, Vladimir Riakhovsky stresses, Jehovah's Witnesses were prosecuted, exiled, and sent to the camps; in 1991 they were rehabilitated and believers received certification as victims of political repressions. Since then, the doctrine and organization of Jehovah's Witnesses have not changed by virtue of their conservatism.
Vladimir Riakhovsky says that most likely the European court will order the Russian Federation to pay fines and return confiscated property of local organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses. Their property, which was converted in favor of the state after their liquidation, is valued at more than one billion rubles. As a rule, Russia regularly pays fines in accordance with decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, but it does not draw any systemic conclusions. However, for example, Russia did not fulfill the E.C.H.R. decision in the Yukos case, which possibly will be the case with Jehovah's Witnesses, also.
The head of the Center for Study of Problems of Religion and Society of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Roman Lunkin, stresses that the campaign against Jehovah's Witnesses is the consequence of the application to believers of the "antiextremism" policy and regulation of the public sphere on the whole. The broad (actually unlimited) definition of extremism in the law of the RF has long evoked criticism on the part of rights advocates, and expert analyses of the doctrine and activity of religious associations have become a field for arbitrariness, since they are conducted to please law enforcement agencies. In this way a policy for ensuring the safety of citizens has been turned into its exact opposite. Believers of many confessions have been embittered and become hostile or distrustful of authorities, and a substantial portion of religious communities, primarily protestants and Muslims, remain without registration.
On 7 May the European Court of Human Rights communicated the appeal, registered on 15 January, of the Glazov and another 394 local religious organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia with respect to the decision of the Russian Supreme Court of 20 April 2017 banning the activity of the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia and of local congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses as extremist. In December 2017, the E.C.H.R. partially communicated and promised to consider on priority basis the appeal of the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia and its chairman, Vasily Kalin, challenging the warning about the impermissibility of extremist activity issued to the Administrative Center by the prosecutor general's office in March 2016. (tr. by PDS, posted 30 May 2018)
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