By Theodore Shoebat
The Russian government has banned Jehovah’s Witness literature, including their magazine, and deems the Watchtower Society as a dangerous and extremist cult. They are doing the same thing to Islamic literature as well. Good for Russia for squashing down these satanic cults. I did an entire video on this and it can be watched here:
All members of a Jehovah’s Witness compound in Taganrog have been deemed as extremists and dangerous to society, and seven of them have all been fined and four of the seven have been given suspended prison terms of at least five years.
Though their custodial punishments were suspended, those who were sentenced with imprisonment were given five years probation “during which time they may not change their places of work, study or residence without notifying the authorities.”
Both the Jehovah’s Witness community in Taganrog and another in Samara have been put listed as “terrorist and extremist” organizations. The Taganrog JW compound as even been listed amongst “organisations recognised as terrorist or extremist in the member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization”.
The Taganrog Jehovah’s Witness community was eventually completely forbidden and dissolved. The Samara JWs were warned by the government never to distribute Watchtower literature, but in the Spring of 2014, the presence of the banned writings were discovered amongst them, and the state ordered the writings to be destroyed.
Viktor Zhenkov, a lawyer who defended some of the JWs, said:
Law enforcement agencies in Taganrog and throughout Russia can use this decision in a propaganda campaign to continue to oppress the Jehovah’s Witnesses, threatening them with real criminal punishment for practicing their faith.
In Crimia, “Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses have faced raids and seizures of religious literature which the Russian authorities controversially regard as ‘extremist’.”
One account describes the suppression of JWs in the following:
On December 8, 2009 the Supreme Court of Russia upheld the ruling of the lower courts which pronounced 34 pieces of Jehovah’s Witness literature extremist, including their magazine The Watchtower, in the Russian language, and the book for children, My Book of Bible Stories. Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that this ruling affirms a misapplication of the Federal Law on Counteracting Extremist Activity to Jehovah’s Witnesses. The ruling upheld the confiscation of property of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Taganrog (Rostov Region) in Russia, and might set a precedent for similar cases in other areas of Russia, as well as placing literature of Jehovah’s Witnesses on a list of literature unacceptable throughout Russia. The Chairman of the Presiding Committee of the Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia, Vasily Kalin, said: “I am very concerned that this decision will open a new era of opposition against Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose right to meet in peace, to access religious literature and to share the Christian hope contained in the Gospels, is more and more limited.” Kalin also stated, “When I was young I was sent to Siberia for being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and because my parents were reading The Watchtower, the same journal being unjustly declared ‘extremist’ in these proceedings.”
The Russian government’s negative view of the JWs is based on the violent and antisocial nature of the cult. The Watchtower Society rejects any form of blood transfusion. On the JW website it says:
The Bible commands that we not ingest blood. So we should not accept whole blood or its primary components in any form, whether offered as food or as a transfusion.
Thus, JW parents would rather allow their children, who need blood, to die, then have a hospital provide they need to survive. This is dangerous and violent, and no civilized, and Christian, nation should permit such a group to thrive and propagate in its society.
It is no wonder that Russia attempted to ban the JWs’ official website from being accessed. On 2013 the Tsentralniy District Court of Tver attempted to establish the ban, but it was later struck down.
While the JW cult is not completely abolished, it is most definitely suppressed, and I only pray that it will eventually be entirely extirpated for the dangerous religion that it is.