Jehovah’s Witnesses

For Immediate Release
January 19, 2011
(Russian)

Russian courts fail to condemn unlawful disruption of religious service and illegal detainment of a youth

YEKATERINBURG, Russia—A peaceful meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses that was disrupted in the city of Asbest, Sverdlovsk Region, on Sunday, May 24, 2009, is the basis for continued legal action by Jehovah’s Witnesses. On that occasion, armed police and FSB officers raided the gathering, escorted the worshippers to the police station, and denied them their right to legal assistance. Mikhail, a 15-year-old male who was present at the meeting, was placed in a home for social rehabilitation.

On August 10, 2010, the local Asbest court condemned the raid and the subsequent actions of the law-enforcement agencies, but it refused to pronounce the disruption of the meeting and the detainment of the teenager as unlawful. That decision was upheld by the Sverdlovsk Regional Court on December 16, 2010.

Attorney Ye. S. Chernikov stated: “The courts ignored both the standards of the Russian law, which guarantee the protection of such worship services from state intervention, and the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the Kuznetsov case. In that case, the Court condemned the similar disruption of a worship service of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the nearby city of Chelyabinsk. The decisions of the courts in this present case deprived the applicants of any hope of receiving judicial protection from the arbitrary actions of the officials and, once again, called into question the effectiveness of the Russian judiciary system.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses in the city of Asbest, particularly Mikhail and his parents, are determined to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Contacts:
In Russia: Grigory Martynov, tel. +7 812 702 2691
In Belgium: The European Association of Jehovah’s Christian Witnesses, tel. +32 2 782 0015
In USA: J. R. Brown, tel. +1 718 560 5600