Jehovah’s Witnesses

For Immediate Release
February 16, 2012
(Russian)

Russian authorities target official Web site of Jehovah’s Witnesses

CHITA, Russia—A report posted on the Web site of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation informed its readers that the District Court in the city of Chita, located in the Zabaykalsky Territory, ruled to block access in the region of Chita to jw-russia.org, the official Web site for Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia. The ruling was in response to demands from a local deputy prosecutor, Denis Kovylchenko, and was issued without involving the site’s owners in the legal proceedings or informing them of the prosecutor’s claim.

Mr. Kovylchenko falsely alleged that the Witnesses’ Web site is “an electronic resource of an extremist nature,” and failed to produce any evidence supporting his claim. His statement contradicts the fact that the publications of Jehovah’s Witnesses are printed in many languages and legally distributed worldwide and enjoyed by millions of readers. For example, the Watchtower magazine has been in publication for some 130 years, with a monthly distribution of 42,182,000 and is available in 194 languages. However, several of these publications have been pronounced “extremist” in Russia. Jehovah’s Witnesses have filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights contesting this accusation.

The human rights-oriented Web site, Sova Center, commented on the District Court’s decision: “We do not consider the accepted interpretation of the law as lawful. With this interpretation, Internet providers are ordered to shut down access to a Web site, if any texts that have been declared extremist are discovered on them. In addition, we consider the ban on the materials of Jehovah’s Witnesses to be unlawful.”

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