Chair of Jehovah’s Witnesses branch fined for distributing extremist literature

© flickr.com/Ian Crowther

11:30 25/01/2017

MOSCOW, January 25 (RAPSI, Diana Gutsul) – Chairman of the Jehovah’s Witnesses branch in the town of Dzerzhinsk has been fined 4,000 rubles ($67) for keeping and distributing extremist literature banned in Russia, the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court announced on its website on Tuesday.

According to case papers, local prosecutors during a field check at the organization’s premises found two booklets declared extremist and added to the list of prohibited literature.

The booklets were seized by court.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have had many legal problems in Russia.

On October 12, a court in the Jewish Autonomous Region ruled to ban a branch of “The Jehovah’s Witnesses” in Birobidzhan because of distributing extremist literature by the organization.

On June 16, Russia’s Supreme Court declared “The Jehovah’s Witnesses of Stary Oskol” in the Belgorod Region an extremist organization and ruled to liquidate it.

On June 9, the Jehovah’s Witnesses of Belgorod was banned as extremist organization.

In March 2015, a court in Tyumen fined the organization 50,000 rubles ($792) and seized prohibited literature.

In January 2014, a court in Kurgan ruled to ban the organization’s booklets as extremist. The books talk about how to have a happy life, what you can hope for, how to develop good relations with God and what you should know about God and its meaning.

In late December 2013, the leader of the sect’s group in Tobolsk, Siberia was charged with extremism and the prevention of a blood transfusion that nearly led to the death of a female member of the group.

In 2004, a court in Moscow dissolved and banned a Jehovah’s Witnesses group on charges of recruiting children, encouraging believers to break from their families, inciting suicide and preventing believers from accepting medical assistance.

Jehovah's Witnesses is an international religious organization based in Brooklyn, New York. Since 2004 sever branches and chapters of the organization were banned and shut down in various regions of Russia.