North-Caucasian Jehovah's Witnesses state pressure by power agents

In the cities of Prokhladny and Stavropol, power agents had planted extremist materials on Jehovah's Witnesses, who held their worship, said the Administrative Centre of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. The believers think that the authorities are implementing their targeted policy of combating the religious community.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on March 28 the Prosecutor's Office of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR) reported that the court of Prokhladny passed a warning to local Jehovah's Witnesses for spreading extremist publications. On March 23, Stavropol Orthodox activists held pickets against the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses.

On March 27, power agents searched the building of Jehovah's Witnesses in Prokhladny.

According to the Administrative Centre of Jehovah's Witnesses, on March 30 and 31 searches were also conducted in the communities of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Saransk and ended with detection of banned materials.

All the books and brochures of Jehovah's Witnesses, put on the list of extremist materials, are based on the Bible, said Yaroslav Sivulskiy, the spokesman of the above Administrative Centre of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. According to his version, law enforcement bodies are trying to discredit Jehovah's Witnesses.

Now, after the court warning, the community is on the verge of closure, Vladimir Novitskiy, the President of the Russian Section of the International Human Rights Society, has explained.

Lev Levinson, an expert of the Human Rights Institute, has treated the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses as an attempt to protect the Russian Orthodox Church from its rivals.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.