The human rights test case involving Jehovah’s Witnesses opened in Moscow today
with a sense of farce.
After six years of criminal investigation and legal process, including a trial
that lasted two years, the sum of evidence produced in court by prosecutor,
Tatyana Kondratyeva, was a list of articles of which she disapproved that had
appeared in The Watchtower magazine, published by Jehovah’s Witnesses, and
photocopies of Biblical material considered at Witness meetings throughout the
world.
Ms. Kondratyeva said she was unable to provide any specific evidence of
wrongdoing by members of the Witnesses’ congregations.
Defence counsel motions to dismiss the trial based on the violations of the
European Convention on Human Rights were denied.
Defence counsel Artur Leontyev referred the court to the finding of the
European Court at Strasbourg in a 1996 decision in favour of Jehovah’s
Witnesses (Manoussakis v. Greece): “The right to freedom of religion as
guaranteed under the Convention excludes any discretion on the part of the
State to determine whether religious beliefs or the means used to express such
beliefs are legitimate.”
At stake is the freedom of worship of 10,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses in Moscow and
120,000 members of their 400 registered congregations throughout Russia. The
Prosecution’s drive to liquidate the Witnesses in Moscow and throughout Russia
has triggered fears among Human rights observers that this will have a domino
effect as they move against other non-Orthodox faiths.
Chair of the International Helsinki Group in Moscow, Ludmilla Alexseyeva,
commented: “Modern-day persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses has been carrying on
for six years. Surely it will not take another six years before justice
triumphs.”