Religious issues and persecution – Bimonthly Digest September 16-30

 

30.09.2024 – Details of the raid against Jehovah’s Witnesses in Samara: law enforcement officers used force against one believer

JW – On September 16, 2024, in Samara, law enforcement officers detained Samvel Babayan, who professes the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Despite the poor health of the believer, the court sent him to a pre-trial detention center. A criminal case on extremism has been opened against the man.

These events were preceded by a search and interrogations, which took place on the same day. The security forces took Samvel, his wife and 17-year-old son to the local department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The young man was taken separately from his parents, on the way a police officer threatened him with a long term of imprisonment in a colony if he did not incriminate his relatives.

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27.09.2024 – The appeal did not change the sentence of three believers from Novocherkassk, including a woman, 68.

JW- On September 26, 2024, the Rostov Regional Court, chaired by Judge Sergey Shumeyev, approved the decision of the first instance: Gevorg Yeritsyan and Garegin Khachaturyan will continue to serve their six years and two months and six and a half years in a penal colony, respectively. Lyubov Galitsyna’s term of two years and three months in colony is considered served, due to her prior detention.

The trial of the believers started in September 2023. At the hearings, recordings of hidden video filming, which was carried out in the house of Lyubov Galitsyna, were reviewed. The defense drew attention to the fact that there are no defendants in these videos and nothing extremist is happening in them.

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27.09.2024 – The Church of Scientology in St. Petersburg was demanded to be recognized as an extremist organization

Sova – On September 26, 2024, it became known that the St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office demanded to recognize the local Scientology church as an extremist organization. The corresponding claim was registered by the St. Petersburg City Court on September 11, its consideration will begin in October.

It is not known exactly what became the reason for filing the lawsuit. It is probably related to the sentence that was previously handed down to Scientologists from St. Petersburg. One of the convicts in this case – the head of the local church of Scientologists Ivan Matsitsky – is listed as a defendant in the prosecutor’s office’s claim to recognize the organization as extremist.

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24.09.2024 – Banned Russian priest stands by condemnation of ‘brother killing brother’ in Ukraine

Reuters – KARABANOVO, Russia, Sept 24 (Reuters) – For years until the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Father Ioann Burdin served as a priest in the Russian village of Karabanovo, 370 km (230 miles) northeast of Moscow. Now he is a convicted heretic, banned from conducting services and hounded from his parish.

In spring 2022, Burdin denounced the conflict in a sermon to his parishioners and in comments online, saying Christians could not just stand by, opens new tab

 “when a brother kills a brother”.

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23.09.2024 – The court banned the activities of the Baptist prayer house in Kurganinsk until the violations were eliminated

Sova – On September 6, 2024, the Kurganinsky District Court of the Krasnodar Territory satisfied the claim of the district prosecutor’s office to ban the activities of the Kurganinsky House of Prayer, which is part of the International Union of Evangelical Baptist Christians.

The reason for going to court was the inspection of compliance with the legislation on freedom of conscience and religious associations conducted by the prosecutor’s office, during which a number of violations were revealed. In particular, the prosecutor’s office established that illegal missionary religious events (about 1,500 people) are systematically held in the House of Prayer “with the participation of residents of the subject and neighboring regions, including minor citizens and missionaries and foreign citizens”.

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19.09.2024 – A court in Elista has toughened the punishment for three believers.

JW – On September 17, 2024, the Supreme Court of Kalmykia reclassified Kishta Tutinova’s actions from participation to organizing the activity of an extremist organization, appointing her to four years suspended sentence with a probationary period of three years and restriction of freedom for one year. The court added six months to the additional restriction of freedom for Yekaterina Menkova and Tsagan Khalgayeva.

In June 2024, the Elista City Court of the Republic of Kalmykia sentenced three believers to suspended sentences: Khalgayeva and Menkova to two years, and Tutinova to three years. The court called it illegal for women to talk peacefully about God and the Bible. Assistant prosecutor Marina Bugdayeva appealed the sentence as “excessively lenient”.

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19.09.2024 – The Regional Court reduced the suspended term of an elderly believer from Knyaze-Volkonskoye by a year

JW – On September 17, 2024, the Khabarovsk Regional Court commuted the sentence of Valeriy Rabota, 62, giving him a five-year suspended sentence for participating in peaceful worship services. Prosecutor Taisiya Kovtunova sought tougher punishment: she asked to replace the six-year suspended sentence with a real one.

Valeriy Rabota himself completely denies the guilt of extremism. In his complaint, he noted: “My actions were completely peaceful. The prosecution did not claim that I incited violence or religious hatred and enmity.

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19.09.2024 – Falun Gong practitioners arrested as “U.S. agents” in the Russian Republic of Mordovia

Bitter Winter – 2024 is a bad year for Falun Gong in Russia. The organization was declared “undesirable” in 2020 but only after the war of aggression against Ukraine started was Russian law amended to deal with “undesirable” groups as severely as with the “extremist” ones.

After raids in Moscow and in the Krasnodar Krai, the crackdown continued earlier this month in the Republic of Mordovia. The FSB raided private homes in Mordovia’s capital city of Saransk, in the Aksenovo village in the Lyambirsky District, and in the Romodanovo rural settlement, the administrative center of Romodanovsky District. Promotional Falun Gong literature was confiscated.

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16.09.2024 – The sentence of Jehovah’s Witnesses was approved in the Altai Republic

Sova – On September 12, 2024, the Supreme Court of the Altai Republic confirmed the sentence of Jehovah’s Witness Sergei Petrenko.

On June 27, 2024, the Maima District Court of the Altai Republic sentenced a 45-year-old believer to four years of suspended imprisonment under Part 2 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code (participation in the activities of an extremist organization). In addition to the main punishment, he was banned from working in public and religious organizations for two years and one year of restriction of liberty.

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