Latest Operation Against Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia Results in Danish Member's Capture
Russian security forces raided last week a Jehovah's Witness (JW) Bible study in the central city of Oryol and arrested a Danish citizen leading the service. It was the latest move against the religion following the Supreme Court (SC) ruling, labeling the group an extremist organization.
According to the religious group's global headquarters in New York, at least 15 heavily armed police and Federal Security Service officers swooped into the worship service, collected the identities of the attendees, and seized religious literature and electronics. Four homes of Witnesses were also searched thereafter.
Christensen may have been arrested because he was a foreigner participating in the activity "or maybe because [the Russian authorities] considered he was the one taking the lead of the Bible study session that was being conducted at the time," JW spokesman Robert Warren said.
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Christensen is the first foreigner to be jailed since the Apr. 20 decision of the Russian Federation SC, which bans JW's operations by closing its administrative center and 395 local churches across the country. The ruling also sparked more than 40 violent incidents against the group.
Just hours after the SC handed down its decision, a group of men in St. Petersburg vandalized the largest JW's church in Russia. Other places of worship and homes of members were also vandalized in Kaliningrad, Moscow, Penza, Rostov, St. Petersburg, Sverdlovsk, Voronezh, and Krasnoyarsk.
Last May 24, a house used as meeting place of Witnesses was set on fire in Zheshart town in the Komi Republic. Aside from vandalism police raids at home, other forms of harassment regularly faced by Witnesses include threatened at school and work, thrown with rocks and laid off from work.
The situation has prompted the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to recommend to the State Department to brand Russia a "country of particular concern" for egregious violations of religious freedom, lumping it with the likes of China, Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia.
