Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) has relegated more than 200 Jehovah’s Witnesses to its List of ‘Persons Involved in Extremism or Terrorism.’ Once blacklisted by Rosfinmonitoring, an alert is associated with one’s passport indicating that he/she is suspected of money laundering, financing terrorism, and/or distributing weapons of mass destruction. Consequently, Jehovah’s Witnesses are being deprived of their jobs, businesses, unemployment compensation, pensions, and even the ability to purchase a SIM card for their cell phones or apply for car insurance. They cannot exercise inheritance rights, receive child support, receive judicial compensation for damages, execute powers of attorney, or access their bank accounts.
Jarrod Lopes, spokesman for Jehovah’s Witnesses, states: “Without just cause,
Russia’s Rosfinmonitoring is vilifying Jehovah’s Witnesses, crippling them from
caring for their basic needs. Russian authorities are doling out unconscionable
penalties to people who did nothing more than peacefully observe their
Christian beliefs. Clearly, Russia has effectively reinstated its darkest
period of history by relentlessly persecutes Jehovah’s Witnesses as did its
intolerant Soviet predecessors.”
The director of Rosfinmonitoring is the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. In December 2018, Mr. Putin personally said that the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses and their placement on the List was “complete nonsense.” And yet, the repression of Jehovah’s Witnesses intensifies. Additionally, Kremlin advisers have publicly decried law enforcement agencies for misapplying the 2017 Supreme Court decision by prosecuting and imprisoning Jehovah’s Witnesses for their personal beliefs.
Most objectionable is the fact that only a small number of the 200 Jehovah’s Witnesses blacklisted have even been convicted in a court of law. The majority are either under criminal investigation or have yet to be tried (some 300 Jehovah’s Witnesses are under investigation in Russia). Some have not even been charged with a crime. Rosfinmonitoring has imposed burdensome restrictions on Jehovah’s Witnesses without any basis; fathers of large families, young mothers, retirees, labour veterans—all have been treated like criminals. Even an 85-year-old woman, Yelena Zayshchuk, was placed on the extremist list.
For those who have been labelled criminals by the courts, after serving their
sentence, they normally remain on the Rosfinmonitoring list until they
personally take steps to be removed from it. This involves numerous
bureaucratic procedures. Even if they succeed in navigating the Byzantine legal
structure, they continue to face financial consequences for some time
afterward.
The criminal prosecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses has escalated over the past year. In 2019, Russian courts convicted 18 Jehovah’s Witnesses as so-called extremists. Already in 2020, in a little more than a month, Russia has convicted 8 Jehovah’s Witnesses, almost half as much as in all of 2019.
Let me know if you have any questions. Myself or another spokesman can be made
available for an interview, upon request.
