From: PWCarden@aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 1:20 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: Fwd: Important Report on Re-registration of Russian
Jehovah'sWitnesses
Friends,
Note that this account includes important information NOT included in 
other reports (e.g., the section beginning "But the Ministry itself 
demanded that certain amendments had to be introduced into the charter of 
Jehovah's Witnesses Russian organisation.  The main demand was to exclude 
preaching at the doorstep....").
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Date:        05/12  1:53 PM
Received:    05/18  11:33 AM
From:        Ray Prigodich, Prigodich@aol.com
Tuesday 11 May 1999
RUSSIAN JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES FINALLY RE-REGISTERED
Tatyana Titova,  Keston News Service
[for personal use only]
The religious organisation of Jehovah's Witnesses was finally 
registered in Russia - on  29 April, one day before the expiry of the 
six-month period stipulated by the 1997 law on religion within which 
a decision must be reached.  'Now the question arises of  re-
registration on a local level', says ARTUR LEONTEV, the lawyer who 
prepared the documents for registration. 
The Expert Council of the Ministry of Justice, which decides whether 
to issue a registration, delayed the decision five times. The head of 
Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia, VASSILI  KALIN, was asked questions 
like 'Does your organisation force its members to refuse blood 
transfusions?' or 'Does the organisation press its members not to 
serve in the armed forces?'  Each time he had to give written 
answers. 
The deliberate dragging out of the registration process seemed to 
have a specific, though unspoken, explanation. The Moscow 
Golovinsky court is still hearing a case against the local Jehovah's 
Witness community initiated by a Committee for the Salvation of 
Youth. This Committee demands that a stop be put to Jehovah's 
Witness activities as harmful to young people. The hearing has been 
adjourned for the gathering of expert opinions. Kalin claims that 
local Jehovah's Witness communities have received refusals to 
register them in twenty  cases - all because of the Moscow court 
case.
However, the Ministry of Justice Expert Council could not postpone 
its decision further because of six months' rule and finally 
considered the Jehovah's Witness registration. It was granted. But 
the Ministry itself demanded that certain amendments had to be 
introduced into the charter of Jehovah' Witnesses Russian 
organisation.  The main demand was to exclude preaching at the 
doorstep. The law on religion of 1997 says nothing specific against 
this activity but the Ministry officials insist that as this method 
of preaching was not mentioned in the law, it should not be in the 
charter either.  The lawyer representing the Jehovah's Witnesses was 
told that the Ministry receives telephone complaints from members of 
the public who object to Jehovah's Witnesses calling at their doors 
as 'arousing displeasure'.  
Another demand was that the Jehovah's Whitnesses Administrative 
Centre draw up contracts with its voluntary workers. The Centre was 
against this because it might be interpreted as hiring workers 
commercially.  SERGEI VASSILEV, one of the leaders of the Moscow  
Jehovah's Witness community, told Keston that in his opinion the 
Ministry was trying to establish a mechanism for applying pressure 
on Jehovah's Witnesses in the future. 
Keston's Moscow representative interviewed a highly-placed Ministry 
official and was assured that the disagreements would be discussed  
with Jehovah's Witnesses in search of a compromise. And indeed 
Vassily Kalin soon reported that all the problems have been resolved.  
For example, as far as preaching is concerned the words 'home to 
home' have been replaced with 'on domestic premises'. 
The leaders of Russian Jehovah's Witnesses hope that the 
registration of their Administrative Centre in Saint-Petersburg will 
have a positive effect on the general standing of the organisation 
and its local communities. It may even influence the outcome of the 
Moscow court case since a decision to ban Jehovah's Witness 
activities in the capital of Russia would fly in the face of their  
recent registration nationwide.  But Kalin is not overly optimistic.  
He told  Keston:  ' The Russian media wage a campaign of hatred 
against us.  Last year, there were some 600 hostile reports in the 
press, on radio and television.  In the first four months of this 
year we spotted more than 200 such slanderous reports.  These include 
the most absurd charges.  A man allegedly beat up his wife and 
children because they did not want to attend the Jehovah's Witness 
meeting.  We checked this out - this man has never been a Witness.  
Or, in a town where several Jehovah's Witnesses work at the nuclear  
power station, the local paper warned: 'Beware! The Jehovah's 
Witnesses have access to nuclear weapons!' In a broadcast of one of 
the national TV networks, an allegation was made that Jehovah's 
Witnesses collaborated with Hitler; in fact, the Nazis severely 
persecuted the Jehovah's Witnesses.  But our attempts to refute such 
slanderous inventions are usually met with evasive replies like 'your 
article is not in accord with our editorial policy'.
One day after the registration, on 30 April, the newspaper Segodnya 
published an account of the remarks made by GENRIKH  MIKHAILOV, the 
secretary of the Russian government's commission for liaison with 
religious  associations.  He spoke of an activisation of 'all sorts 
of religious sects' ahead of parliamentary elections due later this 
year. Jehovah's Witnesses, said Mikhailov, were conducting a campaign 
'of an openly aggressive character' and were even trying to get their 
representatives into legislative bodies. Strangely, during the Moscow 
court case the Jehovah's Witnesses were accused of just the opposite 
- of refusal to recognise the state and the authorities.
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