In Primorye, new searches for faith, one believer stayed behind bars for two days

On June 18, 2019, searches and detentions for religious beliefs continued in the Primorsky Territory. In the city of Ussuriysk, officers of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation searched the apartments of two believers who are suspected of professing the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses. Mobile phones and other electronic devices were seized from Sergey Korolchuk and Dmitry Tishchenko. Dmitry Tishchenko's wife was interrogated as a witness to the "crime".

At the same time, Sergey Korolchuk was detained and placed in a temporary detention center, where he stayed until June 20. During the interrogation, it turned out that Sergey had been under covert video surveillance for a long time. The believer was charged under Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - "organizing the activities of an extremist organization."

Earlier, on June 5, 2019, Sergey Melnikov was detained in Ussuriysk and sent to a pre-trial detention center for two months. In general, this is the seventh criminal case against Jehovah's Witnesses in the Primorsky Territory. Five believers in the region remain in detention. Despite this, the Russian authorities claim that the decisions of the Russian courts on the liquidation and prohibition of organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses "do not assess the doctrine of Jehovah's Witnesses, do not contain a restriction or prohibition to practice the above teachings individually." Public figures, the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other Russian and international organizations have repeatedly drawn attention to religious persecution in Russia.

Update. On October 23, 2019, in Ussuriysk, 45-year-old Vitaliy Ilinykh and his wife Irina underwent another search.