[{"body":"During 2018, the situation with freedom of religion in the territory of the Donetsk region, which left the jurisdiction of Ukraine, worsened. Local authorities banned the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses, equating a peaceful denomination with extremists. The believers were under surveillance, and in different cities law enforcers summoned them for interrogations and threatened them with arrests. According to a similar scenario, the situation developed in Russia, where the ban on the organization turned into total oppression of hundreds of thousands of people.\nFrom January to June 2018, representatives of the DPR law enforcement agencies showed increased attention to the worship buildings of Jehovah's Witnesses - Kingdom Halls. In such cities as Donetsk, Yasinovataya, Snezhnoye, Zugres, Yenakievo, and Dokuchaevsk, prosecutorial checks, conversations with believers, and inspections of Kingdom Halls were conducted. Later, this resulted in the confiscation of buildings. By August 29, 2018, a total of 16 Kingdom Halls had been taken from local Jehovah's Witnesses.\nSince June 2018 , security forces in Donetsk, Torez, Snizhne, Shakhtersk, Yenakiyevo, Makiivka, and Yunokommunarovsk have begun collecting data on Jehovah's Witnesses. Some men and women were summoned for interrogation on summonses, others were taken to police stations right on the street and from home.\nIn July and August 2018, the homes of Jehovah's Witnesses were searched. One in Yenakiyevo, another in the village of Krasnoarmeyskoye (Novoazovsky district).\nOn August 22, 2018 , the local Supreme Court, at the request of the DPR prosecutor's office, recognized a number of information materials of Jehovah's Witnesses, including the official website, as extremist. On September 5, 2018, the local Ministry of Communications ordered telecom operators to block the site.\nOn September 26, 2018, the Supreme Court of the DPR banned the activities of the religious association of Jehovah's Witnesses in the controlled territory, accusing the organization of extremist activities. At the same time, neither the prosecutor nor the court considered it necessary to hear the arguments of Jehovah's Witnesses in their defense.\nIn October-November 2018, the security forces made additional efforts to identify Jehovah's Witnesses. Some believers reported being under surveillance. In the village of Talmanovo, the security forces made rounds of the residents, notifying them against receipt that the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses were banned.\nIn Yenakiieve, there were reports that law enforcement agencies had been ordered to \"find, arrest, and neutralize Jehovah's Witnesses engaged in the preaching work.\"\nSerious concerns are caused by reports from various sources about the preparation of mass detentions. The situation threatens to turn into massive violations of the rights of thousands of civilians, as is happening in the Russian Federation. (Although the Russian authorities claim that the country's Supreme Court decision to ban a religious organization applies only to legal entities, dozens of innocent people have become prisoners of conscience. The decision of the Russian Supreme Court has been appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which intends to consider the complaint of Jehovah's Witnesses as a matter of priority.)\n","category":"analytics","date":"2018-12-24T15:56:18+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2018/12/551/foto._otobrannye_zdaniya_dlya_bogosluzheniy_v_donecke_i_makeevke6868_hu_524d631898c0f81a.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2018/12/551/foto._otobrannye_zdaniya_dlya_bogosluzheniy_v_donecke_i_makeevke6868.jpg","webp":"/news/2018/12/551/foto._otobrannye_zdaniya_dlya_bogosluzheniy_v_donecke_i_makeevke6868_hu_2ce09f735e055c6.webp","webp2x":"/news/2018/12/551/foto._otobrannye_zdaniya_dlya_bogosluzheniy_v_donecke_i_makeevke6868_hu_5c05663cbb90e539.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2018/12/551.html","regions":["dnr"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["review","interrogation","search","website"],"title":"Overview of the situation in the isolated territory in the Donetsk region of Ukraine","type":"news"},{"body":"On May 30, 2018, the Supreme Court of Kabardino-Balkaria overturned a lower court's decision to block four websites, including the official website of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia (jw-russia.org).\nEarlier, in February 2018, the prosecutor's office of the city of Prokhladny (Kabardino-Balkaria) filed a lawsuit with the Prokhladnensky District Court to block the jw-russia.org website in Russia, as well as three other unrelated sites about Jehovah's Witnesses. The reason for the prosecutor's appeal, presumably, was the article \"A peaceful respected person is tried for his faith in the Elbrus region\", dedicated to the unfair criminal prosecution of 70-year-old local believer Arkadi Hakobyan.\nDistrict Court Judge Tahir Metselov declined to involve the Watch Tower, Bible, and Tract Society of Pennsylvania in the case, despite the fact that the Society claimed its rights to the jw-russia.org site, indicated the existence of a copyright mark on the site, and sent a representative to protect its rights. As a result, the case was heard with the participation of only Assistant Prosecutor D.S. Chapsky, who stated that the sites should be banned only because they contain information about Jehovah's Witnesses. At the hearing, the court did not access the Internet and did not investigate the sites.\nOn March 20, 2018, the Prokhladnensky District Court granted the prosecutor's claim, deciding to restrict access to this site. However, now, 2 months later, the Court of Appeal has overturned and dismissed the case.\n","category":"victory","date":"2018-06-01T11:32:00+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2018/06/333/180601_apellyaciya_jw-russia4848_hu_8588506aaf1176e.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2018/06/333/180601_apellyaciya_jw-russia4848.jpg","webp":"/news/2018/06/333/180601_apellyaciya_jw-russia4848_hu_9ebe9a1c8cf6314f.webp","webp2x":"/news/2018/06/333/180601_apellyaciya_jw-russia4848_hu_9c4f86413acc0093.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2018/06/333.html","regions":["kabardino-balkar"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["appeal","website"],"title":"The Court of Appeal overturned the decision to ban the jw-russia.org website","type":"news"},{"body":"The complaint was filed by the Watch Tower Society. The Commission on Human Rights of the Presidential Council of the Russian Federation submitted to the Court an opinion that the recognition of the site as \"extremist\" violated the right of believers to judicial protection, since the case was considered without the owner of the site.\nThe court refused to consider the complaint without eliminating the legal uncertainty, as a result of which sites can be recognized as extremist without granting their owners the right to effective legal protection. There is also no proper assessment of the fact that the site is recognized as \"extremist\" in the absence of materials from the FSEM on it, but only because such materials may appear on it!\n","category":"literature","date":"2016-02-02T14:00:00+03:00","duration":null,"image":{"jpg":"/news/2016/02/34/website-01_hu_541d885d7cba42a1.jpg","jpg2x":"/news/2016/02/34/website-01.jpg","webp":"/news/2016/02/34/website-01_hu_da99740040137c5e.webp","webp2x":"/news/2016/02/34/website-01_hu_ec4df2dd52c50696.webp"},"permalink":"/en/news/2016/02/34.html","regions":["stpetersburg"],"subtitle":null,"tags":["complaints","courtroom","website","fsem","bible-ban"],"title":"The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation issued a ruling on the website of Jehovah's Witnesses","type":"news"}]