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In the Primorye Territory, New Searches of Jehovah’s Witnesses. According to Preliminary Data, One Person Is Detained
Primorye TerritoryOn May 12, 2020, at least three homes of local Jehovah's Witnesses were searched in the town of Lesozavodsk. Sergey Kobelev, 44, was detained. Details are being clarified.
The city of Lesozavodsk with a population of 35,000 people is located 350 kilometers north of Vladivostok. Earlier in Primorye Krai, at least 11 criminal cases for faith had already been initiated against 18 local Jehovah's Witnesses. Cases were initiated in Vladivostok, Luchegorsk, Partizansk, Razdolny, Spassk-Dalny and Ussuriysk.
Such a serious violation of the rights of believers is a direct consequence of a terrible miscarriage of justice - the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to indiscriminately liquidate and ban all 396 organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. Law enforcement officers, driven by unknown motives, pass off the joint religion of law-abiding citizens for participation in the activities of an extremist organization. The problem was highlighted by the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, the President of the Russian Federation, prominent public figures of Russia, as well as international organizations - the European Union External Action Service, observers of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Jehovah's Witnesses have nothing to do with extremism and insist on their complete innocence. The Russian government has repeatedly stated 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."