The Appeal in Birobidzhan Left Unchanged the Sentence for Believer Yevgeniy Yegorov

On November 25, 2021, the Court of the Jewish Autonomous Region dismissed the appeal of 30-year-old Yevgeniy Yegorov, the father of a young child. The sentence of the lower court—2.5 years suspended and 1 year of restriction of freedom—came into force.

The believer considers the verdict as subject to cancellation because it was rendered with substantial violations of the norms of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, international legal acts, criminal and criminal procedural legislation of the Russian Federation, and its conclusions contradict the factual circumstances of the case. He has a right to appeal against the verdict in cassation as well as in international instances.

Addressing the appellate court with his last word, Yegorov emphasized: "The totality of all the evidence presented in my case includes only information that I am a Christian, one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and not an extremist. And as the prosecution itself admits, I participated in worship services, not in extremist meetings."

The persecution of Yevgeniy Yegorov and other peaceful believers in Birobidzhan began in May 2018 after a large-scale operation codenamed "Judgment Day." In the Jewish Autonomous Region, 19 criminal cases were filed against 23 believers between 2018 and 2020, including 12 women between the ages of 28 and 59. The criminal case against Yegorov was filed on July 29, 2019, after his apartment was searched in May 2018.

After the indictment, Yevgeniy Yegorov was put on the Rosfinmonitoring's list of extremists, which creates significant difficulties for Yevgeniy and his wife, Ksenia, young parents: the believer's bank cards are blocked. Evgeny recalls, "The unexpected happened. The day before the wedding we found out that the registry office had lost our application. Solving this problem, I learned from the news that the restaurant where the wedding reception was to be held was on fire. And, to make matters worse, the planner who had taken the money for the restaurant had quit. It seemed that the wedding was not going to happen, and the ground was gone from under my feet.” Finally, on the day of Yevgeniy and Ksenia's wedding, FSB officers charged Yevgeniy’s mother, Larisa Artamonova, as well as a few of the guests.

More than 60 Russian and foreign public figures and organizations condemn the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia and state: "What is happening to them is essentially happening to us. This is a test of society's immune forces. Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses shows the failure of anti-extremist legislation in general. If society does not protect Jehovah's Witnesses, if they are not restored to their rights, it will mean that anyone can be declared an extremist. . . . In the story of how a man found at Jehovah's Witnesses answers to questions that a Catholic priest could not solve, the courts saw the promotion of religious superiority—that's all the extremism. Such "extremism", and much more brutal, can be found in the doctrinal, liturgical and other texts of most religions. If we approach religious scriptures with the same yardstick, we would have to ban all religions.”