A Court in the City of Komsomolsk-on-Amur Gave Three Women Five-Year Suspended Sentences for Talking About the Bible

On March 23, 2023, Judge Natalya Kazymova of the Central District Court of the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur gave Tatyana Svoboda, Tatyana Bondarenko and Elena Nesterova five-year suspended prison sentences with probationary terms of two years. The verdict has not entered into force. The believers can appeal.

The court viewed the women's conversations about God and the Bible with one of the local residents as extremism. According to the investigation, Bondarenko, age 62, Svoboda, age 63, and Nesterova, age 55, “influenced V. N. Demina to participate in the activities of a religious organization . . . persuading her and using other means to involve her in the activities of this extremist organization by lyingly convincing her of the correctness of its teachings.” The prosecution did not give a single example of such "persuasions."

In the autumn of 2021, the Investigative Committee initiated a criminal case against pensioner Tatyana Svoboda. A month later, her home was searched, as were the homes of Elena Nesterova and Tatyana Bondarenko. In November of the following year, the case went to court, and a decision was rendered after six court sessions. According to the defense, the assessment by specialist D.·V. Galyamov was made from the standpoint of his religion and his personal judgments and was not based on scientific or other objective data, and expert M.·B. Serdyuk gave a legal rather than religious assessment to religious conversations, which does not meet the criteria of a scientific examination.

The testimony of Demina, who discussed Bible teachings with believers, did not indicate the presence of any signs of extremism in the actions of the women. The defendants reminded the participants in the process of an excerpt from the Plenum of the Supreme Court, according to which “the joint confession of religion and the performance of worship . . . in themselves, if they do not contain signs of extremism, do not constitute a crime under Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.”

Despite this, the state prosecutor requested this sentence for the believers: seven years of imprisonment, suspended, with a five-year probation term and restriction of freedom for one year and six months without the right to engage in activities related to posting materials on the Internet for a year and a half.

During the judicial arguments, the defendants asked the court: “If the Supreme Court and the Government of the Russian Federation publicly declare that citizens in Russia have the right to continue to profess the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses, then on what basis do the investigating authorities consider it a crime to profess this faith?”

Since 2018, 30 of Jehovah's Witnesses in this region have been subjected to criminal prosecution for their faith. Four of them were given suspended sentences; another four have served their sentences. Seventeen people have cases at the trial stage. As the European Court noted in the summer of 2022, “bearing Christian witness ... [is] an essential mission and a responsibility of every Christian and every Church ... There is nothing to indicate that non-religious people were forced to talk to them [Jehovah's Witnesses].” (§ 183)