 |
| Dennis Christensen, a Jehovah’s Witness accused of extremism |
A Russian court on Wednesday found a Danish adherent of the Jehovah’s Witnesses guilty of organising a banned extremist group and jailed him for six years in a case critics condemn as crushing religious freedom.
Armed police detained Dennis Christensen, a 46-year-old builder, in May 2017 at a prayer meeting in Oryol, some 320 km south of Moscow after a court in the region outlawed the local Jehovah’s Witnesses a year earlier.
Russia’s Supreme Court later ruled the group was “extremist” and ordered it to disband nationwide. Christiansen’s detention, Russia’s first extremism-related arrest of a Jehovah’s Witness, foreshadowed dozens more.
The court in the city of Oryol on Wednesday found Christiansen guilty after a long trial, his lawyer, his wife and a representative for the Jehovah’s Witnesses told Reuters.
Christiansen had pleaded innocent, saying he was exercising freedom of religion guaranteed in Russia’s constitution.
Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen called on Moscow to respect religious freedom and criticised it for classifying Jehovah’s Witnesses on a par with terrorist groups.
The US-headquartered Jehovah’s Witnesses have been under pressure for years in Russia, where the dominant Orthodox Church is championed by President Vladimir Putin. Orthodox scholars have cast them as a dangerous foreign sect that erodes state institutions and traditional values, allegations they reject.
DOZENS MORE CAUGHT IN CRACKDOWN
But Russia’s latest falling-out with the West, triggered by Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, spurred a more determined drive to push out “the enemy within”.
With about 170,000 followers in Russia and 8 million worldwide, Jehovah’s Witnesses are a Christian denomination known for door-to-door preaching, close Bible study, and rejection of military service and blood transfusions.
They believe the end of the world as we know it is imminent, an event “the obedient” will survive to inhabit the Kingdom of God they believe will follow.
Christiansen moved to Murmansk in northern Russia in 2000 where the Jehovah’s Witnesses were already well established and met his wife Irina there. The couple later moved to Oryol because the climate is milder and housing cheaper.
