c. 1999 Religion News Service

MOSCOW _ The judge presiding over an important test case of Russia’s new religion law delayed the trial indefinitely Friday (March 12) by giving a panel of academicians an open-ended mandate to rule on the legitimacy of the Jehovah’s Witnesses as a faith.

Jehovah’s Witnesses officials quickly decried the move as a delaying tactic that would imperil the registration of about 900 congregations across Russia in time for a year-end deadline. “We are very disappointed because of the impact this will have on our worshippers, not just in Moscow but in Russia,”said Judah Schroeder, a spokesman for the fast-growing denomination which claims 250,000 members in Russia.”In virtually every case the local authorities have said that they are waiting for the Moscow decision.” In the five-week Moscow trial, prosecutors have argued that the Jehovah’s Witnesses instigate”religious enmity”by claiming to be the only true religion, that they endanger members’ lives through a prohibition on blood transfusions, and that they”breakdown families”by placing unreasonable demands on adherents. The legal arguments are based on Russia’s vaguely written law on religion which was adopted in 1997 over the objections of Western governments, the Vatican and religious freedom advocates.

Should the prosecutors prevail in revoking the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ registration in Moscow, a liberal city of 10 million residents, other less progressive authorities in Russia’s 89 regions are likely to follow suit.

While minority and new faiths often face delays in obtaining registration in Russia, court actions by prosecutors seeking to close congregations are rare. In one unrelated case in the Russian city of Magadan, 402 Pentecostals recently applied for political asylum in the United States after a local prosecutor’s bid to close their church down sparked a campaign of harassment by local authorities.

In Moscow, Jehovah’s Witnesses leaders have worked diligently to attract international attention to the trial by issuing frequent press releases, touting the presence of monitors from Western embassies in the courtroom and stressing the trial’s importance as a vital test of religious freedom. While foreign interest has been substantial, Russian media have shown little interest in the proceedings.

The Moscow-based Committee for the Rescue of Youth, which first asked prosecutors to take legal action against the Jehovah’s Witnesses, has received hundreds of calls and letters as a result of the limited coverage in Russian newspapers, said Yelena Ryabinkina, a member of the small anti-sect group. She said the response from distraught parents and relatives of people who joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses has bolstered her conviction of a need for legal action.”It is not a matter of freedom of religious conscience, it is a matter of the demands they put on people in the organization _ like spending so many hours on the street looking for new followers,”said Ryabinkina, a retired engineer who said a”teenaged relative”had”destroyed”her family by joining the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Ryabinkina hailed the judge’s Friday ruling, saying it was a logical step given the relative ignorance in Russia about the Jehovah’s Witnesses as compared with the dominant, 1,000-year-old Russian Orthodox Church. “I am no specialist but this is a new movement and because of that it makes sense for the judge to have experts figure out what it is,”Ryabinkina said.

Schroeder disagreed, saying,”This is is not an issue for a court or for a committee of experts to decide. Every Russian should be able to decide for themselves how they want to worship God.” In her Friday ruling, Judge Yelena Prokhorycheva delegated a committee of two linguists, two religion experts and one psychologist to use the Bible and Jehovah’s Witnesses literature in determining whether the faith causes”religious discord,”destroys families or should be considered a religion at all. With such a broad mandate and without a deadline, the committee could easily take months to render a decision which the judge would then use in making her final verdict.

Prokhorycheva left the door open for an appeal of her ruling to a higher city court within 10 days. Schroeder said Jehovah’s Witnesses lawyers planned to do that by the end of next week. “Then, if they reject our appeal, that gives us the chance to go to Strasbourg (the European Court of Human Rights) because we will have exhausted all our avenues in Russia,”Schroeder said.

In Brussels on March 11, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling”on those in power at (the) central and local level to guarantee freedom of religion”in Russia. The resolution, Schroeder said, was in part a response to Jehovah’s Witnesses’ lobbying. The European Parliament’s statement also deplored the rise in anti-Semitism in Russia.

Schroeder said he would depart Saturday from Moscow for Washington where he planned to meet Senator Gordon Smith, R-Ore., who has championed religious freedom in Russia.

DEA END BROWN