On March 18, 2019 Sergei Skrynnikov, a Russian and allegedly
a Jehovah’s Witness, was charged with “participating in an extremist
organization,” an offence under Russian law that could earn him up to six years
in prison. https://www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/190318a.html
. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been fleeing
Russia and seeking asylum in Germany and Finland to escape such harsh sentences.
https://www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/190127c.html
On February 6, 2019 a Russian court
sentenced a Danish citizen who was legally resident in Russia to six year in
prison for such extremist offense as organizing other Witnesses to shovel snow
from their church’s property. https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/06/russia-jehovahs-witness-convicted
In China, state authorities harass Jehovah’s Witnesses
and raid their meetings. Authorities also deport foreign Witness missionaries
from countries such as South Korea. https://bitterwinter.org/jehovahs-witnesses-hunted-down-and-deported/
.
South Korea has only recently dropped a 2003 law
prohibiting conscientious objection to fighting in its armed forces, a law that
confined young Witness men—as well as others—to jail. https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/02/09/south-koreas-conscientious-objectors-escape-military-conscription
All these states violate international laws that
protect religious freedom, including the freedoms of unpopular minorities. Article
18, 1 of the 1976 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects
everyone’s freedom to “have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice” and
“to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and
teaching.”
A
Long History of Persecution
Jehovah’s Witnesses were among the first groups the
Nazis persecuted. There were about 25,000 to 30,000 Witnesses in Germany in
1933. About half of those who did not flee were convicted of various crimes and
between 2,000 and 2,500 were sent to concentration camps, where about 1,000 died.
About 250 were also executed. Some years ago I met a Jehovah’s Witness in
Hamilton, Ontario, where I live, who told me the Nazis had beheaded his
grandfatherGermany’s Jehovah’s Witnesses were not merely passive religious group that refused to adopt the Nazi ideology: they also actively tried to expose Nazi atrocities.
In the 1960s and 70s in the East Africa country of
Malawi, entire villages of Jehovah’s Witnesses were burned, and many villagers were
raped, tortured, or murdered as they tried to flee. Their crime was refusal to
participate in rituals of loyalty to the newly-independent Malawian state and
its President, Hastings Banda. The government of Malawi denied me a visa in the
early 1980s when I told two officials at its High Commission in Ottawa that I
wanted to know what had happened to these Witnesses.
Many Witnesses in Rwanda, both Tutsi and Hutu, lost
their lives during the 1994 genocide, many trying to hide people at risk of
being murdered. Even now, Rwandan
authorities expel some Witness children from school and have fired some Witness
teachers because they refuse to sing the national anthem or participate in
religious training. https://www.jw.org/en/news/legal/by-region/rwanda/jehovah-witness-facts/
Persecution
of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Canada
Here in Canada, Jehovah’s Witnesses have not always
enjoyed their rights to freedom of religion and expression.
During WWII Witness children were banned from
schools in several Canadians locations in Canada because they would not salute the
flag, sing the national anthem or repeat the pledge of allegiance. A Witness father
sued the Hamilton Board of Education on behalf of his two sons, who had been
expelled from school in 1940. In 1945, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in favour
of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, saying the Board was required to excuse students
from participating in religious exercises to which their parents objected.
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/1945/1945canlii117/1945canlii117.html
In the 1940s and 50s Premier Maurice Duplessis of Quebec
persecuted Jehovah’s Witnesses, mainly because their public missionary
activities offended the province’s Roman Catholics. When almost a thousand
young Jehovah’s Witnesses were arrested and fined $40.00 each (a large sum at
the time) a Witness restaurant owner named Frank Roncarelli paid their fines so
that they could return to the streets and continue trying to make converts. In
response, Duplessis stripped Roncarelli of his liquor license, ending his
business. Roncarelli sued Duplessis and the case eventually went to Canada’s Supreme
Court, which in 1959 ruled in favour of Roncarelli (the two judges from Quebec
dissenting). https://www.lawnow.org/whatever-happened-to-roncarelli-v-duplessis/
Even now, Jehovah’s Witnesses run the risk that they
will be attacked while conducting their missionary work, a central obligation
of their faith. Many people object to Jehovah’s Witnesses who come to their
door trying to convert them. Some go so
far as to attack them, set their dogs on them, or even pull guns on them.
Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t perfect. Among other
things, church elders have been accused of covering up child abuse. https://www.ucobserver.org/justice/2018/01/jw/
But no other religious group is perfect either, especially when it comes to
child abuse.
There is no reason to persecute—or tolerate persecution
of—Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are equal citizens, protected by national and
international laws regarding freedom of religion.
