You're reading: RFE/RL: Police raids reported against Jehovah’s witnesses in Russia

RFE/RL: Police raids reported against Jehovah’s witnesses in Russia

Published May 18, 2018 at 1:10 pm

People attend the annual Jehovah's Witnesses assembly gathering 30.000 believers on July 22, 2011 in Villepinte, Paris suburb. European rights judges said on June 30, 2011 that France had interfered with the religious freedom of Jehovah's Witnesses in imposing a supplementary tax assessment on gifts by its faithful. The Association of Jehovah's Witnesses claimed that the French government was trying to repress their activities by imposing in 1998 a tax assessment that amounted in total to 45 million euros ($65 million), covering the period from 1993 to 1996. AFP PHOTO / BERTRAND GUAY / AFP PHOTO / BERTRAND GUAY

Photo by AFP

Officials from the Jehovah’s Witnesses religious organization say Russian law enforcement officers have carried out “mass searches” on members’ homes in the Urals region of Orenburg and in the Far Eastern city of Birobidzhan.

Jarrod Lopes, a spokesman for the World Headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in New York, said on May 17 that 150 law enforcement personnel raided more than 20 adherents’ homes in Birobidzhan, the capital of Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region.