A Russian-controlled Crimean court on Thursday sentenced a Jehovah’s Witness to six years in prison for religious extremism, extending Russia’s yearslong persecution of the religious group to the Russian-occupied region.
Sergey Filatov, a local leader for the group, was accused of undermining “the foundations of constitutional order and the security of the state” for holding illegal religious services in his home. He was arrested in November 2018 after authorities searched his home.
In his testimony, Filatov did not admit guilt and appealed to the freedom of religion. The court cited a 2017 decision by the Russian Supreme Court labeling the Jehovah’s Witnesses an “extremist organization” in convicting him. That ruling stated that the group’s “offbeat views on the essence of the Christian faith” and “special interpretations of many commonly accepted notions,” including the group’s opposition to blood transfusions. It effectively banned Jehovah’s Witnesses from organizing meetings in the country.
Filatov is the 30th Jehovah’s Witness to be convicted by a Russian court since 2017.
Yaroslav Sivulskiy, a spokesman for the European Association of Jehovah’s Witnesses, said that Filatov’s conviction represented ongoing religious persecution in Russia.
“It is sad that the massive repression of faith, which has been unleashed by security services in dozens of regions of Russia, has reached Crimea,” he said in a statement. “Sergey Filatov was convicted of a grave criminal offense, as a dangerous enemy of the state, for a simple family worship service.”
A different Crimean court on Thursday fined Artem Gerasimov, another Jehovah’s Witness, 400,000 rubles for a similar offense. Jarrod Lopes, a spokesman for the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States, told the Washington Examiner that the difference in punishment for Filatov and Gerasimov underlined how “arbitrary” the Russian judicial system has been.
“This bleak development in Crimea is the latest example of Russia exporting its patently extreme religious intolerance,” he said in a statement. “Human rights advocates across the globe have publicly criticized Russia for its baseless attack on Jehovah’s Witnesses, internationally recognized as peaceful, societally responsible Christians. We hope that senior officials in Russia will soon correct the injustice being doled out in their local courts and that judges in Crimea will follow suit.”
Since 2017, 313 Jehovah’s Witnesses have faced criminal charges in Russia. Russian authorities have raided the homes of more than 70 members of the faith and opened criminal cases against 31 members in 2020, according to the institution.
