Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses
[1][2] According to law professor Archibald Cox, Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States were "the principal victims of religious persecution … they began to attract attention and provoke repression in the 1930s, when their proselytizing and numbers rapidly increased.
"[3] At times, political and religious animosity against Jehovah's Witnesses has led to mob action and governmental repression in various countries including the United States, Canada and Nazi Germany.
[5] In 1930, the Watch Tower Society had controlling interests in several radio stations in Australia, including 5KA, where presenters were told to preach and in 1931 began broadcasting sermons of Joseph Franklin Rutherford.
Jehovah's Witnesses was declared an illegal organization on 17 January 1941, with World War II described as "an ideal opportunity to get rid of licensees long regarded as deviant".
[12] In 1984, Canada released a number of previously classified documents which revealed that in the 1940s, "able bodied young Jehovah's Witnesses" were sent to "camps", and "entire families who practiced the religion were imprisoned".
[4] The 1984 report stated, "Recently declassified wartime documents suggest [World War II] was also a time of officially sanctioned religious bigotry, political intolerance and the suppression of ideas.
The documents prepared by the justice department were presented to a special House of Commons committee by the government of William Lyon Mackenzie King in an attempt to justify the outlawing of the organizations during the second world war.
[16][17] Under Fidel Castro's communist regime, Jehovah's Witnesses were included among groups considered to be "social deviants" and were sent to forced labor concentration camps to be "reeducated".
[38] France's Ministry of the Interior sought to collect 60% of donations made to the denomination's entities; Witnesses called the taxation "confiscatory" and appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.
[43] In 1996, a year after Georgia adopted its post-USSR Constitution,[44] the country's Ministry of Internal Affairs began a campaign to confiscate religious literature belonging to Jehovah's Witnesses.
[50] Amnesty International noted: "Jehovah's Witnesses have frequently been a target for violence … in Georgia … In many of the incidents police are said to have failed to protect the believers, or even to have participated in physical and verbal abuse.
"[51] On May 3, 2007, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against the government of Georgia for its toleration of religious violence toward Jehovah's Witnesses and ordered the victims be compensated for moral damages and legal costs.
[59] A "Declaration of Facts" was issued at a Jehovah's Witness convention in Berlin on June 25, 1933, asserting the group's political neutrality and calling for an end to government opposition.
The Watch Tower Society reported that according to Karl R. A. Wittig, a government officer in Germany at the time, Hitler was shown a number of telegrams protesting the Third Reich's persecution of the Bible Students.
Its "mission was to serve as the shield and sword of the SED and to protect the socialist system and the East German state from internal and external threats, especially by uncovering and forestalling 'the hostile plans of the aggressive imperialists and their helpers.
Persecution, both economic and physical, intensified after a September 1972 Malawi Congress Party meeting which stated that "all Witnesses should be dismissed from their employment; any firm that failed to comply would have its license cancelled".
In December 2015, a Rostov Regional Court convicted 16 Jehovah's Witnesses of practicing extremism in Taganrog, with five given 5+1⁄2-year suspended sentences and the remainder were issued fines they were not required to pay.
[102] On April 20, 2017, The Supreme Court of Russia issued a verdict upholding the claim from the country's Justice Ministry that Jehovah's Witnesses' activity violated laws on "extremism".
The ruling liquidated the group's Russian headquarters in Saint Petersburg and all of its 395 local religious organizations, banning their activity and ordering their property to be seized by the state.
[112] In May 2017, armed Federal Security Services (FSB) officers arrested Dennis Christensen, a 46-year-old Danish citizen, at a hall in Oryol on charges related to extremism.
[116] In February 2021, a Russian court in the Republic of Khakassia sentenced 69-year-old Valentina Baranovskaya to two years in prison for taking part in religious activities that have been banned in Russia.
[121] In 1972, the Singapore government de-registered and banned the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses on the grounds that its members refuse to perform military service (which is obligatory for all male citizens), salute the flag, or swear oaths of allegiance to the state.
Then-Chief Justice Yong Pung How questioned How's sanity, accused him of "living in a cartoon world" and referred to "funny, cranky religious groups" before denying the appeal.
[122] In 2000, public secondary schools indefinitely suspended at least fifteen Jehovah's Witness students for refusing to sing the national anthem or participate in the flag ceremony.
[131] In April 2001, one public school teacher, also a member of Jehovah's Witnesses, resigned after being threatened with dismissal for refusing to participate in singing the national anthem.
[133][134] Beginning on June 7, 1967, the apartheid South African government passed the Defense Amendment Bill, making it compulsory for all white males of eligible age to participate in the armed forces.
According to the Survey of Race Relations in South Africa of 1974, during 1973, 158 Jehovah's Witnesses were sentenced "for refusing on religious grounds to render service or undergo training."
[146] In 2015, a Jehovah's Witness in Turkmenistan was sentenced to four years in prison for allegedly inciting hatred at a religious meeting held in a private home, and other attendees were fined.
The Supreme Court found that the United States, by making the flag salute compulsory in Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940), was impinging upon the individual's right to worship as one chooses—a violation of the First Amendment Free Exercise Clause in the constitution.
However, Justice Frankfurter, speaking on behalf of the 8-to-1 majority view against the Witnesses, stated that the interests of "inculcating patriotism was of sufficient importance to justify a relatively minor infringement on religious belief".
