Helsinki Commission Condemns Pending Legal Action against Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia

Where were the Jehovah's Witnesses when Putin was persecuting gays, locking up opposition leaders and invading neighbouring countries? I know all government is supposedly Satan's so you stay out of the political process, so you can't expect the rest of us who do take part in the political protest to suddenly take an interest when your arses are on the line.

Jehovah's Witnesses don't exactly help themselves either, trying to ram your religion down someone else's throat is the height of rudeness. They don't knock on your door to discuss religion, they come to tell you you're wrong. They're extremely judgemental and often downright rude, looking down their noses at those of us who celebrate Christmas and birthdays, and not even having the common decency to reply to a child's birthday party invitation.

A lot of the ones who knock on your door are thick as mince, incapable of discussing anything, just parroting what they've already been told. Pretty much everyone I know has had a bad experience with JWs, like being knocked up when you're off work in bed with a streaming cold and a terrible headache, I don't know of anyone who's had a positive experience.

The children of JWs have even worse tales to tell, of feeling singled out at school as the only kid not able to go to birthday parties or see Father Christmas. I know they're supposed to give gifts all year round but none of the grown up children of JWs that I've met recall that ever happening.

And I know that it's possible to be put on a do not bother list, but it takes time, and we shouldn't have to anyway. When we're at home minding our own business we should be left in peace.

Yes I am sorry this is happening to JWs, but I think there are far more deserving causes in Russia right now, and that's where I'll be focussing my energies.

Stand Away from your keyboard iZmael , someone will get hurt.

Wow, I think youve got the village title for 'The most" Passive Aggressive personality on A2K.
Im not so pleased with JW's either, mostly' because of their somewhat unique worldview and views on science qnd medicine. However, they deserve the same human rights that we all should be granted. I can never figure out the ver popular "I wont help you because your religious group, back in the Pleistocene, used to kill unbelievers"or "We gott sit on this guys nominee because they did such and such to Obama's". We can only solve our travails of today and tomorrow, not yesterday.

Russia is the felon, not the JW's. SO, IN WITH THE GOOD AIR---OUT WITH THE BAD.

I didn't intend to be at all passive. I don't know how that came across. I agree with you, they do deserve the same human rights as everyone else, but I can think of far more deserving Russians, like democracy campaigners and members of the LGBT community. People who don't get me out of bed when I'm off work ill.

Who will be the next ones? The Mormons? The Methodists? Any one outside of the Russian Orthodox Church?

I'm a long time atheist, but I've liked three JWs. I don't answer the door for strangers in the first place so I haven't had any doorway run ins, but I've sure heard about them.

The first one I liked was a very good writer about Italy, her name escaping for the moment. I never met her, but I read a lot of her articles in travel magazines and one quite good book. Second was a woman who owned a mexican food restaurant in northern California; we got to be fairly friendly, not least because she was the only good mexican food cook in town. We might have talked religion once, but that was it. We talked family and other stuff. Third, I'd count Neologist as an occasional internet pal, despite our obvious disagreement re religion.

Jehowa`s Witnesses - just like other groups who wants to sell something -
have a special technic.
They have a question you have to agree on and then they sell their product.
Jehowa`s Witness usually ask you "Don´t you think there is a lot of "...criminality in the world or it can be war or something else which evil, we people can agree on.
My answer has always been something like this ....No I think it is amazing that
only 5% are criminal or I find it wonderful that so many are for peace and so few for war.
The result is, that they do not know how to continue and they have stopped ringing my doorbell.

I quite like Neo too. I've known two people brought up as JWs who really have serious issues with their parents.

There was a JW girl in an office I once worked at, she was quite peculiar. Not somebody you'd want to sit next to on a coach trip to Calais.

Remember I'm British, we don't do God. Beliefs are personal and should be kept to oneself. That's very much the cultural norm over here.

The name of the writer popped up in my brain - Barbara Grizzuti Harrison. The way I tend to remember old names is to say to myself, it starts with H, and in this case that worked. Names of yore seem to rest in my netherworld and trundle to the fore if I think for a while.

Being on the nutsy side, I've quite the collection of books on Italy, by italians or others, Cellini to modern police procedurals. Cellini's autobiography may be my favorite. I'd guess 300 to 4oo books, but I haven't counted lately, maybe it's 500. Some are old and crusty, from used bookstores. Anyway, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison was virtually always a good read for me, back in my early Italy-crazed days. I should look her up on Wiki, as she may not be your usual Jehovah's Witness.

Hi from a loud Californian. The US is so big, as you know, having been to Texas, that our states can vary wildly, top to bottom, west to east, or vice versa.
Even within single houses...

Tangent, but I'll get back to the topic, I promise.

I do God, since I got godded, the story told here before. I was recruited by the nuns at the end of my senior high school year since I was asked by one of them that I was interviewing for the school paper what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted to be a doctor, silly for a girl in the later 1950's. CAUGHT! That order had a nursing mission in India. Soon I was recruited. My favorite nun, my geometry teacher, told me she had a dream, about what? that I would become a nun.

My very catholic parents rescued me, probably my father prevailing, but I don't know, maybe it was both. They sent me on a trip with my father making an industrial film, the crew being a now recognized good film editor and a cameraman and me, snort. I quickly got a crush on the film editor. Nothing creepy happened, I just learned about male camaraderie, but after we got home, I cancelled the interest/appointment at the nun shoe place.

I didn't want to be a missionary in the first place, just wanted to practice medicine, but a whiff of distaste grew over a few years.

By now I figure missionary-ness is a large part of our world, from ad agencies to thick plotting to change society.


Canada, from my observation, is the same as with you folk, no god stuff..
I don't know. You folks may be right, very tempered.

You don't have to be big to vary wildly. Penzance's and Newcastle Upon Tyne's accents, people and scenery are as different as anything over there if not more so.

I like you, too Izzy

Would it be ok for me to knock on your door, so long as I don't wake you up?

On answering the door, I did, twice. My neighbors telling me to get out at 4 a.m.. their house on fire, a matter of ex husband and the furnace. I didn't answer for a while, scary for the knocking and screaming neighbors. I'm not vilifying him, this tract has shitty furnaces.

Another time, circa midnight if I remember, banging on the door, a female voice. Wails.
I answered. She was wanting money to get her son out of jail. We talked at the door, but I couldn't help her if I wanted to, which was iffy.

My step father's uncle DeWitt was a JW. A kindly old guy, and blind. Always smiled, never a cross word (he couldn't see to work cross words ) Over the years I became dismissive of the door knockers. Called them "witlesses." My first wife joined up after we divorced, choosing that brand, I think, to spite me. She told me how belonging to a religion made her fit into society, whereas atheists are outcasts. I could point out how she should be an outcast in her own right, but she's not here to defend herself. I don't see much reason to differentiate between sects. They all have to be protected under the law.

As far as Witnesses working for the less advantaged: In the US, the court cases won by JWs during the last century rival the ACLU in the freedoms won for minorities. Witness volunteers spent many hours repairing homes of non witnesses after disasters like Katrina.

We don't rally or picket. The demonstrations in Russia last week were not attended by JWs. The Russian government seems to have all the trouble it can handle.

I did write a few letters, however. I believe the USPS sold out of their international forever stamps. I'd hate to be a Russian Postal worker.

If you're popping over for a beer no problems.

Im always seeing th JW's politely allowing the teeniest bits of publicity written by our regional newspapers herein a couple of Kingdom Halls band and help out a community .
Ya gotta hand it to em, they do 'practice what they preach". JUST NOT AT MY DOORSTEP PLEASE~!!

Some questions:
1) Is there an official reason behind Russia's request?
2) Is there an assumed actual reason (given that characterizing JWs terrorists seems a bit hyperbolic)?
3) Are there no Jews or Muslims or other usual propaganda fodder in Russia?