Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Articles

How the European Court of Human Rights Ruled Russia's Ban on Jehovah's Witnesses Unlawful

Articles

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
How the European Court of Human Rights Ruled Russia's Ban on Jehovah's Witnesses Unlawful

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

On 7 June 2022, the European Court of Human Rights decided Taganrog LRO and Others v. Russia, a case consolidating twenty separate applications brought by Jehovah's Witnesses organizations and individual members in Russia.

The Chamber found violations of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights over the 2009 forced dissolution of the Taganrog local religious organization, the case that gave the consolidated action its name.

Further violations followed under Articles 9, 10 and 11 over the 2017 nationwide liquidation of Jehovah's Witnesses' administrative center and hundreds of affiliated organizations, the banning and confiscation of their religious publications and website, and the criminal prosecution of individual members after their literature was designated extremist.

The Court ordered Russia to discontinue the pending criminal proceedings, release those imprisoned on the underlying charges, and return the confiscated properties or pay compensation, awarding a total of 59,617,458 euros in pecuniary damages and 3,447,250 euros in non pecuniary damages across the consolidated applicants.

What the Taganrog judgment changed for Jehovah's Witnesses' standing was placing an international court's finding on record against the full scope of Russia's 2017 nationwide liquidation, not only the earlier Taganrog dissolution alone, and attaching a compensation order to the finding rather than a declaration without remedy.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.