“Russia’s religious persecution focuses almost exclusively on Jehovah’s Witnesses,” according to Rachel Denbar, Deputy Director Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch in a statement to christianpost.com.

This is much stronger than I would have put it, but it is also from someone more in the know. Denbar spotlights human rights violations in Russia for all causes—not just religious, but also political, journalistic, persecution of gays, etc. When it comes to religion, there is only one worth mentioning, she reports.

I have said that all minority religion in Russia is harassed, but that Jehovah’s Witnesses are in the vanguard; I said in Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia that Jehovah’s Witnesses are banned, but others are shaking in their boots that they will be next. Turns out I was wrong. They can rest easy. For all practical purposes, it is only Jehovah’s Witnesses. “You don’t see this kind of ban on other sorts of religious life,” Denbar says.

The christianpost.com article continues: “In the 2017 Supreme Court case, the actual verdict wasn’t about condemning beliefs, it was about liquidating legal entities. Whether or not someone is a believer, really has nothing to do with liquidating a legal entity,” a Witness spokesman said. “They’re using that law as a weapon and misapplying it to attack Jehovah’s Witnesses religious beliefs.”

Of course! The notion of outlawing a religious organization but not the individuals of that religion is so duplicitous that ordinary people cannot get their heads around it and just carry on as though the people themselves were outlawed. It may have been planned that way. Or it may simply represent manipulation from devious ones, even a Devious One, who prefer to remain hidden.

Yuriy Savelyev, the 66-year old just sentenced to prison, where he will rub shoulders with violent criminals and risk getting COVID-19, says: “I have found myself being accused not of a crime, but of being a follower of the religious teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I have no enemies, and for my almost 67 years I have never been brought to administrative or criminal responsibility. I am against any form of violence, be it verbal, psychological or physical.” Everyone knows it is true, save for a few fringe anticultists who equate not hanging out with those who turn 180 degrees against you as “psychological violence.” Everyone else instantly realizes the truthfulness of his statement.

“The law targets those who are extremists or terrorists or dangerous. It’s a gross misapplication of the law.” Of course, again.

And what are the chances, in any kind of a sane world, that these are the persons who would be persecuted, when there are so many who in the blink of an eye will turn to violence, and a few that specialize in it? It makes no sense from a human point of view. Therefore, persons can be forgiven if they look for a superhuman point of view—and there they can find one.

“The Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing that he has a short period of time....[He] became enraged at the woman and went off to wage war with the remaining ones of her offspring, who observe the commandments of God and have the work of bearing witness concerning Jesus.”

I think of a local brother with a certain dramatic flair decades ago taking a globe onstage for his public talk. He quoted Matthew 24:14: “This good news of the kingdom will be be declared in all the earth for a witness and then the end will come,” and as he did so, he put his finger down upon this or that small area of the globe in which the area king said, “This good news of the kingdom WILL NOT be be declared in my part of the earth.” The unspoken question carried an implied answer: “Who will prevail—the maker of the globe or the one who would defy God on this small section of it?”

Sometimes those who don’t like Witnesses will carry on about how they overstate their “persecution complex.” We see here from the christianpost.com that, in reality, Witnesses understate it. 

See: I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why