Photo:
RIA Novosti
The head of the Moscow Helsinki group Lyudmila Alexeyeva during the traditional autumn meeting of the members of the Council under RF President on development of civil society and human rights (HRC) with the head of state intends to talk about the violations of citizens ‘ rights to freedom of religion.
Date and agenda of the meeting of human rights defenders with Vladimir Putin not yet been determined.
“I intend to tell the President about the obvious offensive forces of a state on all the churches except the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. For the Orthodox, which are not included in the Moscow Patriarchate, including the attack” — said Alekseev TASS.
She also said that in his report intends to point out the violations of the rights of Jehovah’s witnesses and Scientologists. “The Moscow Helsinki group, has always defended the rights of believers under the Soviet rule, we defended and the Pentecostals, and Adventists, and now I signed a letter in support of Scientology, because for them their faith is as important to me as my beliefs,” said human rights activist, stressing that the imposition of “state religion contrary to the Constitution”.
The case of Scientology
On Monday, the newspaper “Kommersant” published a collective letter will be sent to President Vladimir Putin signed including Lyudmila Alexeyeva, the protection of the group arrested Scientologists from St. Petersburg suspected of extremist activities.
Members of the Church of Scientology of St. Petersburg is accused of illegal organization of paid courses and programs without the appropriate registration, the income from these actions is estimated at the sum more than 276 million rubles. They were detained on 6 June, the same day in the office, religious organization employees of management of FSB across Petersburg and Leningrad region has spent searches in a criminal case under articles of the criminal code “Illegal entrepreneurship”, “inciting hatred or enmity” and also “the Organization of extremist community”. The members of the organization seized the books and materials, recognized as extremist in Russia. According to investigators, the Church of Scientology of St. Petersburg is an extremist community.
Scientology — religious-philosophical trend founded in the USA in early 1950-ies by the science fiction author Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. In Russia part of the Scientology materials recognized as extremist and included into Federal list of extremist. Production, distribution and storage for mass distribution of these materials on the territory of the Russian Federation is illegal.