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Russian Supreme Court upholds ban On Scientologists

2016-09-25 Source:kaiwind Author:rapsinews

(Kaiwind.com)Russian’s Supreme Court upheld the lower court's decision to ban the Church of Scientology Moscow,RAPSI reported.

 

In November 2015,The Moscow City Court backed a justice ministry request to shutter the church in Moscow after authorities argued in part that since the Church of Scientology had registered its name as a US trademark, it cannot call itself a religious organisation, the Moscow branch of the Church of Scientology has six months to officially cease activity in the Russian capital under the court’s ruling. However, the organization plans to appeal the Moscow court’s ruling in High Court as it, they claim, violates the rights of its parishioners in Russia.

 

On June 21, The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) have conducted a number of searches in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region as part of the investigation into the case of illegal business activities of the Church of Scientology. During the searches law enforcement officials seized items and documents proving the version of sales of goods and services provided by the organizers of the Church of Scientology of St. Petersburg in violation of statutory norms and indicating the inter-regional nature of these illegal activities.

"The upholding by the Supreme Court of the legality of the shutdown of the so-called Church of Scientology is seen as an important precedent demonstrating the state's determination not to recognize as religious those organizations that use people's religious feeling for malign purposes, The ruling in the scientologists' case is not a breach of the religious freedom since "it was proved in court that the very activity of this organization is an affront to human freedom as such. " Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Vakhtang Kipshidze told RAPSI.

Background: 

Scientology is a body of religious beliefs and practices created in 1954 by American author L. Ron Hubbard (1911–86). After he developed Dianetics,the Dianetics Foundation entered bankruptcy and Hubbard lost the rights to his seminal publication Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health in 1952. He then recharacterized the subject as a religion and renamed it Scientology.

 A resolution passed in 1996 by the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, classified the Church of Scientology as a destructive religious organization.

The Moscow Regional Court ruled in 2012 that some of Hubbard’s books be included on the Federal List of Extremist Literature and prohibited from distribution in Russia.

 Original linkhttp://rapsinews.com/judicial_news/20160629/276413434.html 

 Chinese version linkhttp://anticult.kaiwind.com/xingao/2016/201608/22/t20160822_4193442.shtml 

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Editor:Sunny