In Snezhnogorsk, Yunona Ilyasova and Aleksey Yeliseyev Were Fined for Their Faith. Speech Therapist and Electric Welder Found Guilty of Extremism for Reading the Bible

On May 15, 2023, Roza Bolotskaya, judge of the Polyarny District Court of the Murmansk Region, sentenced Jehovah's Witnesses Yunona Ilyasova and Aleksey Yeliseyev to heavy fines of 400,000 and 450,000 rubles, respectively. The court found them guilty of organizing the activity of an extremist organization.

Yunona Ilyasova, a mother of three and a special education teacher, was suspected of extremism in July 2021. Another peaceful citizen from Snezhnogorsk, Aleksey Yeliseyev, a welder, also became a suspect. Homes of the believers were searched during the night, after which they ended up in a temporary detention center. The investigation considered Ilyasova and Yeliseyev guilty of extremism due to the fact that they “organized individual preaching and the discussion of religious literature and its texts” via videoconferencing.

“On the recordings, we saw a discussion of religious texts that were not included in the list of extremist materials, including the Bible; praying and singing songs, which in themselves are not extremism,” Aleksey Yeliseyev said in court. “The videos show that moral standards, good conduct, family values, health topics, the future, etc. are being discussed”.

Addressing the court, Yunona Ilyasova noted: “During the trial, it was repeatedly said that there is not a single forbidden religion in Russia, but at the same time, the investigation and the prosecution considered that my actions in worshiping God were illegal. It turns out that you can use only the first half of the 28th article of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which says that I have the right to choose and have faith, but you can’t use the second half of the same article — to act in accordance with my convictions, both individually and together with others. It's like giving a car to a person who does not have a driver's license. That is, there is a car, but there is no right to use it”.

The case was investigated by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Murmansk Region, and in August 2022 it went to court. Prior to the sentencing, the believers were under a recognizance agreement for a year and eight months. What is happening has become a great stress for the families of both defendants. Aleksey and his wife even decided not to inform his parents, who are already in poor health, about the criminal case.

In the Murmansk region, already seven Jehovah's Witnesses have faced criminal prosecution because of their religion. Four of them have already been sentenced to large fines. Willy Fautré, founder and director of the Brussels organization Human Rights Without Frontiers, expressed his concern about the growing repression campaign: "Jehovah’s Witnesses are the religious group that has been the most persecuted in Russia... hereby deprived of their freedoms of association, assembly, worship and expression".