Talk:Freedom of religion in Russia

Jehovah's Witnesses ban

The last few paragraphs are uncited and are written without an NPOV. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.197.132 (talk) 23:39, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Much of the article is actually unsourced, I have added a relevant tag. —PaleoNeonate – 17:42, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Even worse, the entire page seems to be lifted from this 2007 US government report with a 99.6% Earwig score. It's more than 10 years out of date in any case, and may be best to start over from scratch. – Reidgreg (talk) 20:24, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Okay, apparently the source is in the public domain. The article needs to be rewritten for encyclopedic tone but I don't want to do that when the information is 11 years out of date. Needs updating and more sources for better NPOV. – Reidgreg (talk) 20:53, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

It's been a bit since this was looked at, I know, but there are some pretty significantly noteable developments in the last 6-8 months especially and the last year overall. The campaign against religious minorities, with Witnesses as particular targets, is being talked about by Amnesty International and multiple news outlets. One particular prisoner is being treated as the lead and getting a lot of coverage from Radio Free Europe (among others) and even has government-level rights groups, like the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, watching. Just some added links for thought. --HiroQ (talk) 01:22, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Jehovah's Witnesses persecution

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vesti.ru%2Fdoc.html%3Fid%3D3128480 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.200.186.102 (talk) 19:08, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

NPOV

@Jordan Mendelson: See WP:NOTNEUTRAL and Okrent's law.

I don't agree with JW, but they are the canary in the coalmine. You know that the country is rotten if it bans JW. tgeorgescu (talk) 23:20, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Someone else seems to has also replaced it, however there were numerous problems with the original statement:

> In the Russian Federation, Jehovah Witnesses are persecuted since 2017 for no apparent reason, which reminds people of the Inquisition.

First, "no apparent reason" was editorializing, there were reasons given in the previous paragraph, and a non-encyclopedic tone.

Second, "which reminds people of the Inquisition" was an opinion of a single journalist in the citation given, but the statement was written as if wikipedia was stating a fact using persuasive writing. I considered quoting the person who made the statement, but as the page is quite long, decided against it.

The last remaining part about the JW being persecuted since 2017 was covered in the preceding paragraph, so it seemed unnecessary to repeat it. Jordan Mendelson (talk) 01:38, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Jordan Mendelson: no apparent reason: maybe it isn't there verbatim, but it is the point of at least one WP:RS, namely that we still don't know how/why JW pissed off Putin's regime. Well, except their outright refusal to bear arms, but that wasn't a novelty, and actually pleads against them committing acts of violence.

To many commentators it appears that JW got persecuted simply because they are heretics, hence the comparison with the Inquisition. tgeorgescu (talk) 02:01, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Regardless of whether or not it came from a reputable source, it stated opinions as facts from Wikipedia's voice WP:VOICE. I could not figure out how to fix it so that the opinions were properly attributed to comply with WP:NPOV in a way that added to the article. I saw no way to properly attribute "no apparent reason" given the citations gave reasons. Attributing the inquisition bit would require changing it to "It reminds me of the Inquisition" with the journalist's name, however the person doesn't appear to be especially noteworthy.

On a side note, there appears to be a lot of duplication here with Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses#Russia. Since this is an article on religious freedom in Russia is quite broad, perhaps the details of JW persecution should be moved into a new article Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia similar to Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States, leaving this article with a more succinct summary of the JW persecution. That way there would be space to include things like statements from major human right's organizations or countries and reference to Trial of the Sixteen (2011–2015) without making this article even more lengthy. Jordan Mendelson (talk) 02:58, 2 October 2022 (UTC)