A Moscow court upheld a ban on the city's Jehovah's Witnesses, ending a six-year case that reflected growing pressure to stifle minority religious groups in Russia, where Orthodox Christianity is predominant.
Earlier this year, a district court prohibited the group from engaging in religious activity under a provision that allows courts to ban religious groups considered to be inciting hatred or intolerant behavior. The Jehovah's Witnesses had appealed.
Christian Presber, a spokesman for the Jehovah's Witnesses, had earlier warned that if the Moscow City Court upheld that ruling, the group could be stripped of its legal status. It would no longer be able to maintain bank accounts, rent space for worship or otherwise support its religious activities.
"This is turning the clock back to the Soviet times. Religious freedom has just turned back to where it was in the Soviet times," said the Jehovah's Witnesses' Canadian lawyer John Burns.
Moscow is home to about 10,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, with 133,000 members nationwide, Presber said.
"Are they going to make police come into apartments to see that kids are celebrating holidays and birthdays," he said, referring to the Jehovah's Witnesses practice of not marking those occasions.
The Moscow group had been fighting for survival since 1998 when proceedings were first launched to shut it down. In 2001, a local court threw out prosecutors' attempts to ban the group in a ruling hailed as a sign of increased religious tolerance.
Another court, however, later ordered a new hearing in the case. The second trial, which ended in the ban, began in the spring of 2002.
Prosecutors argued that the religion is dangerous to the psychological and physical health of Russians, breaks up families and endangers children by forbidding procedures such as blood transfusions.
Lawyers for the Jehovah's Witnesses countered that the court ruling was biased and that it failed to take into account experts, including the sociological faculty at Russia's prestigious Moscow State University, who concluded that there is no relationship between religious belief and family breakups.
An elderly woman who attended the court proceedings and identified herself only as Olga applauded the decision to ban the religious group. "Other souls won't die," she said. She said her daughter joined the group five years ago.
Russia's 1997 law on religion enshrines Orthodox Christianity as the country's predominant religion and pledges respect for Buddhism, Islam and Judaism — called traditional religions — but places restrictions on other groups.
Rights advocates say that Jehovah's Witnesses often are among the persecuted in countries where religious freedom is a fragile right because of their refusal to take part in compulsory military service.