RUSSIA USCIRF–RECOMMENDED FOR COUNTRIES OF PARTICULAR CONCERN (CPC) KEY FINDINGS I n 2020, religious freedom conditions in Russia deteriorated. The government continued to target “nontraditional” religious minorities with fines, detentions, and criminal charges. Russian legislation criminalizes “extremism” without adequately defining the term, enabling the state to prosecute a vast range of nonviolent religious activity. In 2020, the state brought 188 criminal cases against Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were banned as an extremist group in 2017. Since that time, there have been 1,274 raids and searches of members’ homes, with 477 occurring in 2020. Raids and interrogations included instances of torture that continue to go uninvestigated and unpunished. During the year, 72 Jehovah’s Witnesses—including at least six from Russian-occupied Crimea—were detained under pretrial detention, house arrest, or incarceration. In 2020, the government also used its anti-extremism law to persecute religious minorities, particularly Muslims. A 2020 USCIRF report on blasphemy laws determined Russia to have the world’s third-highest number of criminal blasphemy cases, behind Pakistan and Iran. It also found that Russia led the world in criminal blasphemy enforcement cases related to social media and had the highest incidence of such cases among countries without an official state religion between 2014 and 2018. Such cases continued in 2020, as did cases of enforcement of the religion law, which also sets strict registration requirements and empowers state officials to impede and monitor religious groups’ activities. It also broadly defines and prohibits “missionary activities,” including preaching, praying, disseminating religious materials, and answering questions about religion outside of officially designated sites. In the North Caucasus, security forces acted with impunity, arresting or kidnapping persons suspected of even tangential links to Islamist militancy as well as for secular political opposition. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov oversaw or condoned egregious abuses based on his religious views, including against women and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) community. Chechens routinely appear in humiliating televised confessions in which they must publicly apologize for a variety of offenses, including witchcraft, insulting Islam, and criticizing Kadyrov, in a ritual reminiscent of customary political and religious practice in the region. One young critic of the leader was kidnapped and forced to confess on video before sitting naked on a glass bottle. Chechen Minister of Information and Press Akhmed Dudaev advocates such policies, recently accusing two LGBTI bloggers arrested in April for insulting religion of aiding Islamist militants. Police across the North Caucasus have broadly targeted and harassed attendees at regional mosques, demanding their personal information and subjecting them to questioning. One mosque in Dagestan has been targeted so regularly that government raids are referred to as part of Friday services. Rather than effectively combatting violent extremism, these practices create resentment and lead some individuals to seek information about Islam from disreputable online sources. In Russian-occupied Crimea, the occupation authorities continued to enforce Russia’s repressive laws and policies on religion, which has resulted in the prosecution of peaceful religious activity and bans on groups that were legal in Crimea under Ukrainian law. At least 16 Crimean Muslims were sentenced to prison on made-up charges of extremism and terrorism, primarily based on religious discussions that prosecutors linked to the now-banned group Hizb ut-Tahrir. In the spring, the Russian government began to transfer ownership of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) Cathedral of St. Vladimir and Olga to the state; it is the most important property of the UOC in Crimea and its congregation has already been evicted. RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE U.S. GOVERNMENT • Designate Russia as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA); Kholoshin, by freezing those individuals’ assets and/or barring their entry into the United States under human rights related financial and visa authorities, citing specific religious freedom violations; and • Impose targeted sanctions on Russian government agencies and officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom, including Chechen Minister of Information and Press Akhmed Dudaev and Abinsk district court judge Aleksandr • Work with European allies to use advocacy, diplomacy, and targeted sanctions to pressure Russia to end religious freedom abuses, release religious prisoners of conscience, and permit the establishment of an international monitoring presence in occupied Crimea. The U.S. Congress should: • Pass the Ukraine Religious Freedom Support Act (H.R. 496), which calls on the U.S. administration to consider Russia’s religious freedom violations in Crimea and Donbas when determining CPC designations; and • Hold briefings and hearings highlighting the Russian government’s failure to bring its religion and extremism laws in line with international human rights standards. KEY USCIRF RESOURCES & ACTIVITIES • Hearing: Religious Freedom in Russia and Central Asia • Issue Update: The Global Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses • Issue Update: The Anti-Cult Movement and Religious Regulation in Russia and the Former Soviet Union 38 U S C I R F | A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 2 1