On April 8 and 9, a series of online conferences will be held to commemorate the mass deportation of Jehovah's Witnesses in the USSR
MoscowOn April 8 and 9, 2021, an online scientific and practical conference and a press conference will be held dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the mass deportation of Jehovah's Witnesses, which was organized by the Soviet authorities in April 1951. At that time, about 10,000 believers and their families, including children and the elderly, were deported to eternal settlement in the north of the country just because of their religious views.
On April 8, at 11:00 Moscow time, the scientific and practical online conference "Operation North" will begin. 70 Years Later: Important Lessons from Religious Repression". The meeting was organized by the Ukrainian Association of Religious Studies, the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR) and the Center for Jehovah's Witnesses in Ukraine.
The event will be broadcast on YouTube in English, Russian and Ukrainian .
Experts will discuss the policy of the totalitarian authorities, in particular the Soviet regime in relation to religious organizations; historical facts of the Soviet regime's repression of Jehovah's Witnesses; the current situation of Jehovah's Witnesses in the world (Europe, Asia); the role of the media in shaping public opinion about religious organizations.
Questions can be asked to speakers via WhatsApp at +38 (063) 041-71-49.
On April 9, at 11:00 Moscow time, an online press conference will be held at the Ukrinform press center in Kyiv, at which materials from the declassified KGB archives will be made public. They will reveal little-known facts of repression suffered by ordinary civilians whose ideology did not coincide with the party's.
The press conference will be attended by Head of the Department for Religions and Nationalities of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine Andriy Yurash; Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Vice-President of the Ukrainian Association of Religious Studies Lyudmila Filipovych; Konstantin Berezhko, PhD in History, visiting researcher at the Technical University of Dresden and the Hannah Arendt Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism; Press Spokesman for Jehovah's Witnesses in Ukraine Ivan Rieger.