Terror in name of Jesus Politician Guram Sharadze filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the legal entities of Jehovah’s Witnesses. His suit was dismissed on February 29, 2000. However, Sharadze appealed and won. Jehovah’s Witnesses, in turn, appealed to the Supreme Court. On February 22, 2001, the Supreme Court decided against the Witnesses, basically on legal technicalities. The Supreme Court reasoned that the Constitution specifies that religions are to be registered under public law according to an as yet nonexistent law detailing the registration of religious associations. The court concluded that in the absence of this law, Jehovah’s Witnesses could not be registered in any alternative form. However, some 15 other associations supporting religious activity are legally registered in Georgia.

In reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision, Georgia’s Justice Minister, Mikheil Saakashvili, said in a television interview: “From a legal standpoint, the decision is very dubious. I don’t think it’s the most successful page in the history of the Supreme Court.” Zurab Adeishvili, the acting chairman of Georgia’s parliamentary legal committee, told Keston News Service that he was “very concerned” about the ruling because “it encourages extremist forces in our [Georgian Orthodox] Church to suppress religious minority groups.” Sadly, Adeishvili’s concerns proved justified. A few days after the ruling, the violence against Jehovah’s Witnesses resumed. In the year 2001, Witnesses were assaulted by mobs, police, and Orthodox priests on February 27, March 5, March 6, March 27, April 1, April 7, April 29, April 30, May 7, May 20, June 8, June 17, July 11, August 12, September 28, and September 30. And the list goes on and on.

In the midst of this new wave of persecution, the Supreme Court took the unusual step of clarifying its decision publicly, stating: “Unfortunately, the public has wrongly interpreted the annulment by the Supreme Court of the registration of the Union of Jehovah’s Witnesses . . . When the court registration of defendants, as a legal entity of private law, was annulled, their right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion was neither directly nor indirectly violated or restricted. Their freedom to change their belief, either alone or jointly with others, either publicly or in private, was not restricted. . . . The Court decision has not restricted the defendants’ right to receive and distribute their ideas and information. It did not prohibit their right to have peaceful meetings.” Link: Terror in name of Jesus