As promised, we are once again reflecting upon the topic about ”Jehovah’s Witnesses”. I wanted to prove the information that I have by asking them. That is why I invited secretary of the organization Tigran Harutyunyan and representative Levon Margaryan for an interview.
I am going to present the most important parts of our conversation. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe that society can not tolerate them. In their opinion, some organizations are the ones that are more intolerant, although they consider that normal. I must mention the fact that Jehovah’s Witnesses know the Bible by heart; they make references in their speech and turn their speech into propaganda. I don’t think that that will interest the reader. In any case, I will present some interesting things in the article.
The opinion that many children (and not only children) commit suicide by being under the influence of the sect, according to Mr. Hartutyunyan, is absurd due to the fact that the sect is against that. ”If we don’t smoke because we value our lives, how can we commit suicide?”, he says. In response to the comment about the fact that a child gets scared when hearing about the End of the World, he said: ”Our child members understand that Armageddon will save us, it signifies happiness; we wait happily for that day because we will finally be saved from this horrible life.” What do you think-is the child psychologically well if he or she waits happily for the End of the World? If Jehovah’s Witnesses are impatiently waiting for being freed from ”this horrible life”, then that means to say that many are ready to ”take the initiative”. On one hand, Jehovahs call this life ”sacred”, on the other hand they say that ”they will finally be saved from the cruelties of this life”. They understand one another.
I also brought up the issue about children isolating themselves from other children and not taking part in many celebrations. Mr. Margaryan claims that there are not such bans and that the child members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses ”….get along with everyone; they just refuse to participate in some events.” According to Mr. Harutyunyan, ”we celebrate the holidays which don’t contradict the principles set forth in the Bible.”
The next question referred to the accusations that the Witnesses slander other beliefs. They did not deny the fact that they really do that. ”If they call it slander, then they could have sued us. If they didn’t sue us, then we have the basis for that,”said Harutyunyan and Margaryan and blamed other beliefs for the war in Iraq, including the Catholic church for supporting Hitler during the World War. But what’s most interesting is that they consider the Azeri-Armenian conflict to be based on religion. I suggested them to sue the representatives of other churches if they are sure that those representatives are the ones responsible for the thousands of people that died. ”We are involved with more important things at the present. We are spreading the good word. God has given us the time and that time is coming to an end. We have to do our best to inform as much people as we can,” they said.
For the reader’s information, I must say that the European Council has considered it necessary to accept a formula according to which door to door propaganda should not be looked at as a spirit hunt.
In response to the question as to why they go from door to door and convince people, the Jehovah’s Witnesses said that they do not force anyone and in general, they have no ”census” issue. ”If we really wanted to, we could have enlisted more than 45,000 members,” said Mr. Margaryan (I must mention that according to official statistics, there are more than 9000 Jehovah’s Witnesses in Armenia and the number of their followers reaches 20 thousand).
In addition, perhaps Mr. Margaryan did not notice the error he made, he said the following: ”WE DON’T CARE ABOUT QUANTITY, BUT RATHER QUALITY.”. According to them, if they need to save many people, then how can they not care about quantity? What does ”the believer’s quality” mean? Perhaps those qualities are important for other reasons.
In the end, I asked them to say a few words to the readers: ”They shouldn’t listen to others. They should talk to the witnesses in person. People need to read the Bible with our help. But let them check to make sure we are right or wrong.”-only with THEIR ”help”.
It is interesting to know whether or not Russia has conducted a study about the results of the activities carried out by the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Armenia. I could not find that out. The Religion and National Minorities department headed by Hranush Kharatyan, by law, does not get involved in similar things. ”We only give our expert opinion on whether the organization is religious or not. The rest is decided by the Ministry of Justice,” says Mrs. Kharatyan. As for further control, the Religion and National Minorities department is not competent. ”The police are the ones that control the organization. We do not deal with that by law. We have contacts and lead discussions in case of complaints. In my subjective opinion, Jehovah’s Witnesses and not only them can base many contradictions against the law on a global level. However, I will stay neutral to the opinions that there is no objective study and court cases.”
I also talked to lawyer Avetik Ishkhanyan about this. According to Mr. Ishkhanyan, to register or not to register does not play a major role in this issue. ”If they didn’t get registered, what would change? The Jehovah’s Witnesses would complain that they were being treated badly and attract the attention of more people. They are more active when they are not registered.” The lawyer believes that we must not fight against the religious sects; there must be free competition. We can agree with what he is saying, and we can disagree. However, we can agree with one thing: according to Mr. Ishkhanyan, if we accept the fact that the sect really is dangerous, then we must fight not against the consequences, but rather the reasons for them. If the organization enlists many members, that means that there is something which attracts the people and doesn’t really care about the social/economic status of the individual. “Today, the people that speak against the religious sect are the ones that have put the people in this kind of situation and are buried in corruption,” says Mr. Ishkhanyan.
Perhaps I am mistaken, however, after many interviews with different people, I can come to the conclusion that nobody likes the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They simply do not speak out based on some circumstances. Leader of the ”Armenian Aryan Unity” Armen Avetisyan, whose name had been included in the US State Department report, was pretty active towards this issue. He was against freedoms that get out of hand and when sexual minorities and religious sects get too many opportunities to destroy national values and put down the reputation of Armenians. In response to my question as to why the Armenian Apostolic Church does not take any steps against the sect, Mr. Avetisyan said that the church believes in other values besides the church, which, according to him, ”..has turned into just a stony structure that sells candles.” However, despite everything, Mr. Avetisyan stated that they are ready to collaborate with the church in solving this issue.
In conclusion, we can say the following: we no longer have the chance to make a choice. We chose to take the path towards the European Union and take on some responsibilities; we can not go back and say that we didn’t (even though the ”we” heard in some official speeches is relative). The fact remains that, according to the Constitution and the laws, religious organizations have a number of rights and freedoms-even more in my opinion.
As they say, we longer have rights when others come in to play. However, the rights of Jehovah’s witnesses surpass our rights. Although they are less in number than us, the people, but in these conditions we might have to change roles. All roads lead to the fact that we are the future minority…
We can blame many people-the state courts that registered this organization, political and cultural figures which don’t really care about this issue, the Armenian Apostolic Church that didn’t take any steps against this besides ”expressing its heartfelt pain”.
There is one painful truth stated in the US State Deparment’s report: ”The majority of the people living in Armenia is Christian, however, many consider baptism as a national tradition and do not go deep into the meaning of it.”
Instead of blaming each other for what we have done or haven’t done, perhaps it would be better for all of us Armenians, who have celebrated the ”1700th anniversary of the acceptance of Christianity”, to take concrete steps because usually the second side wins in the battle between the two…