At the present, there are over 3000 religious sects in Armenia
sponsored by the U.S. One of them is the “Jehovah’s Witnesses” sect.
This sect is the richest and its sponsors and directors remain unknown.
Their “corporation” is located in New York. They are against all wars,
any type of government, military service and deprive themselves of such
obligations. They consider national flags and anthems as idolization.
According to them, obeying the laws constituted by the government means
to obey the devil himself. That is why the New Zealand and Australian
governments got rid of the “Jehovah’s Witnesses”, declaring them as an
illegal organization. The members of “Jehovah’s Witnesses” try to keep
the number of members at 144,000 and claim that that is what Jehovah
has told them to do. They are divided into two groups. The first group
is the group for the leaders, and the second for the “sheep”. The
“sheep” have to work very hard in order to save themselves. That is how
preaching on the streets begins. Currently, they present themselves in
different countries on behalf of names such as “Students of the Holy
Bible”, “Witnesses of Valiance”, “Sacred Israel”, “Man’s Friends”, and
so on. The world’s largest and suitable printing-house belongs to the
“Jehovah’s Witnesses” organization. During the year, over 84,000,000
million monthlies are printed. They publish the “Watchtower” and
“Awake” monthlies with a publication of 55,000,000 million and in 128
languages.
We are not using any weapons
One of the preachers of the “Jehovah’s Witnesses” sect did not wish to
present himself and went against the Armenian Apostolic Church for
claiming that the enlistment of the “Jehovah’s Witnesses” is their loss
and the sect’s victory. “People learned from their mistake. They hadn’t
enlisted us, but now they understood that they were wrong,” he said.
“We don’t consider that as our victory because God decides what is
victory and what is not. When an individual becomes an adult, he
receives a passport so that he or she can prove his identity. Thus,
through that identification one can be protected. Enlisting the sect is
the same thing as identifying who we are. People used to not care about
the “Jehovah’s Witnesses”, but now we have the right to defend our
rights according to the Constitution. The law about the freedom of
conscience allows for one to decide what he or she wants to believe in.
For example, in Armenia there are Satanists and they decide for
themselves who they want to believe in. The media like to create
scandals connected with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. All kinds of scandals
like, we are murderers, or we are traitors, we don’t serve in the army,
etc. Why do we have to consider Turks the enemies when the enemy lies
deep inside us? Deputies eat each other up in the National Assembly and
we see that. Why should the enemy attack if we don’t cause that? They
say that we don’t use any weapons, but if there is nobody to fight
against, then there certainly is no need to carry a gun. So, the enemy
is really inside us. There is no enemy at all.”
A naive act
“After enlisting the Jehovah’s Witnesses by using the law about freedom
of conscience, Satanists, Fascists and the homosexuals will demand that
the government enlist them also,” says head of the department on
religion of the Constitutional Court Rafael Papayan.
“Enlisting Jehovah’s Witnesses goes way back, but the turn of events
led up to a bad end. We are forced to admit that Jehovah’s Witnesses
were the ones who won the fight between the two sides, in other words,
the Witnesses and the state competent structures. The problem is that
our competent bodies did not go deep into the whole thing, to find out
what kind of organization it is, what their belief is and what their
goals are. They do not understand what it means to have freedom of
conscience with which they direct themselves. The freedom of conscience
is not absolute in that there are some rights that can be preserved in
all cases, yet there are others which are considered political, like
the right for freedom of conscience. This last group of rights can be
directed towards state and national purposes. For example, if there is
a danger facing the national security, if there is a problem with the
moral ethics of a nation, if national customs are played around with,
etc. Those kinds of rights are stated in the Constitution and they
would not be stated if they were not included in international
documents. According to international standards, the religious sects
and the freedom of conscience are subject to conditions, limitations in
order to prevent the above mentioned problems. Our authorities had an
alternative, because that was set by both the Constitution and
according to rights. Our authorities do not comprehend the issue at
hand. The freedom of conscience is a personal freedom, meaning that no
governmental body has the right to persecute the individual for his or
her faith. However, no document states that the state authorities are
obligated to provide additional rights for any group or organization or
to turn it lawful. I have doubts that this is either Europe’s demand
or…..I don’t know. If Europe is the one demanding, then our diplomats
need to go through negotiations with those structures in Europe. I have
come to the conclusion that there has been no diplomacy. Europe says
that they are taking diplomatic steps. An key European country like
France has not enlisted Jehovah’s Witnesses. They even have a law
called “Anti-sect law”. Preaching is forbidden according to the world
church council’s charter. I think that our competent bodies have not
gone deep into studying the activities of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. All
that happened was automatic. Jehovah’s Witnesses forbid their members
to carry weapons. This is obvious due to the fact that they want to
increase the number of people against weapons by 100%. This is a matter
of security. The purpose for doing this is so the country will be
deprived of immunity and any chance of defending itself. We know how
they treat the sick and their treatments are accepted in medical
sciences. In many cases, those methods help save lives. How have they
solved these problems in their charter? To change a charter does not
mean that they eliminated all contradictions and their religious dogma
changed with it. We Armenians do not fully understand the concept of a
religious dogma. A dogma never changes. If a dogma changes, then there
can be no religion. It turns out that the acts are 100% senseless, or
that there are other forces who are ordered by the sect favorers to
chase after other goals.”