The news are about the intention of Russia's Supreme Court to ban Jehovah's Witnesses by closing their organizations for being extremist and not allowing them to practice their religious activities. If the law is approved, the property of the organization will be taken away and its members won't be able to associate in order to practise their religion in churchs. 
This has been seen as a violation of the right of freedom of religion and association by human rights defenders, as well as for Jehovah's Witnesses, who'll ask for help to the European Court of Human Rights. The Justice Ministry, who has decided not to support anymore the proclamation of the law, has anyways revealed that since 2007 several local Jehovah's Witnesses organizations have been banned, just as 95 pieces of literature considered extremist materials, which hasn't been obeyed by the Jehovah's Witnesses organization although they deny that. Punishments for not respecting the law will go from fines of a considerable amount of money to a maximun of 10 years in prison.
The article reminds that Russia, as a member of the Council of Europe has to respect freedom of religion and association because it is a human right, although it has violated it before and is doing it again with this law that interferes with the free religion practice. Rachel Denber, member of the Human Rights Watch, has appealed to the Russian Authorities in order to make them respect the freedom of a religion which doesn't hurt anyone.
PERSONAL OPINION:
As Denber says, if a religion and its practice doesn't hurt anyone, it should be always respected, because anyone should be free to believe and practise any religion they want. And well, of course, as a human right it should be always respected and I think it is a shame that authorities in Russia are thinking about promoting a law against a religion, when there's a Declaration of Human Rights which totally rejects the unfulfilment of any human right.
In the Spanish Constitution it says that Spain is an aconfessional country, which means that it doesn't have an official religion but it can have agreements with religious organizations, in Spain's case, with the Catholic Church. This creates a predilection for the Catholic religion, even though it's not official. But despite that, all religions are respected in Spain.
In this case we can't do anything to change the situation because it is happening in Russia, but maybe the citizens there could demonstrate against it, which could be helpful in order to prevent the law of getting established.
VOCABULARY:
· breach: violació, infracció
· withdraw: retirar-se
· misdemeanor: falta, delicte menor
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