In April 2017, Jehovah’s Witnesses were declared an extremist organization and outlawed by Russia’s top court. Their ordeal continues:
A spokesperson for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, an organization that Russia labeled extremist in 2017, alleged that at least seven adherents of the religious group had been brutally tortured after being detained last week in the Siberian city of Surgut. The spokesperson said that investigators had stripped, suffocated, doused with water and applied stun guns on the believers during an interrogation.
More disturbing details on the RL/RFE site. The Moscow Times also reports:
Earlier this month, opposition leader Alexei Navalny compared the police raids against Jehovah’s Witnesses in the region to fascism.
“That’s what Hitler did: shoved the Jehovah’s Witnesses into concentration camps and starved them to death,” he said on his YouTube channel Feb. 7.
This is one of the few cases where Nazi parallels seem justified. They aren’t lost of the (regrettably small) section of the Russian public that’s paying attention.