Religion: Witnesses7 Spartan Trials

Tireless as proselytizers and tiresome as preachers, Jehovah’s Witnesses often make more enemies than converts. Currently, the made-in-America sect is facing a high degree of hostility in Greece. The Witnesses’ doctrinal refusal to bear arms defies Greece’s universal-conscription law, which has no provision for conscientious objection. Within the past three months, two young Greek Witnesses have been condemned to death for refusing military service.

As it turned out, neither objector will have to face the firing squad. In July, the first protesting Witness, George Roussopoulos, 22, was retried and sentenced to seven years in prison. Last week, after scattered international protests against the harsh penalty, including picketing of the Greek tourist office in New York and the Greek embassy in

The Hague, Christos Kazanis, 23, was brought before a court-martial on appeal, given a 41-year prison term. Kazanis will still be subject to military service when his time is up, and could conceivably face another trial if he stands by his convictions.

By now, the 10,000 Witnesses in Greece are accustomed to hard knocks.

During the civil war of 1944-49, 87 were convicted for refusing military service; two were executed. Today, at least 50 Witnesses are in prison for refusing to bear arms. Although not pacifists, the Witnesses refuse to take part in man-made wars because, as “God’s ambassadors,” they feel obliged to save their strength for the coming battle of Armageddon that will end world history. Greece has time and again refused the Witnesses official permits to build their “kingdom halls,” and three years ago the government denied them permission to hold an international rally in Athens.

A major source of Witness persecution is the powerful Orthodox Church to which 90% of all Greeks formally belong. Although Greece’s constitution proclaims religious freedom, Orthodoxy is granted special privileges as the state church, and all proselytizing by other faiths is forbidden. Orthodox leaders regard the Witnesses as the most persistent violators of the rule. While Kazanis was facing retrial, the Athens daily Ta Nea summed up church opinion in a story that wildly denounced the Witnesses as “an American Mafia with agents throughout the world, who make propaganda in favor of Judaism.” Greece’s Orthodox primate, Metropolitan Chrysostomos, recently called the sect “the Number 1 enemy of our church.” When asked about the death sentences meted out to Witness objectors, Chrysostomos frostily replied: “The church does not interfere with the decisions of military justice.”