material deemed "extremist". In 2011 there was an unsuccessful attempt to ban the Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is on the same charge. In August 2016, the premises of a Vedic monastery founded in 2001 in Nizhny Novgorod were demolished by local authorities after having been declared illegal in 2015. It has been observed that the categories of "extremist" and "totalitarian sect" have been consistently used to try to outlaw religious groups which the Russian Orthodox Church classifies as "not traditional", including the newest Protestant churches and Jehovah's Witnesses. There is a ban of Jehovah's Witnesses activities in Russia. In 2017, a report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom stated that: "The Russian government views independent religious activity as a major threat to social and political stability, an approach inherited from the Soviet period". Thus, for the first time, the USCIRF classified Russia as one of the world's worst violators of freedom of religion, a "country of particular concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act. The report also affirmed that Russia "is the sole state to have not only continually intensified its repression of religious freedom ..., but also to have expanded its repressive policies. ...Those policies, ranging from administrative harassment to arbitrary imprisonment to extrajudicial killing, are implemented in a fashion that is systematic, ongoing, and egregious". Many other countries and international organizations have spoken out on Russia's religious abuses. Bhagavad Gita trial In 2011, a group linked to the Russian Orthodox Church demanded a ban of the Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is'', the book of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, in Tomsk Oblast, on charge of extremism. The case was eventually dismissed by the federal judge on 28 December 2011. The Russian ambassador Alexander Kadakin condemned the "madmen" who sought the ban, and underlined that Russia is a secular country. To protest the attempted ban, 15,000 Indians in Moscow, and followers of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness throughout Russia, appealed to the government of India asking an intervention to resolve the issue. The move triggered strong protests by members of the Parliament of India who wanted the government to take a strong position. The final court hearing in Tomsk was then scheduled on 28 December, after the court agreed to seek the opinion of the Tomsk ombudsman on human rights and of Indologists from Moscow and Saint Petersburg. See also Anti-Semitism in Russia Anti-Semitism in the Soviet