RUSSIAN
SUPREME COURT
REFUSES TO REVIEW DECISION TO EVICT P.Ts.U. FROM CATHEDRAL IN
SIMFEROPOL
Attorney
Sergei Zaets
thinks that the liquidation of the Ukrainian Orthodox community
in occupied
Crimea borders on genocide. This is how he commented on the
refusal by the
Russian Supreme Court to retain the P.Ts.U. [Orthodox Church of
Ukraine]
cathedral in Simferopol.
On 4
August, the
Russian Supreme Court refused to review the decision to evict
the parish of the
Orthodox Church of Ukraine from the cathedral church in occupied
Simferopol.
This was reported by lawyer Sergei Zaets in Facebook, Gordon
reports.
"It is
time to
sound the alarm. . . . In essence this means the complete
liquidation of the
Ukrainian Orthodox community in Crimea. Formally it is not
genocide, but it borders
on it. Russia is destroying yet another Ukrainian
religious-cultural group and
is continuing to purge Crimea of everything Ukrainian," he
wrote.
The
lawyer said that
at the same time as the eviction of the PTsU from the cathedral
in Simferopol,
the occupation authorities are trying to destroy a chapel in
Evpatoria.
"A week
before
this, Archbishop Kliment [of the Crimean diocese of the PTsU]
received the
demand from court bailiffs to dismantle the chapel," Zaets
explained.
Russia
annexed Crimea
and Sevastopol after an armed blockade of Ukrainian armed forces
and an illegal
referendum on 16 March 2014. The accession of the peninsula to
the Russian
Federation has not been recognized by Ukraine and by the
majority of countries
of the world.
In March
2019, the
Ministry of Property and Land Relations of Crimea filed a
lawsuit requesting
the early termination of the rental agreement for the building
where the only
church of the PTsU in Simferopol is located, the cathedral of
Vladimir and
Olga. On 28 June, an arbitration court of the occupied peninsula
granted the
government's suit.
In July,
Kliment
reported that the property of the church "has been plundered and
destroyed."
The
diocese asked the
appellate court to overturn the decision of the court of first
instance.
On 29
August, the
21st arbitration appellate court in occupied Sevastopol, under
Russia's
control, left in force the decision for terminating the rental
agreement for
the premises of the PTsU cathedral church in Crimea.
In April
2020, the
Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that the occupation
authority in
Crimea was continuing the systematic persecution of parishes of
the PTsU on the
territory of the peninsula. (tr. by PDS, posted 5 August 2020)
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