FOUR PROVINCIAL COUNCILS OF PEOPLE'S DEPUTIES EXPRESS DISTRUST OF UPTsMP
Religiia v Ukraine, 19 March 2018
On 16 March 2018, at a seasonal session, deputies of the Rovno oblast council adopted an appeal to the Council of National Security and Defense of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Security Service regarding anti-Ukrainian activity of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow patriarchate (UPTsMP) on the territory of the country. This is now the fourth provincial council of people's deputies that has expressed distrust of the UPTsMP, Religiia v Ukraine reports, citing Cerkva.info.
The text of the appeal, specifically, says that in circumstances of armed aggression by Russia against Ukraine, the main stake of the aggressor has been placed on propaganda among believers of Ukraine through the UPTsMP.
It is noted that with the assistance of the UPTsMP in Ukraine, literature with an emphatically anti-Ukrainian bias is being distributed, which denies Russian aggression and portrays the war in the east of Ukraine as a civil war. In their prayers and sermons, priests urge believers to pray for Russia and for the glory of Russian arms and they bless terrorists and murderers in the bloody war.
"Taking into account the aforesaid, we ask that you take urgent measures to respond to the impermissible subversive activity of the Russian Orthodox Church for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on the territory of Ukraine, including in agencies of governmental authority and local administration, the armed forces of Ukraine, law enforcement structures, and educational institutions," the appeal notes.
Commenting on the adoption of this appeal, the chairman of the Legal Department of the UPTsMP, Archpriest Alexander Bakov, said: "Similar appeals have already been adopted in the Lvov, Frankovsk, and Ternopol provincial councils. But such declarations are essentially void and do not have any legal consequences."
He is convinced that such actions by bureaucrats are ordinary populism and they are intended to inflame religious strife in the country. "Deputies of a provincial council are trying to create additional tension on religious grounds in the western region and in Ukraine as a whole," he emphasized. "Such statements arouse only a part of the population of Ukraine to hate another part because they are professing their own faith and loyalty to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
In the lawyer's opinion, such initiatives of people's representatives are aimed at undermining trust in the current authorities in the government. "Deputies who adopt statements about prohibiting, banishing, and destroying because of adherence to the UPTs are violating the right to freedom of religious confession that is enshrined in the constitution of Ukraine and they are placing the president of the Ukraine, who is the guarantor of observing the constitution of Ukraine, in an awkward position," he emphasized. (tr. by PDS, posted 21 March 2018)
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