UKRAINE DESCRIBES IN U.N. OPPRESSION OF BELIEVERS IN RUSSIAN OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
Religiia v Ukraine, 23 August 2019
The
charge d'affaires
of Ukraine in the United Nations, Yury Vitrenko, during an Arria
formula
session on 22 August of the United Nations Security Council on
protection of
religious minorities in conditions of armed conflict, declared
that the Russian
occupying authority is crudely violating freedom of conscience
and religious
confession in temporarily occupied territories of Crimea and the
Donbass,
oppressing believers of all confessions and religions except for
the Moscow
patriarchate, Religiia v Ukraine reports with reference to
Ukrinform.
"Russian
aggression
against my country and temporary occupation of part of Ukrainian
territory are continuing, accompanied by systematic
discrimination,
persecutions, and tortures, which crudely violate the rights of
Ukrainian
citizens on religious grounds," Vitrenko declared, addressing
the
participants.
According
to the
diplomat, the occupying authority has unfolded a "broad campaign
of
oppressions against Ukrainians on the basis of their religious
convictions."
Vitrenko
cited the
conclusions of the United Nations monitoring mission for human
rights in
Ukraine, which says in particular that "all religious
confessions except
the Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate seem to be
subjected to pressure
by armed groups, to persecution, to detention of clerics and
parishioners, and
also to seizure of church property."
"The
Russian
occupying authority in the Donbass even invented the so-called
'legalization,'
Russian style, when all religious organizations except the
Orthodox Church of
the Moscow Patriarchate were required to undergo
reregistration," he
explained.
Vitrenko
added that
through such illegal demands, more than 1,000 religious groups,
recognized by
Ukrainian legislation, cannot continue their activity in the
temporarily
occupied Donbass.
"In
Crimea, the
report of the United Nations monitoring mission for human rights
for 2017 notes
that before the occupation of the peninsula in 2014, there
existed 2,083
religious organizations on its territory; as of September 2017,
only 722 had
survived the campaign of oppression," he noted.
The
Ukrainian
diplomat noted that in recent years the situation has only
become worse.
Massive raids by the occupying authority against Muslim Crimean
Tatars have led
to dozens of arrests and detention of innocent people on
falsified charges.
In
addition, he
added, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PTsU) has experienced
continuous
oppression. He said that in March of this year, the Russian
occupying authority
arrested Archbishop of Simforopol and Crimea Kliment, the leader
of the
Ukrainian Orthodox community of Crimea, on fabricated charges,
and in April of
this year the Russians initiated the expropriation of the last
church of the
PTsU in Crimea, and less than a month ago they desecrated its
premises.
"We
demand of the
Russian Federation that it immediately cease all acts of
religious
discrimination of persons, groups of persons, or institutions in
occupied
territories and that it restore their rights, including the
rights to property,
and that it bring those guilty of violations to justice," the
diplomat
declared.
The
session of the
United Nations Security Council according to the Arria formula
was conducted on
the initiative of delegations of member states of the UN
Security Council with
the goal of presenting to members of the council the possibility
of information
on one or another question from a wide circle of participants
who are
ordinarily denied the opportunity to be heard in the course of
formal sessions
of the Security Council. Such sessions can be conducted in
closed (with the
participation of only members of the UNSC) and in open (for all
UN member
states) formats. They permit their participants to conduct
direct dialogue with
representatives of governments, international organizations, and
nongovernmental actors on a wide circle of questions on the
council's agenda.
(tr. by PDS, posted 23 August 2019)
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