Law enforcers do not respond to the “Right Sector” provocations around the UOC church

It is for the third time on the run that the “Right Sector” has collected its scarce advocates near the UOC Cathedral in Ternopol – during the Sunday worship service.

On 7 August there were plenty of people around the only UOC church of St. Vera, Nadezhda, Lubov and their mother Sophia in Ternopol. These were mostly parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The participants of the next anti-church action of the “Right Sector” could be counted on fingers.

So could be the representatives of mass media and law enforcement. However, the latter did not respond to unlawful actions of radicals who openly distributed the literature aimed at inciting interfaith hatred and who had earlier set up a stand containing slanderous information about the UOC.

Like it was during previous provocations, activists of the city organization “Right Sector” distributed plain leaflets on “sponsoring the war against Ukraine”. On top of that, the authors took efforts to tag a specific picture of Ternopol Cathedral to a standard “candle-bullet kit”.

According to lawyer of the UOC Ternopol diocese Andrey Zaharchuk, believers, being the aggrieved as a result of provocative actions, asked the law enforcers to stop lawlessness. In their opinion, it forms a part of the criminal proceeding, which was opened several days ago under a similar incident. Yet, the policemen referred to the fact the “Right Sector” event was allowed by the City Council.

A frontline police squad that arrived upon the UOC parishioners’ call refused to cut lawlessness short and called an Operational Investigations Group. The UOC diocese employees accentuated the fact that a criminal action was taken a week ago in the aftermath of the “Right Sector” provocation. The law enforcers should have put a stop to actions which fully correspond to article 161 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine regarding violation of the believers’ rights and stirring up religious hatred. However, they shrugged off numerous requests of the UOC believers to take away the stand with anti-church information and the violators themselves.

The investigator, who had come upon request, accepted another application on violation with signatures of the believers who were present at the church service and assured that the “activists will leave now”. However, this scene lasted for over two hours with the police leaving the venue once the “Right Sector” had left it.  As for passersby, they were not particularly attracted to the radicals’ behavior. 

On July 24 the “Right Sector” arranged for a similar action near the same Cathedral in Ternopol. The faithful also had to call the police.

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