Deported bishop of UOC: All norms of democracy are violated in Ukraine

Vicar of the Kiev Metropolis Bishop Gedeon (Kharon) of Makarov

In Ukraine today, all the dogmas of democracy are being violated – freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion, said the vicar of the Kiev Metropolis Bishop Gedeon (Kharon) of Makarov on the California radio station ethno.fm, the video of which he posted on Facebook.

“This is the basis of democracy and the normal life of any society – what Ukraine lacks today. This is what is trampled, in every sense of the word. A person cannot express their thoughts freely. I talked about this and for this had oppression. Religious communities today must fit into the framework set by the state. Freedom of the press is also violated – one cannot publish and even read books that are now prohibited by the authorities in Ukraine,” said the hierarch of the UOC.

It was about the facts of violating the rights and freedoms of Ukrainian believers that Bishop Gedeon told the US Congress, resulted in the revocation of Ukrainian citizenship and deportation.

“All this became a reality when I was not allowed to cross the border of Ukraine, although I was born in Ukraine, where my parents, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, grandfathers had lived ... I was deprived of my citizenship, my internal and external passports were cancelled. They just said it was lost. Imagine: you go to the border, give a passport through the window, an officer takes it, and then calls you into the room and says: ‘You know, your passport is lost’,” said the vicar of the Tithes (Desiatinny) Monastery.

According to him, the allegations that he supposedly has triple citizenship are a lie.

“I do not have triple citizenship, this is not true! I have dual citizenship: I am a citizen of Ukraine and the United States. I lived here for more than 10 years, when there was no Ukraine and the Russian Federation but the Soviet Union,” said Vladyka Gedeon.

He added that he had only one passport, not two or three. Since he restored his American citizenship about 10 years ago, he has regularly crossed the borders of various countries without any problems. Even on the day when a passport was illegally seized from the prior of the Tithes (Desiatinny) Monastery, he had passed customs control before that.

“How many times I have flown out and in, and I had no claims. Even passed through customs. Customs checked hand luggage, checked in luggage. They opened, looked, turned upside-down everything. And when I cleared customs and went to the passport office – it all started there,” said Bishop Gedeon.

He also said that in the interval between the 24-hour flight and deportation, he had to spend 12 hours in the detention place.

According to the hierarch of the UOC, the head of the canonical Church, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All Ukraine blessed to gather a group of highly qualified lawyers who specialize in international law to defend the rights of the head of the Tithes (Desiatinny) Monastery. However, the deported bishop himself suggested that the process of his return home could be delayed due to the forthcoming election of the President of Ukraine.

On February 18, 2019, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Vasily Gritsak said that the vicar of the Kiev Metropolis was denied entry into the territory of Ukraine as he allegedly has 3 passports. “It was found that Yuri Kharon owns the passports of three countries: Russia, Ukraine and the United States. We have informed the State Migration Service about the data we possessed. He is denied entry into the territory of the state,” said Gritsak.

According to Article 21 of the Law "On Citizenship of Ukraine", which names the legal grounds for cancellation of decisions on registration of acquiring the citizenship of Ukraine, such a decision can be cancelled only “if a person acquired Ukrainian citizenship in accordance with the Articles 8 and 10 of this Law by deceit, as a result of deliberately furnishing false information or forged documents, concealing any substantial fact under existence of which a person cannot acquire the citizenship of Ukraine.”

As reported by the UOC Information Center, the detention of the abbot of the Tithes (Desiatinny) Monastery took place on the eve of the Supreme Court’s session on the claim to invalidate the appeal of Parliament to Patriarch Bartholomew on receiving the Tomos. The information on the meeting scheduled for February 14 was posted on the website of the Supreme Court of Ukraine.

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