Expert about persecution of UOC: One must be tried for incitement to crime

Vasily Anisimov. Photo: pravoslavye.org.ua

The state should react to the incitement to a crime without waiting for it to happen, said Honored Journalist of Ukraine, the expert on religion Vasyl Anisimov in his commentary to the “Vesti” edition regarding fomenting a new wave of religious confrontation in Ukraine against the backdrop of the fight against the coronavirus.

"Now we are observing a tendency: beat the priests – save the country," the journalist said. - <...> They suck out some vulgarity from a finger. It was said that at Easter there were 130 thousand people. Even if it is so, we have 13 thousand parishes, 12.5 thousand temples, and 270 monasteries. It turns out that nobody violated the quarantine at all. 10 people at a go are allowed, aren’t they?"

In his opinion, when one misfortune is for all, the people should unite, "but here all this God-fighting meanness, even in such a situation, wants to come to the surface and earn some points”.

The expert stressed that any threats and incitement to commit crimes against the Church should be immediately stopped by the state.

"As journalists we understand that if someone threatens us, and we are equal to law enforcement officers and judges, the SBU should immediately call the one who threatens us and give him a warning, hold a preventive conversation: this is a violation of the Constitution, and if it repeats we will put you in jail. <...> A man can make a mistake once. And the state should not overlook this. And this arsonist (of the temple – Ed.), will say: I listened to Muzhdabaev and went to set fire. Then we must also put on trial for incitement. You shouldn't wait for the big and terrible crime to happen. We need to stop it right away. If you've been warned once, the second and third attempts must be administratively liable," Vasily Anisimov said.

Earlier, the general director of the first Crimean Tatar ATR television channel Ayder Muzhdabaev, recorded a video in which he said that the UOC is "one of the main breeding grounds for coronavirus in Ukraine", "the Church-evil”, “the Church-killer”, which disregards both Ukraine as a state and Ukrainians as a nation". For these statements, an application against Muzhdabayev was filed with the PGO for inciting hatred against the UOC.

As reported earlier, the UOC Legal department published samples of documents that will help believers protect their rights in case of inciting religious hatred.

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