Violations of UOC rights raises response with foreign media

The article "Ukraine: State pressure on the Orthodox Church continues under Zelensky", published in the German media. Photo: nachdenkseiten.de

The statements about the violation of the believers’ rights of the largest confession of Ukraine – the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, voiced at the UN and OSCE by human rights activists and the Representation of the UOC to European International Organizations, were echoed in the world media.

Thus, in recent months, a number of publications have emerged in the German-language media segment about the real situation that has developed in the church life of Ukraine and World Orthodoxy after the formation of the OCU.

In particular, the fischundfleisch.com resource published several materials about the facts of violations against communities and believers of the UOC, voiced by the NGO "Public Advocacy" during the 45th regular session of the UN HRC, as well as the film "Faithful: Hymn of Love", released by the production studio of Zoriany TV channel with the support of Favor Charitable Foundation, which features the courage and resilience of true Christians from the villages of Butyn and Kinakhivtsi, Ternopil region.

“World Orthodoxy, which until 2018 was peaceful and relatively harmonious, completely lost its inner peace with the emergence of a new church, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” says one of the articles published on the resource. <...> The issue of recognizing the OCU splits the Churches. Sergei Dumenko is probably right when he says that "it depends on the OCU whether there will be peace in the Orthodox Church." What he does not say is that the OCU has already destroyed that peace. Nobody knows what the Orthodox Church will look like tomorrow."

Also, detailed articles about the church situation in Ukraine were published by the resources of Rubikon and NachDenkSeiten. The materials note that the major world media and the expert community "look at Ukraine through geopolitical glasses" and practically do not cover "scandalous state interference in religious affairs" and egregious facts of violation of the rights of the largest Ukrainian confession – the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, since this "does not fit into picture".

As the UOJ reported, the hierarch of the UOC in the OSCE called for a more active response to violations of the believers’ rights.

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