Open appeal by the UOJ to international human rights organizations

UOJ website

On March 12, 2024, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) conducted mass searches in the workplaces and residences of Ukrainian journalists and human rights activists. The searches targeted employees of the online publications "Union of Orthodox Journalists" and "First Cossack" ("Pershy Kozatsky"), the Public Union "Myriany" ("Laity"), and the legal defense initiative "Center for Legal Protection". Journalists, including former employees, human rights activists, and administrative staff, were charged with various crimes, including those punishable by lifelong imprisonment, such as state treason and participation in organized criminal groups.

Fшму journalists and human rights activists: Archpriest Serhiy Chertilin, Andriy Ovcharenko, Valeriy Stupnytsky and Volodymyr Bobechko, were arrested and placed in investigative detention.

The "Union of Orthodox Journalists", the online publication "First Cossack", the Public Union "Laity", and the Center for Legal Protection have long been highlighting violations of the rights of believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, including those committed by state agents, politicians, and radical organizations.

The "Myriany" ("Laity") and the Center for Legal Protection also provide legal and social support to believers and communities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church who are subjected to persecution, discrimination, and raiding attacks on churches.

The "Union of Orthodox Journalists", "First Cossack", and "Myriany" adhere to journalistic standards of fact-checking and data verification in their publications, using formulations of permissible criticism and evaluative judgments, with a primary focus on the Ukrainian society group — believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which unfortunately suffers from the systemic deprivation of rights.

We emphasize that while covering the issue of religious discrimination and violations of the right to freedom of religion and hate speech in Ukraine, our publications and projects strictly avoid hate speech, incitement to hatred, and calls for unlawful actions against other categories of citizens, particularly on religious grounds.

The criminal charges brought against our journalists are based solely on the content of publicly available publications by the Union of Orthodox Journalists, the First Cossack edition, and the activities of the Public Union "Myriany" in defending the rights of believers of the UOC. In other words, we are being judged for publishing facts of crimes against the UOC, their analysis, and evaluative judgments on this matter.

Both Myriany and the Center for Legal Protection are being targeted for their lawful human rights advocacy activities in defending the rights of UOC believers to freedom of religion and religious activities.

We consider this completely unlawful and unacceptable for any free country, especially one aspiring to join the European Union. If Ukraine opposes authoritarianism on the battlefield in the conflict with Russia, we, the citizens of Ukraine, and the entire civilized world, cannot allow our country to be turned into an autocracy, into a realm of arbitrariness where fundamental human rights and freedoms are trampled upon.

We call on the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC), the UN Committee to Protect Journalists, the World Association of Newspapers, ARTICLE 19, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, the International Federation of Journalists, the South East European Network for the Professionalization of the Media (SEENPM), the World Association of Newspapers, the World Press Freedom Committee, and other organizations that are concerned about freedom of expression and human rights to react to the iniquity that is currently taking place in Ukraine against journalists, human rights defenders, and priests solely because they are Orthodox, socially active believers of the UOC.

According to our information, the detained journalists will be held in custody pending trial, which may not happen anytime soon. And there is no certainty about the objectivity of these trials due to the explicit state order for these criminal cases.

We are confident that the sole purpose of detaining representatives of our organizations is to prevent them from fulfilling their professional duties and to silence them.

The actions of the Ukrainian authorities constitute a blatant and aggressive attack on freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and human rights. Those people were taken on the eve of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine's adoption of a law banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which indicates per se that the concepts of "democracy" and "human rights" in our country are in deep crisis. Parliamentarism itself is degrading, with deputies openly intimidated into voting "correctly", in favor of the ban.

That is why we believe that the arrest of press representatives and human rights defenders is aimed at concealing and successfully pushing through the criminal plan against the Church that the Ukrainian authorities are hatching.

The criminal cases presented by the SBU as grounds for the arrests are fabricated and have no evidential basis.

We appeal to international organizations, fellow journalists, and all those who uphold the fundamental principles of civilized society – freedom of speech and human rights – to react to the detention and persecution of employees of the Union of Orthodox Journalists, the "First Cossack" edition, the Public Union "Myriany", and the human rights initiative "Center for Legal Protection".

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