“They occupy our temples, our lands”
As we know, three UOJ journalists have been behind bars for almost five months, facing a potential life sentence. Among the charges, they are accused of inciting inter-faith hatred.
On what grounds? The UOJ writes the titles of members of the OCU in quotation marks and dares to call those who seize UOC churches "raiders" or "radicals".
But we live in a legal state where the law comes first. And it is the same for all citizens, isn't it? Well, not quite.
On July 25, a broadcast aired on the Priamyi channel, dedicated to bill No 8371, which proposes banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). We present a few quotes from the participants about the UOC, without any commentary.
Host Oleksandr Blyzniuk: "What prevents us from resolving the question with the presence of this Russian, Moscow-based FSB organization? I don't call it a religious organization. They have a large number of parishes. They occupy our churches, our territories, our lands. This is an organisation that prays for Putin, for the Russian military and refuses to hold funeral services for our soldiers."
MP Volodymyr Aryev: "This is an FSB department on the Ukrainian territory."
MP Andriy Osadchuk: "Regarding the UOC, I urge you to avoid the word 'Church'. It is not a Church at all; it is one of the FSB units, inheriting this from the KGB of the USSR."
Let’s remember that the UOC represents 5-6 million Ukrainians.
Is there evidence that even a few of these people are really connected to the FSB? No, no one has bothered to provide such evidence. But we do know that the UOC helps the Ukrainian Armed Forces more than any other denomination, a large number of its parishioners and even the sons of priests have died on the front lines, and UOC churches have suffered the most from shelling. So, what kind of FSB agents are these? And whose "our lands" are they supposedly occupying?
The answer is clear. The participants of the Priamyi broadcast (like many other "patriots") are simply lying. And they are lying with an obvious purpose: to incite as much hatred as possible against their fellow citizens in the UOC. And who benefits from Ukrainians being pitted against each other? Of course, the enemy.
But for some reason, the SBU definitely won’t ‘notice’ any of them, as it has ‘not noticed’ until now.
Indeed, it is not inverted commas in writing the titles of Epifaniy's wards. For that, one could really rot in prison here.
