Yelensky to protect state workers forced to attend church transfer meetings
The DESS head assured that the state service will defend the rights of employees if they are forced to vote for UOC parishes' transfer to the OCU.
The head of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS) Viktor Elensky promised to protect municipal workers who are forcibly herded to meetings on the "transfer" of UOC communities. He made this statement on November 13 in Zaporizhzhia at a meeting with the clergy of the Zaporizhzhia Eparchy of the UOC.
The topic was raised by Metropolitan Luke of Zaporizhzhia and Melitopol. He cited Cherkasy as an example, where, according to him, the mayor herded into a church municipal workers who "were supposedly parishioners".
"They were never members of the parish; they were municipal utility workers. The mother-in-law of one of the priests of the Cherkasy Eparchy worked there. The mayor’s office issued clear instructions: people were needed at a certain location, and anyone who refused to go would be fired," the hierarch said.
He asked Yelensky what the agency had done to prevent such abuses. The DESS head replied that the agency was "doing everything necessary."
"And if municipal workers are forcibly herded, we will defend their rights. After all, municipal workers are also, so to speak, citizens of Ukraine," the official stated.
Metropolitan Luke stressed that people in such a situation are afraid of losing their jobs. Yelensky then added: "If they do not want to pray, that is their right. And they do not pray."
As the UOJ reported, at the same meeting Yelensky called the overwhelming majority of “transfers” voluntary. According to him, about 1,900 communities have transferred to the OCU since the Tomos. The DESS head acknowledged only "several cases", mostly in cities, where the transfer was "extremely controversial" and accompanied by beatings and clashes. Among them is the seizure of the cathedral in Cherkasy, during which Metropolitan Theodosiy of Cherkasy was injured.
