“Unless Filaret adherents led church raiding, there wouldn’t be temple seizures”

Some days ago the biggest annual European conference on human rights – OSCE HDIM 2016 was held in Poland. It paid particular attention to the Ukrainian religious issue: the UOC representatives told European organizations about what pressure and persecutions believers of the canonical Orthodox Church have been faced up to in contemporary Ukraine.

The outcome of the event was reported to the UOJ by one of the representatives of the UOC delegation Oleg Denisov – human rights activist, member of the Board of NGO Public Advocacy Human Rights Advocacy.


– At the OSCE conference you made a statement on violations of believers’ rights of the UOC. Do inter-faith relationships in Ukraine arouse any concern?

A whole range of such statements were voiced at this conference, including the one made by DECR Deputy Chief, Archpriest Nikolay Danilevich, and mine. All of them relate to a legal standing of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the years of 2015-2016.

Personally I gave first of all recommendations on the improvement of legal regulations – in order to put a stop to violations of the believers’ rights of the UOC, since namely this confession, according to our observations, is subject to pressure in Ukraine.

My statement is based on the monitoring of the current stance in definite communities. In 2015-2016, in cooperation with the SMM OSCE mission, we made in insight into conflicts, having to do with illegal church seizures in Western Ukraine. Those seizures were most numerous and frequented throughout Rovno and Ternopol regions. Regretfully, church raiding, discrimination, and hate speech continue in the contemporary time.

– But proponents of the Kiev Patriarchate continually claim that the UOC temples are not grabbed but there is a voluntary transition of communities from the UOC to the UOC-KP jurisdiction.

– We have conducted a lot of meetings with the injured parties – UOC believers, and I directly participated in dialogue and reconciliation commissions which were attended also by the state authorities, KP representatives, and I can say confidently there are just a few cases of voluntary change of jurisdiction by the UOC communities in pleno.

We cannot even say there are many cases of actual split within a UOC community: they are mostly related to the desire of just a part of the community members to change their canonical affiliation. But even in this case part of the organization’s members cannot assert ownership of the whole community’s property, completely ignoring the rights of other believers, even though the latter are in minority.

Regretfully, the KP adherents seldom make use of legal procedures; they prefer to undertake raiding attacks in a straightforward way, accompanied by break-ins, forceful clashes, splashes of violence and hostility amid the population.

– Yet the Kiev Patriarchate adepts assert that namely the UOC communities make decisions on changing their jurisdiction. How does the process of ownership change look in reality?

– In most cases they form a group of raid initiators, who often do not belong to the UOC community but just live in a village, where a temple is located, or arrive from other populated centers. Besides, radical organizations take an active part in conflicts.

The presence of radicals in camouflage uniforms, sometimes with silent weapons and firearms, do not create a peaceful mood of the people, but on the contrary, cause an atmosphere of fear, animosity and aggressiveness. In fact, an intimidation element is widely used in seizures of the UOC churches, both priests and parishioners regularly receive death threats, their life in a village becomes unbearable, they are accused of “separatism”, aiding Moscow”, and so on and so forth.

The next raiding stage is holding so called “referendums” that look like chaotic gatherings of the KP proponents, village residents, with the UOC faithful hardly ever invited to these events. Feeling frightened, a lot of villagers who have nothing to do at all with the UOC community, vote or put their signatures on the poll sheets to morph subsequently into minutes of the UOC community meetings. By virtue of such “protocols” there is initiated a church raid.

In the legal framework a transition may occur by virtue of the decision adopted at the general meeting of the UOC community members, who enjoy a voting right under the statute. This is a restricted number of persons who are regular church-goers and official members of the religious community. A legal status of these people is similar to that of the enterprise shareholders – only they are empowered to vote certain issues. Persons who do not have a community member status cannot make a decision on transition of the community’s denomination change, no matter how much they might crave for that.

However, it’s next to impossible to be aware of all juridical subtleties right on the “battlefield”, that’s why church raids are carried out under the cover of illegitimate documents, whose legal quality and lawfulness are not even taken account of. Basically, to determine who is right and who is wrong in a situation when a raiding party is not willing to accept legal arguments but wants to be guided solely by force can be done within a law enforcement procedure, such as court. Yet the police for this purpose have to ensure immunity of the UOC community rights until the court makes a decision.

Representatives of the UOC communities have many times reaffirmed their readiness to fulfill the court decision and asked to grant them a possibility to use their temple till the court proceeding is over. But the problem is that the KP adepts want to grab the church immediately, without going through the court. Though the current legislation qualifies such behavior as a criminal offence, since the right to evict a person or a legal entity extends only to a state executive service based on the court decision that has entered into force.

– What are the reasons of such conflicts?

– The reason of conflicts is first and foremost aggressive propaganda, targeted at the UOC, assistance to the raiding of the UOC temples by the Kiev Patriarchate clerics with connivance of the state authorities. If it were not for the incitement of religious hatred, conflicts would be a rare case. If the KP clergy refused to initiate raids, there would be no place for conflicts as well.

In the conditions when the Ukrainian society is split, one should have refrained, for the sake of Ukraine, from any manifestations of the religion-based aggression and confrontation, but – alas – this is not the case. Then there must be a rule of law in order to halt the phenomena which pose a threat to the whole society. Unfortunately though, law enforcement bodies fail to ensure that those accountable for raiding acts be brought to justice, fail to prevent property damage and break-ins, and fail to detain individuals who are apparently at fault for the offences committed.

In Katerinovka village there were beaten over 15 believers of the UOC, among whom were women and elderly people. They were injured by the law enforcers, the bashing was mass and public, with severe injuries – arm fractures, brain concussions, numerous beatings. It was a de facto ungrounded use of physical force by the law enforcement representatives. Yet not a single MIA official has been brought to justice – not even disciplinary penalties.

Therefore, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church remains without due protection from the state, the faithful have to unite to defend their sanctities on their own, but such sporadic actions do not lead to reconciliation but only enhances the strife. Legal mechanisms, which have to work, do not actually work.

– What was the aim of the UOC to appeal to international organizations? Do you count on their assistance regarding the issue in question?

– OSCE is called to carry out activities to ensure political security in the first line. At the same time this institution provides extensive possibilities for a dialogue between the state and the civil society, supervised by international observers. Namely this aim is pursued by representatives of non-governmental and religious organizations who meet on the platforms of OSCE/ODIHR (office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights). Their task is to present both criticism and recommendations to the international community in a public format.

Such form of the dialogue disciplines a state and enables representatives of the civil society to anticipate more attention to their position. On the other hand, OSCE and other international institutes have definite practical possibilities to improve the situation at hand. It concerns, first of all, guidelines on working out special regulations to combat hatred and discrimination crimes. This is exactly the legal category that embraces conflicts related to church raiding and other offences toward the UOC believers.

We recommend the OSCE, the state of Ukraine in the near future to facilitate adoption of special laws, directed at fighting with hate speech and hate crime, what, in our opinion, will foster the improvement of the situation.

– You have prepared a report on the human rights defense on this matter, how much efficient are such actions going to be?

– Preparation of reports on human rights defense is customary and appropriate in the International Law being a type of awareness-raising within an international advocacy mechanism. Non-governmental organizations are called to such an activity by resolutions of the UNO, Council of Europe, and established practice of human rights protection. Ukraine is the one to have assumed relevant commitments and obligations which secure human rights activity of both religious and non-governmental organizations.

On 26 February 2016 President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko approved a National Development Strategy of the Civil Society for 2016-2020, elaborated with the support of the OSCE Project Coordinator in Ukraine and in partnership with the President’s Administration of Ukraine. The strategy underscores the importance of cooperation between the power and civil society representatives in their common cause of the third sector building.

Therefore, with a view to improving the situation, we will keep observing how the UOC believers’ rights are honored and inform the international advocacy mechanism, including appropriate UNO rapporteurs, consultative and regulatory EU structures, leading international organization. Using a consultative status at the UN ECOSOC and the Council of Europe, we will also do our best so that the situation with the human rights protection in Ukraine might get better.

There exists a range of specific means of juridical work in the human rights defense sphere, such as appeals to the ECHR, preparation of counseling conclusions and reports upon the request of official international organizations and other structures, as well as other forms of work such as diverse media-based procedures, and, of course, appeals to courts of different levels, including jurisdictions of the European Union countries.

– Is it possible to regulate the situation in Ukraine by means of a dialogue between the representatives of denominations?

– In 2015-2016 together with the OSCE mission we conducted a lot of meetings with representatives of the state power, communities, including the attempts to launch a mechanism of meditative conflict settlement in Ternopol region. There was set up a dialogue group composed of the representatives of the UOC, UOC-KP, OSCE SMM and our organization, we discussed a possibility of signing a memorandum or another form that would enable to prevent conflicts.

However, this initiative was not effective. This situation remains unilateral – there is a party which is willing and able to seize a church, since the ambience is quite conducive to that, and there is the other party, which requests not to do it, but may appeal only to a good will of the former party.

So far the KP representatives do not manifest such good will, though they have powers to give spiritual blessing to their clerics not to participate in clashes and abet to raids and transitions of communities, having left these issues at the discretion of the parish.

– Arising from the utterances of official representatives of Ukraine at the conference, they are not inclined to dramatize the situation, are they?

– The position of the Ukrainian delegates on the matter of violations of the UOC rights is not quite clear to me. Firstly, the delegates did not give an answer to our substantiated criticism on the merits. Deputy Chief of the UOC DECR Archpriest Nikolay Danilevich remarked in his speech that the fact of violations with regard to the UOC is recognized by the two authoritative international organizations – the US State Department in its report on religion over 2015 and in the report of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights.

In both documents there are conclusions that the UOC believers rights are violated, and the state delegation could have taken actions in this respect or at least agree to the point that the problem does exist and needs to be resolved. In the first line it’s necessary to carry out work with profile agencies – MIA, the Verkhovna Rada committees, regional state administrations in order to bring the offenders to justice and improve the legislation in this sphere.

But instead of it head of the Department for Nationalities and Religion Andrey Yurash declared that references to reports of international organizations in speeches of the UOC representatives are manifestations of hybrid war. He said, in particular:

“I would like to reply to the statements of two representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. They campaign against ideological propaganda, but such and alike statements appear as an outspoken insinuation of this propaganda. In their statements they make allusions to the annual report of the US State Department. The allusion to this document is a typical example of hybrid war in Ukraine, since this report presents not only the position of the UOC MP, but also their opponents who have completely opposite viewpoints of the situation in question. A UOC MP representative stated in his speech that a number of communities in the country, namely 150, have changed their canonical jurisdiction (subordination). This process is carried out in full compliance with the national law and fundamental principles of the OSCE in terms of the right and possibilities of religious communities to change their jurisdiction.”

Such argument does not reflect the reality, because in our statements we refer not only to the reports of the US State Department, but also to particular juridical facts, primary documents – applications from injured parties, court decisions, statistical data on open criminal proceedings upon the UOC believers’ applications.

The report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights there not only presents the information on the parties’ standpoints, but also expresses concerns of this organization about de-facto violations of the believers rights. In particular, Paragraph 120 of the report points out to:

“According to local residents, law enforcement bodies and state authorities concentrate their efforts on the prevention or counteraction to solely physical clashes without paying due attention to other forms of confrontation, intimidation, and discrimination.

It’s a matter of concern that in some villages local residents and external powers impede the entrance to preferred places of worship for the faithful of both denominations and hold services there, including baptizing and church wedding. By and large, investigations in similar cases are either not effective or not performed at all.”

Hence, the OHCHR verified the information, having been supplied by the members of the UOC communities, and established whether it is true. This constitutes a fact of recognition by authoritative international experts of offences towards the UOC. Similar statements can be found in the report of the US State Department.

Criticism of the very fact of our appeal to international organizations is also surprising. Yet if Ukraine strives to be in line with international standards, it has to be considered that human rights activity is subject to special protection of the international human rights law, whereas the right to criticism of the state policy is an acknowledged democratic value.

As regards an international image of Ukraine, it is impaired as a result of numerous facts of condoning criminals and offenders, rather than as a result of statements of representatives of religious organizations, who have all grounds to criticize animosity, hate speech, aggression, violations of the law and other adverse phenomena.

The persons who call to cover up such crimes, who imply the necessity to no longer appeal to the international community and the system of international human rights mechanism, will undoubtedly inflict considerable damage on Ukraine, standing in the way of implementation of advocacy standards, recognized by the international law, and covering up offenders.