The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) has appealed to the international community to help protect the rights of its worshippers and other religious minorities in the Russia-occupied Donbas.
In an open letter published on the UOC-KP’s website, the church’s leader, Patriarch Filaret, called upon the participants in the Minsk Process, as well as the United States, European Union, United Nations, and OSCE, to “urgently pay attention to the sharp deterioration of the situation with freedom of conscience” in the occupied territories.
According to Filaret, the self-proclaimed authorities in Donbas have announced that they will require religious communities to register in accordance with their legislation.
The occupation authorities informed UOC-KP priests that, should religious communities fail to register within a month, they will lose their rights to land and property, including churches; their activities will be banned; and their priests will be deported from the region.
Religious communities cannot register with the occupation authorities, Filaret wrote, because this would mean violating the laws of Ukraine.
The Patriarch called upon the international community “not to allow more violations of the principles of religious freedom in this region.” He also called on Russia and the Moscow Orthodox Patriarchate to use their influence to halt these “provocative actions.”
Russia-led separatists have faced repeated allegations of violating religious rights in the Donbas. In June 2014, a militant group known as the Russian Orthodox Army abducted and murdered four Pentecostal Christians after a worship service in the town of Sloviansk, which was then occupied by Russia-led separatists.
The next month, the leaders of Evangelical Protestant churches in Ukraine issued a joint open letter accusing the occupation authorities abducting, beating, and torturing Evangelical Christians, as well as seizing houses of worship.
Along with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, the UOC-KP is one of the two largest churches in Ukraine. Since 2014, an increasing number of Ukrainian church have switched from the Moscow to the Kyiv Patriarchate.
Earlier this month, the Ukrainian parliament backed a proposal by President Petro Poroshenko to call on the worldwide head of Orthodox Christianity, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, to grant the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephaly — i.e. autonomy from the Moscow Patriarchate. Currently, the Eastern Orthodox Church does not recognize OUC-KP’s independence from Moscow.
