Met. Mitrofan: The world keeps silent about pressure on UOC
The UOC does not yet see an explicit reaction from international human rights organizations to the numerous facts of violations of religious rights.
Head of the UOC Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Mitrofan of Lugansk and Alchevsk spoke about the reaction of various international structures to the facts of oppression of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on the “1Kozak” TV channel.
“All direct violations of the Constitution that occur today in different regions of Ukraine while transferring to a new church structure, often with violence and participation of local authorities, are monitored, documented and forwarded to relevant international human rights organizations,” said Metropolitan Mitrofan.
Vladyka recalled that the situation is being monitored by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, which, during its visits to the eparchies, records violations of the rights of UOC believers.
“But so far, we don’t see any explicit reaction from international organizations,” admitted the head of the UOC Department for External Church Relations. “There is a conscious silence about the church situation in Ukraine, dictated from the outside, in the world,” says Metropolitan Mitrofan.
Vladyka expressed the hope that international organizations and the world community would nevertheless draw the right conclusions and influence that at the state level so that persecution, oppression, and pressure on the Church would be stopped.
We recall that the head of the UOC Representative Office to European International Organizations Bishop Victor of Baryshevka agreed to inform the European Union about the situation of UOC believers through the NGO “Human Rights Without Frontiers”.
As the UOJ reported, in connection with numerous cases of human rights violations and the threat of escalation of religious conflicts, Bishop Victor of Baryshevka appealed to officials of the UN, OSCE, EU and other countries to influence the situation in Ukraine.
