UOC reacts to SSU accusations against clergymen
The Synodal Legal Department of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has reacted to the publication of the SBU website regarding the criminal persecution of UOC clergymen. This is reported by the official website of the Church. The Yurotdel said that the SSU is engaged in forming an exclusively negative image of the UOC in Ukrainian society, which is “not related to the main tasks assigned to the SSU by the legislation”.
“In this news, as well as in others earlier, SSU officers repeatedly add the prefix (MP) to the name of the UOC. Such addition of the name “Moscow Patriarchate” not only misleads the citizens of Ukraine, but also indicates the deliberate formation of information in order to obtain the expected attitude of the reader to it against the background of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against our state”, – the report said.
“It is necessary to emphasize that there is not and cannot be any registered church of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine; moreover, religious organizations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church registered in Ukraine in accordance with the current legislation, do not contain in their constituent documents provisions on the connection with the Moscow Patriarchate and, in fact, can not relate to it”, – emphasize in the Legal Department of the UOC.
The report of the UOC Law Department also did not ignore the fact that for some reason the SSU does not publish relevant data on other religious organizations in Ukraine. “The SSU does not cover information about representatives of other faiths – Jews, Catholics, Muslims, who not only helped the enemy, but now have re-registered their religious organizations in the temporarily occupied territories and continue to carry out their activities, including in Crimea, since 2014. The SSU does not say how many criminal proceedings have been initiated against such persons, how many suspicions or sentences have been announced to the courts. But the fact that there are such persons is a well-known fact, just as there are such proceedings, which exceed a hundred”, – note in the UOC.
“Unilateralism in the coverage of information exclusively about the UOC with its reference to the aggressor country, as well as conducting an information campaign with emotional coloring aimed at shaping public opinion, indicates the consciousness of actions of the SSU employees responsible for concealing information, and in fact are actions aimed at inciting national, racial or religious enmity and hatred, insulting the feelings of citizens in connection with their religious beliefs”, – summarized in the Legal Department of the Church.
We shall remind you that earlier we reported that the Security Service of Ukraine in its official media reported on the activities regarding the UOC, as a result of which 68 criminal proceedings were opened.