Religious scholar on Bill 8371: More outcry and noise than change itself

Religious scholar Lyudmyla Filipovych, commenting on the bill No 8371 “on banning religious organizations associated with the Russian Federation” adopted by the Verkhovna Rada, said that “no one in Ukraine will be able to come to a church and hang locks or kick out believers, “load” all of them into “teplushki” and send them to Sakhalin”. This is reported by Ukrainian Radio.

Filipovych said Ukraine is “an absolutely consistent promoter of the ideas of freedom of conscience and guarantees every citizen and non-citizen the right to profess what they want.”

“There have already been some changes to the law on freedom of conscience and religious organizations several times and now we have the third or fourth wave of changes. Therefore, nothing terrible is happening. Besides, the current changes literally fit on one page if you read into what is being proposed. There is more outcry and hype than the changes themselves”, – she said.

The religious scholar added that “some changes could have been implemented earlier, if we had thought a little ahead and predicted the situation, thought about the preventive nature of our legislation, not just fixing what has already happened. This is actually a passive reaction that has been going on since 2014. Experts have long said that it is necessary to look at religious life, the state of religious freedom and human rights in the sphere of religion from the position of national security”.