On October 6, 2016, despite a barrage of criticism from religion experts, lawyers and AUCCRO representatives, Parliament will nevertheless consider Mr. V. Yelenskyi’s highly controversial Draft Law No. 4128 during the first reading. As is reported by the UOC Department of Information and Education with links to the official Web-portal of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
The initiative to legalise church raiding was recommended by a profile Committee for consideration in the Parliament at the beginning of this summer without consulting the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations(AUCCRO). In addition, as was explained by the Chairman of the Legal Department of the UOC Archpriest Oleksandr Bakhov, the promugation of Draft Bill No. 4128 carries with it a threat to all religious organisations because it directly interferes into their internal activities and provides the very mechanism which today is being used to seize churches that legally belong to the faithful of the UOC.
Recall that, in accordance with the logic of the Mr. V. Yelenskyi Draft Bill No. 4128, any outsider can consider himself as being a member of a given parish thus becoming eligible to vote for the transfer of the parish to another jurisdiction. Under such a scheme there have already been dozens of such seizures of churches belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church(UOC). As was noted in His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufriy’s report at the Council of Bishops of the UOC on 29 January 2016, during the so-called voting at the General Assembly for the transfer of jurisdiction of a given parish “there occurs the substitution of notions, whereby a territorial community is equated to a specific local religious community.”
Concerns and negative attitude towards the Draft Law No. 4128 was also made public by representatives of the World Council of Churches(WCC), and by members of the AUCCRO Secretariat , the Scientific Expert Office of the Verkhovna Rada, the Institute for Religious Freedom, lawyers from the International Institute for the Defense of Human Rights in Eastern Europe, and Ukrainian religion experts.
In particular, specialists paid attention to the fact that the proposed changes to current legislation, by Mr. V. Yelenskyi pose a serious a threat by unjustified Government interference into the autonomy of religious communities and the emergence of new conflict situations that may occur due to confusion over certain amendments to the statutes. Experts and lawyers also note the incorrectness of the use of the term “self-identification” in the proposed draft law and the expression “participation in the religious life of a particular community”. In addition, also noted were the inconsistencies of the proposed regulations as compared with European standards and usual EU practice with regards to human rights as well as provisions in the Ukrainian Constitution itself.
On the 25th of March, 2016 the UOC Department of Information and Education held a media briefing, during which the fully-explained position of the Church was clarified with regards to Mr.V. Yelenskyi’s highly controversial Draft Bill.
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