UN to consider protection of UOC believers' rights

UN. Photo: RIA-Novosti

The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances will consider cases of abductions of UOC clerics and believers. It is reported by the NGO “Public Advocacy” which addressed the UN with a report on cases of enforced disappearances of clerics and clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The Committee on Enforced Disappearances and its Secretariat are working to support victims, civil society organisations, national human rights institutions and states to find and locate disappeared persons, eradicate, punish and prevent these crimes, and provide redress for victims of enforced disappearances.

The issue of violations of the rights of UOC believers has been put on the Committee's agenda. The UN committee also asked the Ukrainian government to take measures to investigate the facts of enforced disappearances and further prevent them.

In particular, the UN asked the Ukrainian government to comment on the alleged disappearance of believers and clerics of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, such as Archimandrite Lavr (Berezovsky), and to provide information on searches and investigations carried out in this regard and their results.

The NGO adds that enforced disappearances include offences such as detaining, holding, or removing people without their consent to a certain place, conducting arrests, searches or other measures by unauthorised persons, without observing the procedural guarantees provided for by the legislation in force in Ukraine.

"Such actions remain human rights violations even when a person has been released after being forcibly detained. It is important that such facts are not ignored even if persons are found and supposedly safe but in reality as a result of such 'preventive conversations' with them - they are the real victims of violence, especially when as a result of intimidation they were forced to give up the rights due to them," the statement on the “Public Advocacy” website reads.

As reported, in the spring of 2022, the abbot and novice of the Dukon Monastery were abducted by armed men, after which the monastery's property was taken over by the Verkhovyna village council.

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