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The Ukrainian Verkhovnaya Rada is considering legislation that could lead to a ban on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church/Moscow Patriarchate (UPTs/MP). If the new laws pass, they’d allow the Ukrainian régime to ban churches, regulate worship, monitor church activities, ban missionaries from entering the country, and seize the assets of churches. The laws would only apply to churches whose ecclesiastical leadership was in what Ukrainian nationalists consider “aggressor states”. Russia is the only state that the Ukraine currently views as an aggressor. Not only is this an attack on the freedom of worship, it’s clearly a racially motivated attack on believers. Advocates of religious freedom all over the world condemned these proposals. The Ukrainian proposals would be totally illegal in the EU (which Ukraine seeks to join) as well as the USA. Previously, Metropolitan Ilarion Alfeyev drew the world’s attention to the oppression of Middle Eastern Christians at the hands of western-backed jihadist groups. He called the Ukrainian proposals:
It’s a full-scale war on believers. In the first place, these draft laws target the UPTs/MP. That’s no question; it’s obvious. These bills don’t even try to cover it up. The UPTs/MP would be under the submission of the Kiev authorities in a way that didn’t exist even in Soviet times.
Fr Andrei Zuevsky told RT:
Should state officials be given the right to forcefully eliminate religious communities, that’d be open and brutal interference into believers’ private lives. In Orthodox Christianity, personal faith is largely realised within a community, a church. When a government interferes in its life, it violates religious freedom.
An MP statement said:
The proposals threaten the constitutional rights of millions of Ukrainian believers; they may cause a wave of violence, new seizures of churches, and escalate the intercommunal conflict in the Ukraine.
Over 300,000 people signed a petition protesting attempts to destroy religious freedom in the Ukraine.
18 May 2017
Adam Garrie
The Duran
http://theduran.com/ukraines-war-on-orthodox-christianity/
Voices from Russia 
The Ukraine’s War on Orthodox Christianity
Tags: Christian, Christianity, civil unrest, discrimination, Eastern Orthodox Church, Hilarion Alfeyev, persecution, Persecution of Christians, political commentary, politics, Religion, Religion and Spirituality, Russia, Russian, Russian Orthodox Church, Schism, schismatic, schismatics, Ukraine, Ukrainian Civil War, Ukrainian Orthodox Church, UPTs/MP, Verkhovnaya Rada
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The Ukrainian Verkhovnaya Rada is considering legislation that could lead to a ban on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church/Moscow Patriarchate (UPTs/MP). If the new laws pass, they’d allow the Ukrainian régime to ban churches, regulate worship, monitor church activities, ban missionaries from entering the country, and seize the assets of churches. The laws would only apply to churches whose ecclesiastical leadership was in what Ukrainian nationalists consider “aggressor states”. Russia is the only state that the Ukraine currently views as an aggressor. Not only is this an attack on the freedom of worship, it’s clearly a racially motivated attack on believers. Advocates of religious freedom all over the world condemned these proposals. The Ukrainian proposals would be totally illegal in the EU (which Ukraine seeks to join) as well as the USA. Previously, Metropolitan Ilarion Alfeyev drew the world’s attention to the oppression of Middle Eastern Christians at the hands of western-backed jihadist groups. He called the Ukrainian proposals:
Fr Andrei Zuevsky told RT:
An MP statement said:
Over 300,000 people signed a petition protesting attempts to destroy religious freedom in the Ukraine.
18 May 2017
Adam Garrie
The Duran
http://theduran.com/ukraines-war-on-orthodox-christianity/
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