10 September 2017. A Thought from Priest-Martyr Roman Medved

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If you wish more info on R I Medved, click here.

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The Ukraine’s War on Orthodox Christianity

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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/

Lavrov Sez Ukrainian Nationalist Extremists Persecute Christians

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In Genève, Minister of Foreign Affairs S V Lavrov said, “Christians face persecution not only in the Middle East, but also in the Ukraine, where fratricidal war broke out in the wake of an anti-constitutional coup, as extremist nationalists stoked up sectarian strife”. Lavrov stated that extremists destroy Orthodox churches and monasteries, subjecting priests and believers to intimidation and harassment. In Novorossiya alone, they destroyed ten churches to the foundations and damaged another 77. He said, “They killed three Orthodox priests, and many more fled to Russia to escape extremist threats”.

He also said that we have to halt the exodus of Christians from the Middle East, noting that this might have “the most negative consequence in terms of its impact on the structure of Arab societies, and on our preservation of the historical and spiritual heritage of all mankind”. Lavrov noted that the crimes of ISIS and other extremist groups against Middle Eastern Christians have “all the signs of genocide. Entire cities, such as Mosul, completely lost their traditional Christian presence. In ISIS-controlled territory, jihadists commit terrible crimes, their obscurantism leads to violence… they kill Christians, including priests, burn them alive, sell them into slavery, plunder them, expel them from their native places, and use them as hostages”. Lavrov pointed up the situation in Syria, which was an exemplary model of peaceful and mutually respectful coexistence between different religious communities, “but that way of life is under threat as a result of the actions of extremist forces used [by the West] to fight against Bashar al-Assad’s government”.

3 March 2015

Interfax-Religion

http://interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=58029

“Last” Auschwitz Anniversary Is Reminder of Silence’s Danger

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Ronald S Lauder, the President of the World Jewish Congress, said that next month’s 70th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of the Auschwitz death camp is a reminder, at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise again, of what happens when the world is silent about persecution. Lauder told Reuters in an interview that anti-Semitism is now at levels not seen since World War II, driven by Islamist extremists using hatred of Jews as a way to attack Israel, and by far-right nationalists in Europe. He said that the commemorations on 27 January to mark the day that the Red Army liberated Auschwitz in 1945 would be the last major anniversary when survivors would be able to attend in numbers. The youngest are now in their 70s.

Lauder said, “I believe it’s a good reminder to people of what happens when we remain silent, and the world was silent when Hitler was starting, the world was silent when Jews were taken away, the world was silent at Kristallnacht, and in many ways, although many people knew what was happening in the concentration camps, it wasn’t publicised. After World War II, into the 50s, 60s and 70s, the type of anti-Semitism we see today, nobody would ever have thought of happening. But as time went on and generations have passed, we see the rise of anti-Semitism. Hopefully, this commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the freeing of Auschwitz, and the ceremonies that’ll take place, may remind the world what happens when anti-Semitism is allowed to run wild, so to speak”.

At the Auschwitz camp, in southern Poland, the Nazis killed some 1.5 million people between 1940 and 1945, most of them Jews. Lauder, who helped fund conservation efforts to preserve artefacts at Auschwitz including inmates’ hair and shoes, said that the World Jewish Congress would this year bring about 100 survivors and their families to Poland to take part in the commemorations. Lauder said that Hungary, where Jobbik is now the second biggest political force, was one example of a European country where a political party was fanning anti-Semitism, noting, “The government will talk about ‘There’s no place for anti-Semitism in the world’, but that isn’t necessarily speeches being made inside Hungary. There’s a total disconnect between what they say for external consumption and internal consumption”. Magyar Minister-President Viktor Orbán called anti-Semitism intolerable and said that his government is a determined participant in the fight against it. Jobbik’s leaders deny being anti-Semitic.

29 December 2014

Christian Lowe

Reuters/Jewish Daily Forward

http://forward.com/articles/211769/last-auschwitz-anniversary-is-reminder-of-silences/

Editor:

Beware all “Holocaust Deniers”… there are all too many amongst the Vlasovtsy party in the ROCOR, amongst the “Ukrainian Catholic” hierarchy, and amongst the unrepentant neofascists in Bound Brook (lair of the “Ukrainian Orthodox” in the USA). They’re quick to inflate ANYTHING done in the USSR… but minimise anything done by the Nazis. Never forget… there are factions amongst the “Ukrainian Orthodox”, “Ukrainian Catholics”, and the ROCOR whose fathers and grandfathers collaborated willingly with the Nazis and helped them to destroy Eastern European Jewry (of them, the Galician Uniates were the worst and most vicious… as they remain, today… the war in Novorossiya is testament to that). Yes… Russians liberated the camps… but some Russian émigrés helped RUN the camps. So-called self-identified “Ukrainians” (and Balts) were even more zealous in their support of the Final Solution. Yes… we helped end the scourge… but we also had a hand in perpetuating it. Note well that the so-called “anti-communists” shoved Jews in the ovens, whilst the commies liberated the camps

Let History judge…

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