Bishop Baryshevsky Viktor (Kotsaba), Chairman of the Representation of the UOC to European International Organizations, spoke about the activities of the UOC in international organizations for the protection of the rights of believers in an interview with the journal of the Serbian Patriarchate, the Information and Education Department of the UOC reports.

“By the decision of the Synod of the UOC in 2017, a new Synodal Department was founded – the Representation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to European international organizations.

At the same time, the Synod of our Church entrusted me to head it. Since 2017, we have been participating in events at various international venues where we can talk about protecting human rights. The largest OSCE conference on human rights in Europe is held annually in Warsaw. This year, for the first time, it took place online through the pandemic.

Abroad we talk about numerous violations of the rights of Orthodox believers in Ukraine. We do not demand any kind of selective attitude towards ourselves, but on the contrary, we believe that the state should treat all confessions equally, which we do not observe in Ukraine today. I must say that our state has a selective attitude to confessions. I would like to note that the UOC is the largest and most numerous religious organization in the country, which numbers about 12,500 parishes, 4,500 monks, and more than 250 monasteries. Millions of Ukrainian citizens consider themselves to be parishioners of the UOC,” the hierarch noted.

According to him, “despite these quantitative indicators, the majority and some media outlets are disposed, to put it mildly, unfriendly to the UOC, and in every possible way support the OCU, which turns this structure into a managed “state church”. We are talking about all this at the international level, where in such a difficult time the voice of our Church should be heard, voicing truthful and objective information. In addition to oral presentations, we also correspond with officials and organizations. So, back in 2018, a joint appeal by several UN special rapporteurs was made public, addressed to the government of Ukraine with some questions on ensuring freedom of religion in our country, namely regarding the violation of the rights of believers of the UOC. It followed from this document that the UN Special Rapporteur received comprehensive information, which was provided to him by the Representation of the UOC and some other international human rights organizations.”

“Thus, this information was reversed in Ukraine, but with signatures of high-ranking officials, it imposes certain obligations on Ukrainian officials to comply with the norms of international law. It is worth recalling the decision of the UN Human Rights Committee, which stopped the process of “eviction” of our parishioners from their building in the city of Kiev. It turns out that inside the country we were unable to resolve this issue, but with the help of authoritative influence from outside we managed to block some actions of the executive services. These are only general sketches about our activities in the international direction, which requires a lot of routine and imperceptible work, but such is its specificity,” the bishop concluded.