The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has published a report based on the findings of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, which drew attention to the forceful seizure of Ukrainian Orthodox Church churches and persecution of the clergy and believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This is reported by the official website of the Church.

“On March 26, the site published a report prepared by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights based on the findings of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission to Ukraine. The seventh section of this report is devoted to freedom of religion and belief. It contains a list of gross violations of the fundamental rights to freedom of conscience and religious belief in different regions of Ukraine. In particular, according to UN experts, during the reporting period “clergymen and parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church continued to be subjected to intimidation”. Six cases were documented in five regions when “groups of people forcibly broke into churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, justifying their actions by the decisions of local self-government bodies to register new religious communities of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) at the same address where the existing communities of the UOC are registered”, – the statement said.

Note, earlier we reported that on March 8, 2024 the hierarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Metropolitan of Cherkasy and Kanev Feodosiy (Snigiryov) took part in the panel discussion “On countering religious hatred constituting incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence” at the UN Human Rights Council. The bishop urged human rights institutions to pay attention to Law No. 8371, aimed at banning the UOC, and to submit it to the Venice Commission for study.