The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch has issued a statement today highlighting their concerns that Ukraine’s recently passed law which will allow for the banning of an entire religious denomination would violate international human rights law.
According to Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, “the law interferes with the right to freedom of religion and is so broad that it could violate the rights of Ukrainian Orthodox Church members.”
Mr. Williamson notes that Ukraine has a right to defend its national security and to prosecute any Ukrainian individual “when there is credible evidence to indicate their specific actions are illegal and pose a threat to public safety and state security.”
However, these public safety concerns in no way can justify the collective punishment of entire religious communities based only on their faith alone, Human Rights Watch finds.
Further aspects of the international legal violations posed by the law banning the Church in the HRW statement are excerpted below and can be read in full here.
Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun, a Ukrainian professor of international relations and ecumenism, told Human Rights Watch that the law’s implementation could drive the approximately 10,000 Ukrainian Orthodox Church congregations across Ukraine underground, forcing them to practice their religion in secrecy. He noted that there are Ukrainian Orthodox Church congregations in occupied territories that “refuse to join the Russian Orthodox Churchfor many reasons.” He said that the ban would sever the connection with those churches, and that the “Russian Orthodox Church will put their own people in place and that will be the end of it.”
The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has documented multiple incidents in which groups of people forcefully entered churches belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Сhurch, “justifying their actions with decisions from local authorities to register new religious communities of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine at the same address as existing Ukrainian Orthodox Churchcommunities.” In September, Ukraine blocked the website of the outlet DialogTUT, which covered Ukrainian Orthodox Church activities.
Ukraine is obligated under Ukrainian and international law to guarantee religious freedom. The European Convention on Human Rights, to which Ukraine is a party, guarantees in article 9 religious freedom, which includes the right both to hold a particular religious belief and to manifest it, either alone or in community with others and in public or private. Any limitations on this right must be necessary for a stated purpose such as the protection of public safety, public order, or the rights and freedoms of others, be proportionate to that aim, and be supported by sufficient and relevant reasons.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Ukraine is also a party, similarly guarantees the right to freedom of religion (article 18) and provides that “No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.”Governments are explicitly prohibited from derogating from, or partially suspending, the right to freedom of religionprotected under the Covenant, even in times of public emergency.
The European Court of Human Rights has held that government measures that are liable to have negative repercussions on the exercise of religious freedom by the adherents of a particular church or faith–such as banning or dissolving that church—must be “supported by evidence of specific acts liable to pose a threat to public order or to the interests of others”; “must avoid casting doubt on the legitimacy of the beliefs in question”; and “must remain proportionate.”