Robert Amsterdam, international lawyer for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, has published an oped in the Moscow Times detailing the Ukrainian government’s persecution of his clients and arguing for intervention. Amsterdam urges the Ukrainian government to submit their new law on religious cleansing for international review before bodies such as the EU’s Venice Commission.
Excerpt below:
Prominent clerics of the UOC have been arrested by Ukraine’s SBU security service on false or spurious charges. The latest United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Country Report details how arrested priests are being offered freedom if they agree to be exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners of war held by Russia. Some of my own clients have received this offer, which contravenes the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
My client, Metropolitan Arseniy of the Sviatohirsk Lavra, has been in arbitrary detention since April this year. He has been charged over the contents of a sermon from September 2023 in which he complained that police checkpoints prevented pilgrims from reaching the monastery for an important religious festival. He now faces eight years in jail for supposedly giving away the location of the armed forces of Ukraine, despite the fact the checkpoints were not erected or manned by the military.
Metropolitan Arseniy’s pre-trial detention has been repeatedly extended in violation of Ukrainian law, and he has been subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment. He is in ill health and is desperate to return to the monastery where he has lived for over 30 years. (…)
Meanwhile, historic churches owned by the UOC have been seized and transferred to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), the state-backed Church that has become to Ukraine what the Russian Orthodox Church is to Russia – a mouthpiece of the government.
These takeovers have become increasingly violent. Just last week, St. Michael’s Cathedral in Cherkasy was raided during a night liturgy. Scores of OCU supporters dressed in army fatigues stormed the church, smashed the furniture, and fired tear gas. Violence erupted again the next day. According to a statement issued by Metropolitan Feodosii of Cherkasy and Kaniv, who was injured in the attack, “not one of the attackers or armed militants were detained by the police, and the violent acts, including beatings of people, were not interrupted or prevented by police officers.” Such criminal violence has been repeated in other illegal takeovers of UOC churches across Ukraine.
To make matters worse, the UOC is itself a victim of Russian aggression. Its churches and monasteries are being bombed, and its parishioners are being killed on the frontlines. In the occupied territories of Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church has seized control of UOC parishes. Those brave priests who protest these takeovers have been arrested on false charges and jailed. Fr Kostiantyn Maksimov, for example, has been sentenced to 14 years.