Amendments to law on freedom of conscience evoke discussions among religious figures

Amendments to the Law of Ukraine "On freedom of conscience and religious organizations" were controversially perceived by the religious community. Some religious representatives have significant concerns about the nature of amendments and the procedure of their review.

A vivid discussion on draft Law No. 4128 on the change of affiliation by on religious communities occurred during a meeting of the Secretariat of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations on June 29, the Institute of Religious Freedom reports.

Despite the assurance by Andriy Yurash, Director of the Department for Religions and Nationalities to the Minister of Culture, who stated that the project met the international standards of religious freedom, religious representatives provided a number of critical comments to this initiative.

Archpriest Mykolai Danilevych, Deputy Chair of the Department for External Church Relations (Moscow Patriarchate), believes that the proposed amendments do not simplify the transition of Orthodox communities from one jurisdiction to another, but on the contrary,“ will provoke more conflicts.”

Secretary of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate, Archbishop Yevstratii (Zorya) believes that discussion of this bill on the merits will increasingly improve its content. While the original wording raisedconcerns, the wording of the relevant Committee can be supported. He proposed to hold committee hearings in Parliament, which invited all interested persons to take account of all views and improve the proposed initiative.

Fr. Oleksa Petriv, mitered archpriest of the UGCC says that the best way to settle the problems of changing affiliation by religious communities will be to sum up the current legal practice by the Supreme Court of Ukraine. He said the wording of the Committee is much better than the original text. However, he expressed concerns to decision-making procedure to change the religious community subordination to another religious center, because this issue is too important to make decisions by simple majority.

According to Ukrainian Lutheran Church Secretary Igor Rudzik, the most problematic in draft Law 4128 is an innovation regarding the "self-identification" of the person as the basis for his/her recognition of a member of a religious community with the right to voting.

This approach completely disregards internal guidelines of the evangelical churches, which provide certain membership criteria, including baptism and confirmation.

These concerns have been supported by legal counsel to Chief Rabbi of Kyiv and Ukraine, Doctor of Law Hennady Bilorytskyy. According to him, the draft Law 4128 will make possible the ordinary raiding by criminals who can create pseudo religious communities for acquisition of buildings or lands of real religious communities.

According to him, the legitimacy of statutory procedures and existing controls of religious communities are questioned, the criminals can take advantage of the provision of self-identification with the religious community of any third party. Therefore, the proposed changes indicate the state intervention into internal self-regulation of every religious community.

“It will destroy religious freedom in Ukraine. No religious community will remain unaffected by these legislative changes,” concluded the Jewish community representative.

Other representatives of faiths did not express reservations to this legislative initiative.

As reported, draft Law 4128 was elaborated by the Expert Council of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine and submitted to the Parliament by a group of MPs (Yelenskyy, Voytsehovska, Kyshkar etc.) without consulting the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations.

On June 1, 2016, the Parliamentary Committee on Culture and Spirituality considered the draft law and decided to recommend that Parliament adopt it at first reading in the version proposed by the Committee. However, the wording proposed by the Committee for a month has not been published on the Parliament website.

Among other things, participants of the meeting of the Secretariat of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and religious organizations have criticized the Tax Code of Ukraine requirements for mandatory re-registration of the statutes of all non-profit organizations.