On May 1 RISU started a new project monitoring religious freedom in Ukraine in order to protect the rights of believers and religious organizations. The main objective of the project is to collect and disseminate information on violations and threats to religious freedom, as well as to report on events or actions aimed at defending it.
All information for the project will be collected on a separate page on the RISU portal.
According to external observations and conclusions of Ukrainian experts, the state of religious freedom in Ukraine over the last few years has deteriorated significantly. At a recent roundtable organized by the Razumkov Center, well-known religious studies expert and director of the Ukrainian Association for Religious Freedom Viktor Yelensky recorded a decrease in the level of religious freedom in Ukraine.
Most citizens believe that in Ukraine there is complete religious freedom – 65%, but in 2010, 76% thought so. Yelesnky also noted that the level of government restriction of religious freedom, which is defined by international research centers using various parameters, has significantly worsened. In 2009 it was 2.1 on a scale of 0-10 (none – full), while in recent years it was 4. First and foremost it is about the actions of the government.
Also, the Commission on International Religious Freedom, an advisory body to the U.S. government, released a report on rights violations in the world for religious freedom, which documented trends in Ukraine to adopt laws that restrict religious rights and the rights of religious groups.
As experts noted at the roundtable, people have the most trust in the church and it is one of the foundations of civil society in Ukraine. Therefore, it is necessary to report on the church to help protect it.
The RISU editorial staff already has a lot of experience in promoting religious freedom in Ukraine through the spread of information: news, reports, investigations, interviews, commentaries, and analyses. Timely and qualitative information has helped protect religious communities, particularly when it came to human oppression of believers in different regions (interference with the allocation of land for the construction of a church, the return of church property, holding religious events, etc.), attempts to introduce legislation that restricts freedom of religion, or intolerant publications or programs in Ukrainian media, which offend believers or discredit certain religious organizations.
Our new project will last one year (until April 20, 2014) and is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy.
We invite churches and religious organizations, communities and individual believers to inform RISU about of the violation or restriction of rights, about religious intolerance, interference in religious activities, and more.
We believe that spreading objective and timely information can protect religious freedom in Ukraine.