Pak Sahafat – The UN representative at the Security Council meeting regarding the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by Kiev said: Religious places should be places of worship, not war.
According to the Pak Sahafat News Agency, The United Nations Cultural Heritage on Wednesday local time at the Security Council meeting recalled the human rights obligations regarding the safety of religious places and those who use them and emphasized that History and historical identity must be fully respected, and religious places must be “places of worship, not places of war.”
The UN cultural heritage representative expressed “grave concern” over the state of religious sites in areas controlled by Ukraine and Russia, and expressed concern over the “undocumented” detention of Christian clerics.
The UN representative pointed to reports of attacks on religious sites and clerics by Russian forces, stressing that when people and structures are attacked based on religious beliefs, “we all face a crisis.”
Late on March 30, Ukrainian authorities terminated the lease agreement with the country’s Orthodox Church and asked the monks to leave the monastery. The monks refused to follow these demands and called them illegal. Both sides took the case to court.
At the meeting, a writer named Teksior described his “hard” experience of being arrested by Ukrainian authorities for allegedly defending the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and said his story is just one example of the current level of persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
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Turkey welcomed the resolution condemning the desecration of the holy books of the United Nations
Dimiry Polyansky, the first deputy of the Russian delegation to the United Nations, also mentioned the pressures on the Orthodox communities in this meeting, but added that Russia does not speak on behalf of the Orthodox.
The representative of Russia announced his country’s opposition to the draft law in the Ukrainian parliament that seeks to restrict Orthodox communities and emphasized that the rule of law in Ukraine is in danger.
The deputy representative of the Russian delegation said that the Ukrainian government has spread “a special form of cynicism” against Orthodox leaders with the announced punishments, and called on the international community to stand against these actions.
The US representative in the United Nations also announced in this meeting that Russia participated in this meeting shortly after damaging the cathedral in Odessa and other damages to religious places in Ukraine, which is a duplicity.
Japan’s representative at the United Nations also rejected Russia’s narrative and said that while Moscow is trying to present itself as the “guardian” of Orthodox values, it is destroying Orthodox facilities at the same time.
In this meeting, the representative of China also pointed to the “painful lessons” of the situation in which religion and religious institutions decide to incite tensions instead of promoting coexistence and emphasized that a political solution is the most effective way to end the war in Ukraine.
The representative of Russia requested the presence of an Orthodox bishop in the Security Council, and the representative of England voted for this request, but only Brazil, China and Russia voted in favor and the other members abstained from this request, thus the proposal was rejected.
Russia’s first deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Dimyri Polyansky, then criticized Britain for “malicious” efforts to block proposed speakers.