Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in Ukraine - 2002
Released by the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
March 31, 2003 [www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18398.htm]
c. Freedom of Religion
The Constitution and the law provide for freedom of religion, and the Government
generally respected this right in practice. Religious groups of all beliefs
flourished; however, some minority and nontraditional religions continued to
experience difficulties registering and buying or leasing property at the local
level, although there were fewer reports of such difficulties than in the past.
The Constitution and the law provide for the separation of church and state.
There was no state religion. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate, tended to predominate in the east; the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Kiev Patriarchate, and the smaller Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church were strong in the central regions, and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church predominated in the west. These churches exerted significant political influence at the local and regional levels. Reportedly each of these churches, within its respective sphere of influence, also pressured local officials to restrict the activities of the others. The law requires all religious organizations to register with the State Committee on Religious Affairs (SCRA). Registration is necessary to own property or carry out many economic activities, such as publishing religious materials and opening bank accounts.
Some nonnative and minority religious organizations reported that, especially at the local or regional levels, officials of the SCRA delayed registration of their organizations for extended periods. However, there were fewer such reports during the year. Representatives of Progressive Jewish Community claimed that pressure from Chabad Lubavitch officials and local Dnipropetrovsk authorities led to a 5-year delay in the granting of registration to a Progressive Jewish Community in the city. In October 2001, members of the Community withdrew their petition for registration, citing harassment by local authorities. The Progressive Jewish Community also reported that its application for registration in Kryvy Rih, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, had been under examination since 2001. Representatives of Evangelical Christian communities expressed concern over instances of discrimination against their adherents. In December the Suvorov District court ordered a Pentecostal Church in Kherson closed for holding public services in June and July without permission from the local authorities. However, such incidents appeared to be isolated. Evangelical Churches, like many other religious communities, experienced difficulties in obtaining land plots.
Disputes among competing Orthodox Christian administrative bodies continued. The SCRA, although supportive of a unified, independent Orthodox Church for the country, has maintained neutrality in its relations with the various Orthodox churches. The Kiev Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church and the Greek Catholic church complained of harassment by local authorities in the predominantly Russian-speaking eastern region of the country, while the Moscow Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church complained that local governments ignored the appropriation of its churches by Greek Catholics in the western region. The Government generally permitted religious organizations to establish places of worship and to train clergy. The Government continued to facilitate the building of houses of worship by allocation of land plots for new construction and through restitution of religious buildings to their rightful owners. Representatives of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church cited instances of difficulties in providing religious services to soldiers and of the need to obtain approval from prison chaplains of the Moscow Patriarchate for prison ministry activities.
Members of numerous religious communities encountered difficulties in dealing with the Kiev municipal administration to obtain land permits and building permits, problems not limited to religious groups. Representatives of the Jewish community in Poltava complained that, despite assistance from the national authorities, the Poltava mayor's office refused to address their concerns about obtaining property for a synagogue. The law restricts the activities of nonnative, foreign-based, religious organizations ("native religions" are defined as Orthodox, Greek Catholic, and Jewish), and narrowly defines the permissible activities of members of the clergy, preachers, teachers, and other foreign citizen representatives of foreign-based religious organizations. They may preach, administer religious ordinances, or practice other canonical activities only in those religious organizations which invited them to Ukraine and with official approval of the governmental body that registered the statutes and the articles of the pertinent religious organization. However, in practice the Government has not used the law to limit greatly the activity of nonnative religious organizations. There were no reports that nonnative foreign religious workers encountered difficulties obtaining visas or carrying out their activities during the year.
Religious instruction is prohibited in the public school curriculum. Schools run by religious communities can and do include religious education as an extracurricular activity. In 2001 the Government began attempts to introduce training in "basic Christian ethics" into the schools. While the country's Jewish leaders support the teaching of ethics and civics in school, they insist on a nonsectarian approach to this training. A large number of high-level government officials took part in the commemoration of the massacre at Babyn Yar in Kiev, one of the most serious Nazi crimes of the Holocaust, which the Government commemorates each September.
The Government continued to return properties expropriated during the Soviet era to religious groups; however, not all groups regarded the pace of restitution as satisfactory, and all major religious communities continued to have outstanding restitution claims. In 2001 the government completed the return of a number of major religious edifices for use by the main Orthodox churches in Ukraine. According to the State Committee for Religious Affairs, during 2002 the Government transferred ownership of 187 buildings that were originally constructed as places of worship to religious communities, for a total of 8,776 since independence in 1991. In addition, during the year religious communities received ownership of 358 premises (i.e. buildings or sections of buildings) converted into places of worship and another 524 religious buildings that were not designated for worship, such as former religious schools, hospitals, and clerical residences, totaling 2,388 and 1,313, respectively, since independence. Intra-communal competition for particular properties complicated the restitution issue, both for some Christian and for some Jewish communities. Some groups asserted that restitution generally was progressing satisfactorily, although more could be done, while others not receiving property reported a lack of progress. The slow pace of restitution was a reflection, among other things, of the country's difficult economic condition, which severely limits funds available for the relocation of the occupants of seized religious property. On September 27, the cabinet approved an action plan, drawn up at the instruction of President Kuchma, designed to return religious buildings to the religious organizations that formerly owned them.
The March parliamentary elections, in which some priests of various Orthodox communities were accused of endorsing particular political parties or candidates in their sermons, had a negative impact on inter-Orthodox relations, which had already been tense.
Disputes over the erection of crosses in Jewish cemeteries in Sambir, Kiev, remained unresolved. In 2000 in Sambir, Lviv Oblast, Jews, with foreign assistance, began construction of a memorial park at the site of an old Jewish cemetery, which was the scene of Nazi atrocities. Nationalists erected crosses on the site to commemorate Christian victims of Nazi terror, who had been buried in a mass grave at the site. While memorial organizers supported the recognition of all groups who suffered on the Sambir site, they opposed the use of Christian religious symbols on the grounds of the Jewish cemetery. At the same time, local nationalists remained opposed to the use of Jewish symbols or Hebrew in the memorial. Jewish and Greek Catholic leaders intervened in an attempt to find a solution to the dispute. In spite of a proposal by the memorial's foreign sponsor to relocate the crosses to another site at his expense, local government leaders still had not resolved the conflict by year's end. Local officials in Volodymyr-Volynsky, Western Ukraine, continued to allow construction of an apartment building on the site of an old Jewish cemetery despite a December 17 court ruling to halt construction.
Some ultranationalist groups and newspapers continued to publish and distribute anti-Semitic tracts. Anti-Semitic publications also were imported from Russia and distributed without the necessary state license. The Procuracy warned certain publications against publishing anti-Semitic material. Leaders of the Jewish community welcomed changes in the editorial staffs of the newspapers Vechirniy Kyiv and Za Vilnu Ukrayinu in late 2000. Under new editors, these newspapers, which had been among the chief offenders in publishing anti-Semitic articles, ceased such activity. While acts of anti-Semitic violence were uncommon, an attack on the Great Synagogue of Kiev in April by inebriated youths following a soccer match was a source of concern to the Jewish community. However, there were no other attacks on the synagogue during the year, and most observers believed that the April incident was not premeditated. Evangelical Christian missionaries reported some instances of societal discrimination against members of their churches, such as public criticism for betraying native religions, although there were no reports of harassment.
For a more detailed discussion see the 2002 International Religious Freedom Report.
