Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I was in Ukraine just over two weeks ago for a 48-hour period. In the midst of the political violence that was ongoing, the focus of the trip was to speak out against the intimidation that has been directed specifically against the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. This is a church that through much of the second half of the 20th century was one of the largest “illegal” religious organizations in the world.
In a number of cases the government has been intimidating the church. Specifically the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, the ministry that is responsible for church-state relations, sent a letter to Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, that told him the church needed to cease and desist from being present on the square in Kiev in a pastoral fashion ministering to people, because they were violating articles 16 and 21 of the law that regulates church-state relations. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was the only church that received such a letter in which the government threatened to delist the church—to make it, in other words, an illegal organization within the country.
On the square, reports came to us that the Berkut, the security services, were asking NGO representatives and different clergy about why they were there and what their purpose was. But when it came to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic clergy, they were actually intimidating them and threatening them.
We're also concerned, and I issued a statement on this prior to Christmas, about the intimidation directed toward Ukrainian Catholic University. This has been a long-running type of intimidation. Security services were threatening faculty and staff who were going to Kiev to participate in peaceful protests with phone calls in the middle of the night and these types of Soviet-style tactics.
We have committed to being very vigilant in ensuring that this type of intimidation and persecution of one particular church neither continues nor spreads to other faith communities in Ukraine.
Just around the time I was there, perhaps a couple of days before, two Jews were attacked in Kiev. That's another issue we're focusing on. A very good initiative is the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, actually led by two Canadians, that has brought together Christian leaders in Ukraine, Jewish leaders, and also some Muslim leaders around advancing that dialogue between Christians and Jews. That's something else we're monitoring.
The situation there is very concerning, especially given the influence of certain external actors.