orthodoxrights.org

May 18, 2015. The OSCE Serbian Chairmanship and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) organised in Vienna a Conference discussing the ways that can be used in order to count the intolerance and discrimination against Christians.

The Ambassador Vuk Žugić, Chair of the OSCE Permanent Council and Serbia’s Permanent Representative to the Organization, underlined that Serbia has a special interest in promoting this, given that its Christian heritage has suffered great and many times irreparable damage throughout the tumultuous recent history in the Balkans.

At the conference, the participants examined how co-operation and trust among law-enforcement agencies, criminal justice practitioners and Christian communities can be enhanced, to ensure that there is an effective body of laws, policies and practices that addresses hate crimes and intolerance faced by Christian communities across the OSCE region.

More specifically, the conference in Vienna was based on the work done during a high-level meeting in Rome, in 2011, on preventing and responding to hate incidents and crimes against Christians http://www.osce.org/odihr/158601

The Russian Orthodox Church participated in the conference as mospat.ru reports. Among the speakers it was archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Moscow Patriarchate department for church-society relations and member of the OSCE Consultative Council on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Rev. Dimitry Safonov, head of the Moscow Patriarchate department for external church relations section for interreligious contacts, and Ms. Ye. Agapova, vice-chair of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society.

In his address, archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin spoke on a number of problems experienced by Christian communities in the OSCE region. Among them is defilement of objects and symbols honoured by Christians, hate speech towards Christians, aggressive challenges from militant secularism and ‘intolerance for the sake of tolerance’. He maintained that these problems have arisen first because many do not want to see Christians restoring and strengthening their influence on social processes.

In this connection, father Vsevolod reminded the conference that Article 4 of the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Beliefs, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1981, states, ‘All States shall take effective measures to prevent and eliminate discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief in the recognition, exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms in all fields of civil, economic, political, social and cultural life’.

Rev. Dimitry Safonov cited a whole number of facts pointing to the violation of rights of the faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, such as capture of churches by schismatics, pressure put on clergy, etc. He also pointed to the grievous situation of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa and called the OSCE to make the protection of rights of Christians a priority in its work and to consider the situation of Christians in building relations with countries in this region.

Ms. Agapova, in her remarks, drew the attention of the conference to the suffering of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa and in south-east Ukraine.

Dr. Gudrun Kugler, director of the “Observatory of Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe” highlighted five areas in which the religious freedom is limited: a) Freedom of Conscience, b) Freedom of expression, c) The Right to Assembly and Association, d) the parents’ rights and e) the Private autonomy that comes to a non-discrimination legislation.

Dr. Kugler presented the recommendations of the Observatory to OSCE/ODIHR:

-To continue the discussions on intolerance and discrimination against Christians by focusing on the principle of Reasonable Accommodation.

-To review the Guidelines on Freedom of Religion or Belief and to deepen the understanding of Reasonable Accommodation and to investigate and deepen the understanding of the meaning and the scope of parents’ rights, and freedom of conscience in more detail.

-To promote the Tolerance and non-discrimination at school with a special focus on Christianity.

-In the hate crime documentation to broaden the definition of “connection to a group” to include subgroups with regard to essential components.

-To establish an international day against Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians