KYIV: Ukraine’s parliament voted Tuesday to ban the Russian-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a move Kyiv says strengthens its independence as the country cuts ties with institutions it considers aligned with Moscow.
Kyiv has been trying to curb spiritual links with Russia for years — a process accelerated by Moscow’s 2022 invasion, which the powerful Russian Orthodox Church endorsed.
A majority of Ukrainian lawmakers approved the bill outlawing religious organizations linked with Russia, which will mostly affect the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).
Zelensky said the ban would boost his country’s “spiritual independence” and MPs hailed the bill as historic.
Russia condemned the move that its church called “illegal.”
The Russian church has been furious over a 2019 schism that resulted in the creation of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, spiritually loyal to Moscow’s Istanbul-based rival Patriarch Bartholomew.
Zelensky, who still needs to sign the bill for it to come into force, said he will be talking to Bartholomew’s representatives in the coming days.
It may take years to implement the ban, causing some dismay among followers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The Moscow-backed church in Ukraine officially broke ties with its Russian counterpart in 2022, but some lawmakers have accused its clerics of collaborating with Russia.
Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Vladimir Legoida condemned the vote as “an unlawful act that is the grossest violation of the basic principles of freedom of conscience and human rights.”
In Kyiv, believers were praying outside the Russian-affiliated part of the historic Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery, a regular practice since that area was closed to the public last year.
“There’s no politics here. We just come and pray for our children and our loved ones... I’ve never seen any KGB agents,” said 56-year-old Svetlana, who declined to give her name due to the sensitivity of the question.
In a lilac dress and matching headscarf, Svetlana said she had been baptised and married in the church and worried about its potential full closure.
“If they close, people will still pray in the streets, maybe we’ll put up tents, there will be prayers anyway,” Svetlana said.
The schism between Ukrainian and Russian-linked Churches was triggered by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the war between Kyiv and Moscow-backed separatists in the east.
The Istanbul-based head of the Eastern Orthodox Church granted a breakaway wing, called the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), autocephaly — religious independence — from the Moscow Patriarchate in 2019.
The split has impacted church going in Ukraine.
In the Ukrainian-affiliated part of the Lavra monastery, which remains open, 21-year-old Igor said:
“Everything is political. There can be no such thing as art, sports, or even religion outside politics.”
“I actually totally support this ban,” he said, accusing the Russian Orthodox Church of being a Kremlin agent that “has metastasized so much that we will be fighting it for decades.”
The bill was hailed by many Ukrainian politicians.
“There will be no Moscow Church in Ukraine,” Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, said on Telegram.
Ukraine MPs vote to ban Russia-linked Orthodox Church
https://arab.news/y3z4d
Ukraine MPs vote to ban Russia-linked Orthodox Church
- Kyiv has been trying to curb spiritual links with Russia for years — a process accelerated by Moscow’s 2022 invasion, which Russian Orthodox Church endorsed
Egyptian teenagers ‘left to die’ by Bulgarian border police: Report
- 3 boys crossed into Europe via Turkiye late last month and were later found dead
- Authorities concealed evidence that they obstructed rescue efforts, humanitarian groups say
LONDON: Authorities in Bulgaria have been accused of letting three Egyptian teenagers die by ignoring emergency calls and delaying attempts to rescue them, The Guardian reported.
The incident took place in sub-zero temperatures near the Bulgarian-Turkish border late last month.
Evidence of the authorities’ failure to save the boys was collected in a dossier produced by two humanitarian organizations, No Name Kitchen and Collettivo Rotte Balcaniche.
The dossier, seen by The Guardian, contains photos, geolocations and personal testimonies, and reveals a wider pattern of brutality against migrants on the borders of Europe.
The Bulgarian border with Turkiye is a common crossing point for asylum-seekers but contains treacherous terrain, as well as freezing winter weather.
The two humanitarian organizations said that they were first alerted that an appeal for help had been made on Dec. 27 by the Egyptian trio.
Calls had been made to an emergency charity hotline, referring to three teenagers “at immediate risk of death.”
The GPS location of the three Egyptians, who were lost in the forests of southeastern Bulgaria, was sent to the hotline.
Charity workers then forwarded the information to the official 112 emergency number and attempted to locate the boys themselves.
But Bulgarian border police allegedly hindered the charity rescue attempts even after being shown a video of one of the Egyptian teenagers in the snow.
The boys were later identified as Ahmed Samra, 17, Ahmed El-Awdan, 16, and 15-year-old Seifalla El-Beltagy.
They were later found dead, with the former having “dog paw prints and boot prints around his body.”
This “indicates that the border police had already found him, maybe still alive or dead, but had chosen to leave him there in the cold,” the dossier said.
After charity staff later returned to the scene, they discovered that all traces of the prints had been removed.
One of the bodies of the deceased was found to have been partly eaten by an animal.
The dossier released by the two organizations also details harassment of charity rescue teams as well as vandalism of one of their cars.
Staff belonging to one rescue team had their passports and phones seized by Bulgarian police.
Human rights organizations have warned that authorities in European border countries are deploying tactics to target humanitarian groups helping asylum-seekers.
No Name Kitchen and Collettivo Rotte Balcaniche called for an “independent, formal investigation” into “systemic violence and negligence by Bulgarian authorities” and “degrading treatment of people on the move.”
Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry rejected the allegations and said that investigations into the case continued.
“In 2024, there were 515 search-and-rescue operations conducted by (the) general directorate border police of Bulgaria with the purpose (of providing) medical assistance to third-country nationals who managed to enter the country irregularly,” the ministry said.
“Our patrols reacted to all of those signals in a timely manner, considering how crucial this is when a person is exposed to extreme weather conditions.”
One activist described the reaction of Bulgarian border police to the three Egyptian teenagers as “utterly shocking.”
They said: “It should not be the responsibility of worried activists to reach people in the forest — border police are trained and paid to do so.
“It is utterly shocking that three minors froze to death in the forest even though multiple alerts to 112 had been placed. This is a huge failure for everyone.”
Jakarta NGO to rebuild Indonesian hospital as Palestinians return to north Gaza
- Indonesia Hospital in North Gaza was opened in 2015, built from donations of the Indonesian people
- It was a frequent target of Israeli forces, who accused the facility of sheltering Palestinian armed groups
JAKARTA: A Jakarta-based nongovernmental organization has committed to rebuilding the Indonesia Hospital in northern Gaza as Palestinians began returning to the area on Monday.
The Indonesia Hospital in Beit Lahiya, funded by the Indonesian NGO Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, was one of the first targets hit when Israel began its assault on Gaza in October 2023.
As relentless Israeli attacks pushed the enclave’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse, the Indonesia Hospital had stood as one of the last functioning health facilities in the north.
“Since the war started, the Indonesia Hospital has served as one of the main healthcare centers for residents of Gaza in the north. It has been attacked multiple times, damaging parts of the building itself and also various health equipment,” Sarbini Abdul Murad, chairman of MER-C’s board of trustees in Jakarta, told Arab News on Monday.
“We need to rebuild and fill it up with all the necessary health equipment … It is our moral commitment to rebuilding the hospital.”
Israel has frequently targeted medical facilities in the Gaza Strip, saying that they are used by Palestinian armed groups.
The Indonesia Hospital opened in 2015 and was officially inaugurated by the country’s then-Vice President Jusuf Kalla in 2016.
The four-story general hospital stands on a 16,200 sq. meter plot of land near the Jabalia refugee camp in North Gaza, donated by the local government in 2009.
The hospital’s construction and equipment were financed from donations of the Asia nation’s people, as well as organizations including the Indonesian Red Cross Society.
Since it opened almost a decade ago, MER-C continued to send volunteers to help. A couple of them stayed in Gaza until late last year, as MER-C also sent medical volunteers to the besieged enclave since March as part of a larger emergency deployment led by the World Health Organization.
The Indonesia Hospital was treating about 1,000 people at one point during Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 47,300 people and injured over 111,000.
“Many Indonesians are looking forward for the Indonesia Hospital to return to normal operations again, and this is the trust that MER-C keeps close because the hospital is a symbol of unity between Indonesians and Palestinians,” Murad said.
“Healthcare is an urgent need for Palestinians, so we want to offer our support here in our field of expertise.”
Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians began returning to the remains of their destroyed homes in north Gaza on Monday, after Israel opened the Netzarim corridor, a 7 km strip of land controlled by Israeli forces that cuts off the enclave’s north from the rest of the territory.
“We hope Israel will continue to give access for Gaza residents to return to their homes in the north peacefully and not breach the ceasefire agreement in any way,” Murad said.
‘Tidal wave of Islamophobia’ in UK, says outgoing MCB chief
- Zara Mohammed’s 4-year tenure involved responses to nationwide rioting, COVID-19 pandemic
- ‘There has been such a normalization of Islamophobic rhetoric without it being challenged or condemned,’ she tells BBC
LONDON: The UK is suffering from a “tidal wave of Islamophobia,” the outgoing leader of one of the country’s largest Muslim bodies has warned.
Zara Mohammed has served as the first female leader of the Muslim Council of Britain since 2021, and through her tenure tackled nationwide riots last year, the COVID-19 pandemic, and being frozen out of government contact.
Ahead of her departure as MCB general secretary on Saturday, Mohammed spoke to the BBC about the difficulties she has faced over the last four years.
“It was the Southport riots for us that made it really quite alarming,” she said, referring to nationwide disorder last year in the wake of a stabbing attack in Southport.
“It was so visceral. We were watching on our screens: People breaking doors down, stopping cars, attacking taxi drivers, smashing windows, smashing mosques,” she told the BBC. “The kind of evil we saw was really terrifying and I felt like, am I even making a difference?”
The rioting was partly triggered by false online rumors that the attacker was a Muslim asylum-seeker.
Yet the government at the time had refused to engage with Mohammed, and the largest umbrella Muslim organization in Britain “wasn’t being talked to,” she said.
“The justification was there, the urgency, the necessity of engagement was there, British Muslims were under attack, mosques were under attack.”
In the year since the war in Gaza began, monitoring group Tell Mama UK recorded 4,971 instances of Islamophobic hate in Britain — the highest figure in 14 years.
The MCB had done “a lot of community building and political advocacy” in a bid to tackle the problem, yet this had failed to shift mainstream narratives surrounding British Muslims, Mohammed said.
“There has been such a normalization of Islamophobic rhetoric without it being challenged or condemned,” she added.
“We could say we’re making a difference but then what is being seen in national discourse does not seem to translate.”
Abuse of Muslim politicians across the UK, including former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, demonstrates a broader trend of rising Islamophobia, Mohammed said.
“You’re constantly firefighting. Did we make British Muslims’ lives better? On one hand, yes, because we raised these issues, we took them to a national platform. But with Islamophobia, we’re still having the same conversation,” she added.
“We still haven’t been able to break through, whether it’s government engagement, Islamophobia or social mobility.”
Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan, wife appeal graft convictions: lawyer
- Imran Khan was sentenced to 14 years and his wife to seven earlier this month
- A special graft court found the pair guilty of ‘corruption and corrupt practices’
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi on Monday appealed their convictions for graft, his lawyer said.
Khan was sentenced to 14 years and his wife to seven earlier this month in the latest case to be brought against them.
“We have filed appeals today and in the next few days it will go through clerical processes and then it will be fixed for a hearing,” Khan’s lawyer Khalid Yousaf Chaudhry said.
The papers were filed at the Islamabad High Court.
A special graft court found the pair guilty of “corruption and corrupt practices” over a welfare foundation they established together called the Al-Qadir Trust.
Khan, 72, has been held in custody since August 2023 charged in around 200 cases which he claims are politically motivated.
Kremlin says it has yet to hear from US about a possible Putin-Trump meeting
MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Monday it had yet to receive any signals from the United States about arranging a possible meeting between President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, but remained ready to organize such an encounter.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it appeared a “certain amount of time” was needed before a meeting between the two leaders could take place. He said Russia understood that Washington was still interested in organizing such a meeting.
Putin said on Friday that he and Trump should meet to talk about the Ukraine war and energy prices, issues that the US president has highlighted in the first days of his new administration.
