San Francisco, March 27, 2019
Photo: spzh.news
His Grace Bishop Gideon (Kharon) of Makarov, the abbot of the persecuted Monastery of the Tithes in Kiev, who was deported from Ukraine with his passport confiscated and his citizenship canceled, has written a letter to President Donald Trump, explaining his situation and the illegal actions of the Ukrainian state.
The letter is published in full in Ukrainian on his monastery’s website.
In addition to President Trump, His Grace also sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, with whom he has previously met personally. The troubles for Bp. Gideon, who holds U.S. citizenship, began when he returned from a previous trip to America, where he had spoken with members of Congress and Secretary Pompeo about the reality of the persecutions facing the hierarchs, clergy, and faithful of the canonical Ukrainian Church from the state and the schismatic-nationalist church.
In the letter, Vladyka recalls that on February 13, upon returning home to Ukraine from the U.S., he was refused entry, like a “foreigner, or a stateless person,” despite that he had his valid Ukrainian passport in his hand, with which he had exited the country just a week prior. According to the written statement on the confiscation of his passport that he was given, his international passport had been declared invalid on January 24, though he had used it without any hindrance since that time.
Bp. Gideon writes that he believes the documents on the invalidation of his passport were falsified after his visit to the U.S., “during which [he] expressed a principled civil position on the events taking place in Ukraine around the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.” On February 5, with the blessing of His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine, he held a working meeting with Congressmen, conveying the official appeal of the Ukrainian Church to Congress and to Secretary Pompeo to consider the many cases of the violations of the rights and freedoms of believers in Ukraine.
As Bp. Gideon explains, a thorough analysis of the Ukrainian constitution and relevant laws reveals that a citizen cannot be deprived of citizenship without his consent. And even if “a citizen has the passport of another state formally contradicts Ukrainian legislation, he is not therefore deprived of citizenship.”
His deportation took place for clearly political reasons, the hierarch writes, given his principled stand, while the state attempts to veil its illegal actions in a cloak of legitimacy.
Furthermore, in Ukraine, as he writes, “no one would be surprised that a number of Ukrainian politicians, state representatives, and businessmen have dual citizenship. However, this absolutely does not prevent them from living and working in Ukraine, holding senior management positions in executive bodies, and also representing the people of Ukraine in the supreme legislative body—the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.”
“Taking into account the stated facts, which directly point to the gross violation of civil rights and freedoms by the state authorities in Ukraine, I ask you, in accordance with international legal norms, to stand up for the protection of democratic rights not only of myself, but of the entire Ukrainian people,” Bp. Gideon concludes.
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