Myroslav Marynovych to lecture on religion and politics in Ukraine (03/31/02)

Myroslav Marynovych to lecture on religion and politics in Ukraine

LVIV - Myroslav Marynovych, co-founder of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and now director of the Institute of Religion and Society in Lviv, will be lecturing on Ukrainian religion and politics in Washington, Philadelphia, Boston and New York in April.

As vice-rector of the Lviv Theological Academy Prof. Marynovych has been particularly involved this year with the academy's transformation into the Ukrainian Catholic University. During this process he has frequently worked with political figures and government ministries in Lviv and Kyiv.

In New York, on April 13 at the Ukrainian Institute, he will give his insights on the state of human rights and today's political situation following the parliamentary and local elections. In Philadelphia, the former prisoner of conscience will speak about the current role of dissidents in Ukraine.

Prof. Marynovych will also be hosted by two major universities, speaking at Catholic University in Washington in the first week of April and at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute on April 11.

In recent years, Prof. Marynovych has been the advisor on ecumenical issues for Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, primate of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. During last year's papal visit to Ukraine, he was involved in organizing the arrival of the Vatican delegation and he was head of the Papal Text Service. In May 2001 he gave reports at the Papal Gregorian University and the Papal Oriental Institute on social problems and ecumenism in Ukraine. He was also invited to participate as an official auditor at the Synod of Catholic Bishops held in Rome on September 30 to October 27, 2001.

The decisive moment in Prof. Marynovych's life came 25 years ago, when he joined the original Ukrainian Helsinki Group to monitor human rights abuses in then-Soviet Ukraine. In August 1975 in Helsinki, Finland, 33 European nations, the United States and Canada signed the Helsinki Accords, which defined new parameters of international relations.

On November 9, 1976, in a Moscow apartment in the presence of foreign journalists, the creation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group was announced. There were 10 members at that time; Mr. Myroslav Marynovych was one of the youngest.

As Mr. Marynovch explained, the task of the Helsinki monitoring group was "to follow up on how the Helsinki Accords signed by the Soviet Union were being observed. First of all, it focused on that chapter of the accords that spoke about different aspects of the rights of the human person, in particular freedom of speech, movement and religion."

From the very start the group was up front about its activities. Contact information on all its members was published with the group's first announcement. This openness made the KGB's work easier, but it also clearly revealed the undemocratic approach of the Soviet government.

Mr. Marynovych recalled the founding of the group: "I recall that clear night when we were invited to join the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. We thought about the choice: to agree, that meant arrest, no doubt; not to agree meant loss of self-respect, loss of our human face. I was 28 at the time. I said to myself 'yes.' And now I am happy with the choice I made, because in fact that decision laid the foundations for my future."

Some of the most blatant human rights abuses were directed against religious groups. During his time with the group, Mr. Marynovych reported on the liquidation of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and its underground activities, the liquidation of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the persecution of the Baptists. The Helsinki group's members were under constant surveillance, their homes were bugged, they awaited inevitable arrest.

On February 5, 1977, Mr. Marynovych was detained in Kyiv and warned that he would be arrested if he didn't stop his activities. He didn't stop and two months later he was arrested. The Soviets gradually arrested all the other members, even 76-year-old Oksana Meshko.

But the group was not destroyed; others took the place of the arrested human rights activists. A total of 41 people became members of group.

With the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev and glasnost in the 1980s, Mr. Marynovych was freed and in 1991 was officially rehabilitated. He continued to observe the human rights and religious situation in Ukraine and in 1997 founded the Institute of Religion and Society in Lviv.

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For more information on Prof. Marynovych's lectures in the United States, please contact the Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation, 2247 W. Chicago Ave., Chicago, IL 60622; telephone, (773) 235-8462; e-mail, ucef@ucef.org.

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