Human rights must be based on religious morality - patriarch

MOSCOW, April 17 (RIA Novosti) - The head of the Russian Orthodox Church issued a warning Monday against mixing up the notions of human rights and unlimited freedom.

"Human rights to us are not the right to do anything you like," Patriarch Alexy II said. "They must be based on the moral principles of our faith."

Patriarch Alexy II said that Western liberals often treated human rights as meaning freedom with no restrictions, and added that moral principles and faith should be the basis of secular law.

The World Russian People's Assembly, a gathering attended by senior Orthodox and other clerics, politicians and officials, issued a declaration on the rights and dignity of man April 6 that included similar sentiments.

Alexy II said the declaration did not contradict the UN Convention on Human Rights.

"[The declaration] does not contradict [the UN convention], but reminds us that human rights must be in harmony with the moral law we observe in our religion," he said.

Speaking at the assembly, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, who heads the Moscow Patriarchy's external relations department, condemned abortion, homosexuality, and euthanasia, and accused the West of imposing its own concept of human rights on Russia.

He said religious values could form the only basis for human rights for all countries and civilizations, and blamed excessive liberalism for the declining population, growing xenophobia, and other serious problems facing the country.

Attacks on people with non-Slavic features have become increasingly frequent across Russia in recent years, with the central Russian city of Voronezh and St. Petersburg, the country's second largest city, being particularly notorious for nationalistic and xenophobic outbreaks.

Voronezh has seen at least seven apparently racially motivated killings over the past six years. On April 7, a 27-year-old student from Senegal was shot dead in St. Petersburg, while other attacks in the city include the February stabbing of a man from Mali, and the murders of a student from Cameroon last December and a Congolese student in September.

Russian and foreign NGOs are demanding tougher punishment for such attacks, while police continue to treat them as acts of hooliganism.

On a church initiative, the assembly in February adopted a code of moral principles and rules in economics for public servants, entrepreneurs, and employees. The document later received backing from other religious groups in Russia, including Jews, Buddhists and Muslims.