“On May 17, a protest rally took place in Kyiv against the new draft of the Civil Code of Ukraine (draft bill No. 15150), which the Verkhovna Rada adopted in the first reading on April 28. This was reported by Radio Liberty.
Participants in the event called on the authorities to either take into account the amendments of human rights activists or completely withdraw the document.
Representatives of human rights organizations, the LGBT community and social activists took part in the action. They said that certain provisions of the bill could pose risks of discrimination against women and LGBT people, as well as pose threats to property rights.
One of the participants in the action, Yaroslav, noted that the document, in his opinion, could contribute to the emergence of problems in the field of land relations and property.
“Land taking is bad. Raiding is bad. And manipulation of land and property is bad. This civil code is trying to promote all these things,” he said.
The protesters paid special attention to issues of family law. They say the new provisions could narrow the definition of family and make it harder for partnerships to be legally recognized.
Separately, protest participant Zoryan Kis, who came with his husband, expressed his position. He said existing court decisions to recognize partnerships could be complicated by the new bill.
“The Ukrainian court recognized me and my partner Timur as a family. But what the new draft Civil Code proposes completely blocks such decisions in the future and greatly narrows the definition of family,” he said.
During the protest, a performance also took place with a reference to the work “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.” Activists explained that in this way they wanted to draw attention to, in their opinion, risks for cultural heritage and environmental areas.
hromadske published photographs from the protest rally on Telegram. On the cardboards that the participants held, there were inscriptions, in particular, that bill No. 15150 was “only for the deputy,” and also expressed their desire to live “freely, and not “dobrozvichy.”
“Even I will have more rights than my mother after Bill 15150,” is written on a cardboard in front of a dog present at the rally.
Another protest participant, Olga Malinovskaya, in a comment to “Suspilny” called the document “a rollback in the field of human rights.”
“This is definitely not where we should go if we want to be part of a free Europe. There are also many corruption risks in the document, risks associated with land legislation. But, probably, what I don’t like most of all is that such an important bill was not discussed with us,” Malinovskaya said.
