My Lords, I cannot possibly do justice to this vast subject; I doubt that anybody could. However, together we may arrive at useful conclusions and certainly spread useful information. The Motion draws attention to the scale of what is going on. To dispose of an outline of that straightaway, I quote the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, who said that,
“a large share of the world’s population in 2016—83%—lived in countries with high or very high religious restrictions (up from 79% in 2015)”.
He immediately qualified that by saying that,
“these restrictions … do not necessarily affect the religious groups and citizens of these countries equally, as certain groups or individuals … may be targeted more frequently by these policies and actions than others. Thus, the actual proportion of the world’s population that is affected by high levels of religious restrictions may be considerably lower than 85%”.
That is not in itself reassuring, because we are still left with a very large number, so I looked for something more exact.
Before I go further, I should declare an interest, as all noble Lords are supposed to do at the beginning of their speeches. My principal interest in this is that I am a Christian believer. I undertake to try not to make this an occasion to plead a special cause for my faith. The important aspect of this is that it relates to all faiths. We are all in the same rather small and leaky boat.
When he commissioned the Bishop of Truro, the Foreign Secretary said:
“I was deeply disturbed to learn that 215 million Christians faced persecution in 2018, according to a study by the campaign group Open Doors. Christians faced harassment in 144 countries in 2016, according to the Pew Research Centre, compared with 128 in 2015”.
The numbers are enormous, and going up. Open Doors, a respectable organisation which specifically monitors Christian persecution around the world, has put this more dramatically and estimates that, on average, 345 Christians are killed every month for faith-related issues.
The Truro report is an impressive piece of work. It convincingly estimates that 80% of all religious-based persecution affects Christians. I repeat that I do not wish to bias what is said. This does not mean that their plight should monopolise our attention, because the other 20% is still a vast number. Persecution is a shared burden, so I turned to a supposedly neutral source: the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Every year it publishes its Human Relations and Democracy Report: the latest was in 2018. Chapter 5 contains a priority list of 27 countries for human rights, up from 19 in 2015. Most of these have FoRB; I should explain that the shorthand for what we are discussing is “freedom of religion or belief”. That term is not mentioned in the Motion but it is definitely what one has to have, as we shall see later.
Lord Garel-Jones (Con)
I know the whole House will be extremely grateful to the noble Lord for raising the important matter of religious persecution. Has it occurred to him that very frequently religious persecution happens when one religion opposes another, and consequently that religious faith can be one of the principal causes of religious persecution?
I am absolutely with the noble Lord; he has just got there quicker than me—another sign of impatience in the audience. It is more complicated than that because a lot of persecution, as I have just demonstrated, is between people of the same faith. That is a challenge to us all. However, there is something we can do in our own community, first of all, because the atrocities that affect the Ahmadis also affect, on a far greater scale, the Christians in Pakistan. It is a mystery to me why we continue to pour in huge sums of money in aid without raising any concern about something which is part of the Foreign Office brief. I look to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, to speak on this: he is well practised but not all noble Lords may have heard him do so.
I welcome the submission of the Truro report, which burst amazingly on to the scene just a couple of days ago. It is admirable, but its terms of reference are too narrow. It is concerned with only the Christian faith. We are here to try to redress that balance—to show that, as Christians, we believe and see that we are all involved in this together, and that the death of someone of another faith is as much a violation of God’s peace as the death of one of ours. That was the substance of the submissions of the Cardinal Archbishop and the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Bishop of Truro on his call for evidence.
Maybe the World Council of Churches can do something on this but, however much we are strengthened by recognising and acting on community and seeking to change those already caught up in this vile problem, that is simply to clip the growth at the top of the tree. We need to tackle the roots. If only we had some central non-religious body that could instigate and foster programmes to address young people in all countries and of all creeds and draw them away from traditions of discrimination that are buoyed up by the “us and them” instinct, whether they are exploited by politicians, clerics or simply criminals. If only. Well, we have one: the Commonwealth. It has already started working to make community, the shared good of the nations, a reality and not a dream. I am being looked at.
Yes. Do not forget that the Commonwealth comprises 2.4 billion people, which is one-third of the world’s population. Somewhere I will try to get an opportunity to say the rest of my praise for what it is doing; I commend it to my friend the right reverend Prelate and to your Lordships, in pursuit of true peace.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on his initiative and his timing, coinciding as this debate does with the publication of the final report of the Bishop of Truro.
Your Lordships’ House is blessed with the presence of a number of champions of persecuted minorities. Some I see here: the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, who chairs the all-party group which produced that valuable report last year. In addition, my noble friend Lord Collins has been a persistent voice for persecuted minorities, just as the Ministers—the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad—have shown real zeal for the subject. We in the UK are fortunate to have the benefit of a large number of NGOs active in this field: CSW, Open Doors, Barnabas Fund, Aid to the Church in Need and Release International. All are ever ready to brief parliamentarians.
Appropriately, the bishop called the Government’s performance, like the curate’s egg, good in part. Last week’s debate on the human rights record of Pakistan and possible conditionality of our aid revealed that the Government, by failing to provide refuge in the UK for Mrs Bibi, acted in a cowardly way, probably because of fear of extremists in this country. Another negative example is the Government’s record on resettling Christian refugees from Syria. The figures for the first quarter of last year were released last July, only in response to an FoI request from the Barnabas Fund and an order from the Information Commissioner’s Office threatening the Government with contempt of court proceedings.
Of the 1,112 Syrian refugees resettled in that first quarter, there were no Christians and no Yazidis. All were Muslims. This appears to be evidence of government discrimination. Christians are specifically targeted by jihadists. The Home Office has refused to publish further figures in response to Parliamentary Questions, allegedly to protect the privacy of those being resettled and to support their recovery—surely weasel words designed to mask the reality of a failure of policy.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has provided the House with this perfectly timed debate, coming as it does in the week in which the independent report to the Foreign Secretary concluded that the persecution of 250 million Christians comprises the,
“most shocking abuses of human rights in the modern era”.
Many others, believers and non-believers, suffer too. Jeremy Hunt is to be congratulated for commissioning the report, and Bishop Mounstephen, Bishop of Truro, and his admirable team on producing such robust, evidence-based findings. I was particularly struck that the Truro report highlights the failure to declare as a genocide the murder of Christians and Yazidis in Iraq and Syria, and it goes on to forensically analyse, country by country, the UK’s response.
Departmental institutional weaknesses notwith-standing, like the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, I place on record my admiration for the work of the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, in tirelessly championing Article 18 commitments to freedom of religion or belief and the new United Nations day on religious freedom, which is being commemorated in your Lordships’ House on 23 July.
In recommendations 15 to 19 and 21, the report spells out why all government departments need to collaborate in prioritising this issue, and they should note that both Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson have said that they will act on the report’s recommendations. However, the report has sent half an unfinished message on one fundamental issue: genocide.
Over the last 19 years, on 300 separate occasions I have referred to genocide prevention and prosecution, beginning in 2000, after seeing first hand what the Burmese military had done in Karen state. In 2000, it was the Christian Karen. Today it is the Muslim Rohingya and Christian Kachin. From Burma to North Korea and Darfur, from China’s Uighur Muslims to Nigeria’s beleaguered Christians, from Pakistan’s Hindu, Christian, Ahmadi and Kalash minorities to Syria and Iraq’s Yazidis and Christians, the story is the same. Ignore discrimination and tolerate persecution and crimes against humanity, and genocide is never very far behind.
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Elton for the timing of this debate, a few days after the review into the persecution of Christians. I appreciate that this debate is about the persecution of all on the basis of their faith or belief, but I will focus on the review. I declare my interests as a practising Anglican and as the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group.
It is most welcome that the majority of the 22 recommendations in the report focus on freedom of religion or belief. Only six specifically mention Christians, and the majority of the recommendations have been raised repeatedly in your Lordships’ House and in the other place. I am pleased that the Foreign Secretary initiated this review, as it has raised awareness of the scale of the persecution of Christians. I too put on record my thanks to numerous individual Ministers who have sought to raise FoRB over many years: my noble friends Lord Bates and Lady Warsi, Alistair Burt, and of course my noble friend Lord Ahmad. I also thank the right reverend Bishop of Truro for his industry and good intentions, having worked to such a tight timescale.
I welcome the new research in the review on what diplomatic posts know about FoRB, their use of the toolkit and whether they are taking action on behalf of Christians who are persecuted. There is also a good recommendation on the need for research and accurate data, as well as religious literacy training, which has been raised by numerous parliamentary colleagues.
However, the priority for any report or work in this area is to review the effects it will have on those who are already being persecuted and are at risk. What might seem like a good idea in London might have very different outcomes for vulnerable communities in, say, Pakistan, especially when messages travel globally in a nanosecond on a smart phone.
I have read all 136 pages of the report, but I cannot find the evidence or analysis to support recommendation 3:
My Lords, that was a most interesting speech, and it certainly makes me want to look again at some of the recommendations. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on tabling this debate, because an extremely important issue is involved. To declare an interest, I speak as a humanist and, as such, I care as passionately about the persecution of religious minorities as of non-faith groups. I care equally passionately about the right of freedom of religion or belief to be realised by all. Therefore, I welcome the general tendency of the review, which shines a light on the persecution faced by humanists and the non-religious as well as faith groups.
I mention in passing that Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, said at a humanist conference:
“Humanists are attacked as viciously and brutally as any other groups. In many countries around the world, it is illegal to be non-religious or humanist. There are places where leaving the state religion is punishable by a prison sentence or death and also where those who express their non-religious or humanist beliefs can be deemed to have committed a crime of blasphemy and again face the death penalty”.
I therefore trust that the Minister will reassure us that the Government will implement the review’s recommendations as inclusively for the non-religious as for the religious. Further, given the persecution faced by the non-religious around the world, I ask the Minister to commit to establish a similar review into the persecution faced by the non-religious.
The crucial principle is tolerance and the issue is democracy. Both are relevant to this debate. The turning point in the history of civilisation was the Enlightenment, when the authority of the Church was dethroned as the arbiter of truth, evidence was installed instead, and science taught us that in our search for truth we should have due regard to uncertainty. It was memorably summed up by John Locke—not himself a humanist but a man of faith—who argued that the rights of the individual and of minorities and the rule of law were central principles of democracy. Let me quote one of my favourite passages in political philosophy from one of his books. The print is very small, so I shall have to read it carefully. He said that,
My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on securing the debate. I declare an interest as a former trustee of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, which for 30 years has been doing sterling work advocating on behalf of persecuted Christians.
This is a huge and important subject. We certainly need to raise awareness of the suffering of Christians and those of other faiths throughout the world for doing nothing more than belonging to a faith community and expressing that faith in words and actions. Indeed, it is frequently humbling to read of the courage that so many of them display in such difficult circumstances.
I will focus on Christians because, according to the Pew Research Center, which has been mentioned, they face more religious restrictions than any other religious group. According to the International Society for Human Rights, they are the victims of 80% of acts of religious discrimination, despite accounting for only 30% of the global population. What can be done? Like other noble Lords, I start by commending the Foreign Secretary’s firm and courageous speech in launching the independent review led by the Bishop of Truro. Of course, I accept that the persecution of people of other faiths is no less important.
I will stick to two aspects of which I have direct personal experience: the Foreign Office and Syria. I looked through the bishop’s very thorough report, published just a few days ago. It was certainly tactfully written but it confirmed my suspicions that, all too often, Foreign Office officials have simply been going through the motions when dealing with religious persecution, including the persecution of Christians. I agree with the recommendation that religious literacy should be an integral part of induction training. Religion is enormously important in understanding the many foreign societies on which such officials will have to report in the future; they should start by understanding the ins and outs, and the massive importance of religion for so many people.
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I remind noble Lords of something that is not often enough brought to our notice but which is a hidden driver of this sort of atrocity. We all know about flight or fight as an instinctive human reaction but, to decide between flight and fight, you have to decide between “us” and “them”. The awkward thing about that is that it is instinctive: we tend to feel safe among people like us, preferably people we know. When we are among others, the “them”, we are not safe; when we are with “us”, we are. That powerful instinct is very handy for dictators, unscrupulous politicians and scurrilous criminals, as it is very easy to whip up a feeling of “they are other” about anyone who has an obvious marker.
One obvious marker is the faith of the quarry, if I may call them that. Too often they are people of faith but when they are persecuted they are almost always in a minority. That gives them two sorts of difference: first, to the others, “they are not us”; and secondly, “They are not so important. There are less of them, but they are a threat”. That is the background and it seems to me that “them or us” is a cry that has gone up over centuries—thus Margaret Thatcher’s cry in her urgent response to a suggested promotion of a particular person to an important post, “Yes, but is he one of us?” That same question has been asked in thousands of languages over tens of thousands of years within the human race.
As I say, persecuted faiths are almost always in a minority and easily identified, but there are often other dimensions of difference. Those few Rohingya who still exist in Myanmar, for instance, are not only Muslims among the Buddhist majority, they are also Indo-Aryans among a Bamar majority: they are an ethnic as well as a religious minority. Another dimension, crucial in the rare examples of persecution where the majority/minority nexus is contingent to but not part of the problem, is at the interface between the predominantly Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south of what used to be simply Sudan—the area that divides them. The Christians are settled there and are arable farmers and horticulturalists. Their persecutors are nomadic, and are graziers and drovers. Hence we get the awful pillaging that goes on along that corridor, and it can be argued that it is entirely religiously motivated—if we are told that it is not, then why are the churches always burned down?—or one can say that it is entirely due to the pressing needs of feeding families. The fact is that it is never simple. What we need to make sense of this, and possibly to cast a little faint light by which to proceed further, is a core definition in a meaningful political and historical context.
I cannot believe that I have been going for nine minutes, but if it is true I have not got much longer—noble Lords probably think I have been going on much longer already.
We are looking at a truly global phenomenon, affecting the quality and even the continuation of the lives of millions of people. The definitive statement of human rights was made by the United Nations in 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and it is the nearest thing we have to an agreed statement by the human race about what it wants its future to be. To resile from it would be a huge betrayal of hope, and of generations of effort. That is a fitting context, and the directly relevant part is Article 18, which states:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”.
One of the most poignant and least often cited examples of persecution is what has happened to the Ahmadiyya people in Pakistan. This is not on the horrifying scale of the Rohingya but there are 5 million of them in a population of 197 million—a significant minority. The founder of Pakistan, Muhammed Ali Jinnah, issuing his call to the faithful of his persuasion, gave the strongest reassurance possible to those of other faith:
“You are free; you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the state”.
That was in 1947. In 1974, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto amended the constitution with the effect that Ahmadis were from that point non-Muslim for all legal purposes. In 1984 the President, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, issued Ordinance XX, by which an Ahmadi could get three years in prison, a fine or the death penalty for calling himself Muslim, for calling his faith Muslim, for calling his place of worship a mosque, for uttering the call to prayer which we hear coming from minarets in thousands of cities, for preaching, or even for using the greeting “Peace be on you” in Arabic or “posing as a Muslim”. The closure of mosques, defacement of graves and memorials, and charges of blasphemy and killings followed.
Other faiths are caught up in this—
The Government rely on the UNHCR to select candidates, but Christians and other vulnerable groups such as the Yazidis fear taking shelter in UNHCR camps because of religiously motivated violence. Other countries, including Australia and Belgium, have no such problems and rely in part on charitable institutions and churches for candidates.
The Government’s response is surely shameful, as if they are uncomfortable about assisting Christians because of political correctness or colonial guilt. This should also be seen in the context of the refusal of visas for three bishops from the region and the Government’s failure to accept visa applications from the Nineveh Plains, where Christians are increasingly subject to ethnic cleansing. Can we expect a change of policy? Figures show that Christians are the most persecuted minority in the world; Muslims are the second, but much of their discrimination is Muslim on Muslim.
I offer a few random reflections. First, there are many relevant international conventions, including the universal declaration. The problem is not declaration, but implementation. As Pope Benedict XVI told members of the diplomatic corps in 2011,
“it seems unnecessary to point out that an abstract proclamation of religious freedom is insufficient”.
The Commonwealth is hardly a shining exemplar, in spite of brave declarations from Harare onwards. The Open Doors 2019 world watch list has 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian: nine are Commonwealth members, including Brunei, with its record on the gays, and the Maldives, which is reapplying for membership. We hear little of this in parliamentary debates on the Commonwealth and should be more honest about Commonwealth failures in this field. Five of the seven focus countries in the bishop’s report are in the Commonwealth.
Secondly, tolerance should begin at home. If our representations abroad are to be taken seriously, we should be strong on Islamophobia; otherwise, this will blunt our pressure on cases such as that of Mrs Bibi and the blasphemy laws. Equally, if we turn a blind eye to anti-Semitism at home, including in our student unions, we will be less credible abroad. I hope our political leaders will heed this. We should listen carefully to the Jewish community and publicise more of its massive contribution to our national life.
My third reflection is about UK performance. It is clear that there has been some improvement in the Foreign Office since I joined it in 1960. The bishop’s welcome survey actually shows huge discrepancies in the performance of missions abroad, some simply because of the zeal or otherwise of individuals. What plans do the Government have to follow up the recommendations? There should be a more serious effort at mainstreaming, training and improving liaison with NGOs. The bishop’s survey showed the FCO’s response to be “patchy and inconsistent”.
The US provides the gold standard and we should be ready to learn from it. For example, the US is bolder on Saudi Arabia, where citizens are not entitled to hold Christian meetings even in the privacy of their own homes. I recall that in the past our embassy there did not even hold Christmas services. Has that changed? The Emiratis, to be fair, are more enlightened. The temptation is always to be strong on the weak and weak on the strong. We should not hold back from criticising the treatment of Uighurs in China, but quiet diplomacy may produce more of an effect there, as I found when I was a member of the human rights mission to China initiated in 1992 by John Major and wonderfully led by the late Geoffrey Howe.
I have two final, speedy observations. There is a danger of being picked off for sanctions if one works alone, as happened to Denmark with The Satanic Verses. It is far better to work with allies to cover one’s back. Our weight is likely to be diminished if we do not remain part of the European Union but become a mere lobbyist of it.
Finally, if we feel the need to refresh our commitment to religious freedom, we need go no further than room 52 at the British Museum and gaze in wonder at the Cyrus Cylinder, created in 539 BC—a true symbol of tolerance and freedom, which some view as the first charter of human rights in liberating the Jewish minority from its Babylonian captivity. This is an example for today’s Iran and for the growing anti-Semitic movements in our Europe today.
In 1915 a slow-burn genocide, still unrecognised by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for political reasons, took the lives of 1.5 million Armenian Christians. Hitler took the world’s indifference to the slaughter of the Armenians as a signal that he could butcher Jews, disabled people, gypsies, homosexuals, Roma and non- compliant religious minorities, famously saying:
“Who now remembers the Armenians?”
As the Truro report notes, just over a century ago, Christians constituted 20% of the Middle East’s population. Today it is below 5%. It began with the Armenians but it did not end there. A student of those events, the Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, 49 of whose relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, coined the word genocide, and the United Kingdom signed up to the genocide convention which he helped develop, and which requires us to prevent, protect and punish.
As the Truro report reminds us, the killing begins when we ignore the “canary in the mine”; it emboldens the perpetrators into believing that we are too weak or too disinterested to ever hold them to account. It is a green light to the world’s tyrants, lawless militias, totalitarian regimes and hate-filled ideologues, who despise difference and believe that minorities are a curse, not a blessing.
The beginning of 2014 saw the commencement of a new wave of mass beheadings of “infidels”. People were thrown from high buildings, prisoners burned in metal cages, women raped and homes looted. These atrocities then intensified in their number and scope. On 3 August 2014, ISIS attacked Sinjar, killing thousands of Yazidis, abducting thousands of women and girls, and forcing the rest to flee. This attack on the Yazidis was followed by subsequent mass atrocities in the Nineveh Plains, where Christians were forced to flee or die. ISIS was responsible for murder, enslavement, deportation, the forcible transfer of populations, exploitation, abuse, abductions of women and children, forced marriage and enforced disappearances. Christian homes and shops were looted after being daubed in Arabic with the letter N, for Nazarene. Churches were destroyed.
In every sense, these atrocities perpetrated against religious minorities are crimes against humanity and genocide, but to date, the UK Government have still failed to name these crimes for what they are. The Truro report notes that although the House of Commons, the United States Administration, the European Parliament and many other parliaments have said that these events,
“constitute a genocide according to the established UN criteria, this has not been recognized by the UK Government”.
None the less, says the Truro report,
“the evidence from Syria certainly suggests that the UK government should examine its historic unwillingness to deal with the issue of genocide determination and be prepared to make a prima facie assessment as to whether genocide has been committed, whilst still safeguarding its long-held principle that the ultimate determination must be legal not political”.
This is a fundamental question. It is why I have argued that there needs to be a judicial mechanism free of political interference. The FCO should act at least on the recommendation to examine this “historic unwillingness”. I hope that the Minister, whom I questioned about this during Oral Questions yesterday, will give us some assurance that that will happen. After all, this is the crime above all crimes, and the FCO should separate itself from genocide determination and put in place independent legal mechanisms that work.
In 2017, through Resolution 2379, the UK successfully persuaded the Security Council to collect evidence of these appalling crimes and of the mass graves. The FCO deserves credit for that. But the Security Council has failed to establish a mechanism to create ad hoc tribunals to try those responsible. We should now work with our allies—if necessary outside the Security Council—to create such a mechanism. What is the point of collecting evidence if we do not do anything about it? The alternative is to allow mass murderers to grow old, unpunished.
I will give one other example from the Truro report. I co-chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group for North Korea. The report says that the DPRK,
“has consistently registered for the past 18 years as the most dangerous country in the world for Christians”.
This echoes the 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry, which concluded that Christians have been singled out for especially brutal treatment and that this is,
“a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world”.
It says that the regime,
“considers the spread of Christianity a particularly severe threat”,
and that what is happening resembles,
“the horrors of camps that totalitarian States established during the twentieth century”.
It concludes that no official or institution is held accountable, because “impunity reigns”.
That UN report said that there should be a referral to the International Criminal Court. Five years later, through fear of vetoes, nothing has happened. Those North Koreans are among the suffering people highlighted in the Truro report. If the persecution of 250 million people can be truly described as,
“the most shocking abuses of human rights in the modern era”,
the test for us will now be: what are we going to do about it?
“Name the phenomenon of Christian discrimination and persecution and undertake work to identify its particular character alongside similar definitions for other religions, to better inform and develop tailored FCO policies to address these”.
There is a recommendation at page 137 to,
“commission further research into the particular features of this phenomenon. This should specifically, include the naming of the phenomenon”.
Despite 40 pages of footnotes, there is no indication of where that recommendation came from.
I have never heard anyone in your Lordships’ House suggest that this is a role for the UK Government—and I have heard many suggestions. One must be very careful of the perception that could be created by a Church of England bishop recommending to a Foreign Secretary that they take charge of coming up with a definition of Christian persecution. The Foreign Secretary used a word that has been introduced to the vocabulary, Christianophobia. Even if that is possible to define, is it wise for the UK Government to do it? The danger is that this word may refer to the religion, not the people—a criticism similarly made of the word “Islamophobia”. In this situation, where the religion and the overwhelming majority of adherents share the same root word, we need to be very careful.
As I said in your Lordships’ House when talking about anti-Semitism, we need to be very clear about the distinction between hating or criticising a faith’s tenets and hating people. The latter is the issue we are dealing with, and the report itself makes the mistake in recommendation 3 by referring to the,
“particular character alongside similar definitions for other religions”.
Article 18 protects people, not religions. Anti-Semitism is defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and, of course, means Semite people. It is worth noting that both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are being defined by the communities. Who authors a definition does matter. For instance, if anti-Semitism were to be defined by the Israeli Government, it would muddy the issue and potentially put Jews at greater risk.
It is an incontrovertible fact that one risk factor to Christian communities in the MENA region, south Asia and other areas is that they are seen as following a Western religion, are foreigners, are not loyal subjects or are a leftover from Empire times. Where is the evidence in the review that this recommendation will benefit persecuted Christians? Where is the risk analysis to ensure that we do not make the situation worse? Which Church leaders in persecuted communities did the review speak to? Which leaders in India, Pakistan or Iraq said, “I tell you what is a good idea and will help us here”? Were they asked? Did the review speak to the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Dr Ahmed Shaheed, a UK academic?
While we should not ignore Christian persecution due to leftover guilt, we still need to be aware of the risk factor to vulnerable communities of association of Christianity with the West and its foreign policy. Given the lack of any evidence or analysis in the review, will Her Majesty’s Government consider removing, or asking the bishop to remove, this recommendation before it gains more energy? Will they at least risk-check it with the UN special rapporteur? Will my noble friend please do that urgently, because the United States of America is holding a freedom of religion or belief ministerial symposium next week, and one danger currently for FoRB is the alignment with American priorities, which are perceived to be more about persecution of Christians than freedom of religion or belief?
The review has set a hare running, and I hope I do not see a tweet next week about the United States joining the efforts of the United Kingdom Government to define Christian persecution. We just do not know what impact that would have for persecuted Christians. My view is that if the term needs defining, it is for the World Council of Churches and the Vatican to do so.
I am troubled to see in the review such a recommendation without evidence or analysis, which could pose further risk to Christians. I should be grateful if my noble friend ensured that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Cabinet Office review what support and training should be given to the chair of any inquiry who has never conducted an inquiry before, has not had the opportunity to learn about Whitehall from being in your Lordships’ House and is new to the subject area, to ensure that the taxpayer-funded secretariat has the necessary expertise to assist. In particular, when time pressures mean that taxpayer-funded appointments are made without advertising, how are departments ensuring that equality and diversity requirements are still adhered to?
Reviews and inquiries come in all shapes and sizes and are an important part of how our government works. The response to the judge-led-only inquiry into the Grenfell tragedy means that the world of who the public have confidence in is changing. I note that Lord Justice Leveson was wise enough to have six panel members to assist him. I regret that this report was conducted only by Christians; I hope your Lordships agree that to believe in freedom of religion or belief, you do not need to have a particular faith tradition. I hope that the religious literacy training in the Foreign Office and in DfID will mean that the speed-dial will carry them first, for global issues, to the Catholics, rather than anywhere else.
“it would, methinks, become all men to maintain peace, and the common offices of humanity, and friendship, in the diversity of opinions; since we cannot reasonably … embrace ours, with a blind resignation to an authority which the understanding of man acknowledges not … For where is the man”—
this is key—
“that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own or other men’s opinions?”
The Enlightenment promoted tolerance, which is absolutely essential to democracy. Locke was a founding father of parliamentary democracy. I am sorry to say that today’s Parliament has almost uncritically abandoned the philosophy of Locke and Burke in favour of the pernicious doctrine of Rousseau: the will of the people must always prevail. MPs have become delegates, not representatives, and now feel that they must vote as instructed by their party or, above all, as instructed by the will of the people in the referendum held more than three years ago. They no longer believe, as Burke argued so eloquently, that they should use their own judgment after hearing the evidence and argument. Many also clearly believe that party unity matters more than the welfare of the country.
As I said, that is not irrelevant to the debate. Our likely next Prime Minister is prepared to consider proroguing Parliament and denying MPs a vote to ensure that the will of the people prevails. Papers such as the Daily Mail denounce judges who dare to ignore the referendum verdict as “enemies of the people”. Please note: in Pakistan, for not dissimilar local reasons, a mob claiming to represent the true religion denounced a court ruling that Asia Bibi should not be condemned to death, forcing her to flee for her life to Canada. The will of the people and the dictatorship of the majority can be just as big a threat to individual and minority rights and faith as those who preach religious intolerance or populist autocrats such as Hitler, Mussolini or Erdoğan—all disciples of Rousseau. We in Britain should not be careless about how we treat democracy.
Many of the report’s recommendations provide a helpful framework. However, I make a plea for some realism. That would include the recognition that no Government welcome what they regard as interference in their internal affairs. Some depend on religious supporters to retain their power and some have only limited capability to deal with low-level harassment, yet others have judicial systems based in religion, such as in the Islamic world. Realism would also have to accept that our diplomatic posts are there to promote and defend British interests and that, especially nowadays, they have very few UK-based staff. That said, you can make the argument that religious persecution is contrary to our interests, but you must have a hierarchy in the work that you ask your posts to do.
This serious and thorough investigation deserves to be commended and, so far as is possible, put into practice. I endorse the remark of the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, that Church and religious leaders in foreign countries should be consulted; they know how to find their way around the many difficulties that they and their people face. Before we leap into action in some distant country, we should know that we have consulted them and understand what they are dealing with.
Lastly, I turn to the report’s chapter on Syria. I declare another interest as a board member of the British Syrian Society. The report makes incredibly dismal reading for someone who has a great deal of respect and affection for the Syrian people, whatever their religion or sect. It rightly focuses on Islamic extremists as the perpetrators of what amounts to genocide against Christians, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned. Fortunately, the report does not fall into the absurd error of accusing the regime of discriminating against Christians. Quite the contrary—the Alawites, themselves a minority of only about 10%, have long looked to the Christian community for support, or at least acquiescence. That continues to be the case. None the less, as we know, hundreds of thousands of Christians have been forced to leave Syria as a result of the conflict. The British Government are to be warmly commended for the massive amounts of aid that they provided to the UNHCR to provide for the basic needs of these refugees. The Government do not receive the credit they deserve for this considerable expenditure, not even in this House.
I have one criticism of the Government; here I strongly support the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea. Taking only refugees recommended by the UNHCR has the effect of discriminating against Christians, for whom it is unsafe to live in refugee camps, including those in south-east Europe. Indeed, the report acknowledges that. Let us be frank: this policy smacks of political correctness. It is high time that it changed and I hope we will hear an appropriate response from the Minister.