Living in the UK, it is all too easy to take the freedom of religion or belief for granted. Yet, we hear of horrific cases every week where individuals have been attacked, detained without trial or even killed on account of their faith. An estimated 100 million Christians worldwide are persecuted, according to the latest annual report by Open Doors and all but one of the 50 countries in the ‘worst offenders’ are in Africa, Asia or the Middle East. This remains a serious issue and I was able to stress at last week’s Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
The following is a transcript of the speech I made during the debate:
“I do not believe that we should see this debate in terms of religion versus secularism. That is not what it is about. In a mature democracy, it should be possible to respect both the values of secular plurality and of religious freedom, and the report makes a valuable point in stressing the universality of the right to religious freedom and to the expression and practice of religious belief. That is important in some of our dealings with third countries. There is no doubt that there is a real issue, correctly identified in the report, with persecution of Christian minorities in many countries in the Middle East, and there is a real concern internationally that there is a reduction in religious freedom for all religious faiths.
“Research that has been commissioned by a respected organisation in the United Kingdom indicates that some 75% of the world’s population now live in countries where the ability to practise their faith freely is being restricted. That is not a satisfactory state of affairs, and no democrat, whatever their own personal belief or lack of belief, should be satisfied with that. It is important to support the draft resolution’s references to international treaties, which provide the framework for that religious freedom and draw attention to the right to change one’s religion and to practise it in public as well as in private. Regrettably, many member states of the United Nations pay at best only lip service to those latter rights and sometimes positively obstruct them. We should use our dialogue with such parties to seek to encourage them to recognise the genuine spirit of those rights. Of course, in some cases, we have the ability to use our contact with some of those countries who are candidates for the status of partnership for democracy. There is much that we, in the Council of Europe, can do to encourage that.
“We must not be complacent about problems within Europe, either. I recognise the importance of Islamophobia, which is an issue that we in the UK and many other countries with significant populations from an Islamic culture recognise. It is important, too, never to forget the cancer of anti-Semitism. It is mentioned in the report. I might have made it a little more prominent because we have, regrettably, seen an increase in anti-Semitic attacks in the United Kingdom, France and many other countries. We have to be eternally vigilant to make sure that we do not see a return to a time when religion was used to divide rather than to liberate and enhance.”