Georgia: Islamophobia

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

The noble and right reverend Lord makes an important point. Indeed, we raised concerns about the violence at the IDAHO rally in May of last year, for example. LGBT rights, along with the rights of religious minorities, are a cause for concern. They stem from the concern in parts of the Georgian Orthodox Church about a conflict of values—a conflict between Georgian values, which are laid out in a very orthodox way, and what they see as European values, and the kind of anti sentiment towards them.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that this is part of a wider problem, not just in Georgia but in Moldova, Belarus and Russia, in that there is a lack of legislation that outlaws this type of inequality, and the ostracism of people from minority groups, which keeps them out of employment, education and political participation? The problem is not just in Georgia. Can my noble friend say what can be done to address it—and indeed homophobia—across the region in a more holistic way?

[Baroness Warsi]

This is one of the underlying themes of the Eastern Partnership. Georgia is one of six countries that are part of it. At the Vilnius conference at the end of last year there was a process of trying to encourage these countries to look towards Europe and go forward to signing association agreements, and deep and comprehensive fair trade agreements. This was all about trying to bring these countries to a place where the values that we hold dear become part of the norm. Our concern is that even where legislation is introduced it is not properly implemented. Sometimes legislation can have an alienating effect, as it had in Georgia when specific legislation passed in 2011 meant that Georgian Muslims were regulated by the Georgian Muslim department—which felt to the Muslim community there like a sad return to the Soviet era.