Freedom of Religion or Belief

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Thank you, Ms Buck. It is a pleasure to be here today. I have spoken about freedom of religion or belief before. Of course, any decent society believes that freedom of religion is a basic human right. The problem is that I have been to many places where it is not a basic human right.

From the Bishop of Truro’s report, I know that 80% of persecution for religious reasons is against Christians. I am neutral, however, because in Bosnia I saw Roman Catholics attacking Orthodox Christians and Muslims, Muslims attacking Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics, and Orthodox Christians attacking both other sides. What they carried out was often a crime against humanity—it was definitely ethnic cleansing—and it was sometimes genocide. The fact of the matter is that those terms are relative. For the poor devils suffering, it does not matter what it is called: they are dying.

In my experience, I have seen far too many people dying for religion. It is not really about religion, but people often use it as an excuse. Unfortunately, when I was the UN commander in Bosnia, I came across many instances of various sides doing foul deeds to the others. However, there is a good reason—I will come to it later—to refer to what happened on 22 April 1993, when I was in a village called Ahmići. As the British UN commander, I was checking the village for bodies with my soldiers. We came to a house halfway down and could not find any bodies, because people had been killed and thrown into the houses. The houses had been torched and their roofs had fallen down, so we could not get through to the bodies.

In one house that we came to, a soldier said, “Over here, sir.” I was on the road through the village. First, I went to the front door. There was a man’s burned body and a boy’s burned body. They had obviously been shot and then someone had thrown petrol or something over them. We knew they had been shot because we were standing on shell cases. Round the back, however, was worse. When I went into the cellar, I could not really see at first what was in front of me—I just could not believe it. Then my eyes focused and I recognised a head bent back, I suspect in agony. There were other burned bodies. Then the smell came, because this had happened six days earlier. I could not believe it. My men and I rushed out. Some wept; others puked. We could not believe what we were seeing.

The reason I am telling this story is that I received an email this morning from a guy called Thomas Osorio, who was the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at the time—27 years ago—and who I worked with on the ground. In the email, he tells me that the people whom I had found that day—they have been held in a morgue for 27 years because of a failure to identify them—have now been identified. I will repeat their names: Sabika Naser Ahmic, 30 years old; Husnije Zehnadina Ahmic, 28, who was presumably the mum; Arnaut Zedina Elvis Ahmic, eight; Naser Suhreta Ahmic, six; Naser Sejo Ahmic, three months. Theirs are the bodies I found in that cellar 27 years ago. They were Muslims and had been killed by Croats who were Roman Catholic and who used the excuse of people being Muslim to kill them. It was an excuse.

I have to say that I was in such shock afterwards that I did not really know what to do. After consultation with my second-in-command on the radio, I decided to run a press conference and broadcast it to the world by saying, “This is what I found. In my view, this is a crime against humanity.” Later I discovered that it was actually genocide. By definition, genocide is the deliberate act of clearing out a whole group of people. In this case, it was the Muslims in the village of Ahmići. Other houses were untouched. Guess what? In those houses lived Roman Catholics.

I did not really know what had happened, but my intelligence cell suggested that they had done a cordon-and-sweep operation. In other words, they had made a box around the village using soldiers with machine guns. From the bottom, in a straight line, they had systematically gone through each house. When they had driven people out of the houses, they either killed them there and then by throwing them into the houses, or they let them run into the machine guns.

I do not know how we could have stopped it. One of the questions I might ask the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is how the hell can we stop this sort of thing happening. Our blathering on in Parliament is all very well, but what will the Foreign Office do about it? How will the Minister stop that? He is a very good friend of mine and is looking at me intently, but that question is impossible to answer. How do we do it?

[Rehman Chishti]

I thank and pay tribute to my hon. Friend for all that he has done over the years to bring people together and to stand up for rule of law. Regarding what the United Kingdom will do on the prevention of genocide, I refer him to one of the Bishop of Truro’s 22 recommendations, which I am taking forward. Recommendation 7 calls for the FCO to

“Ensure that there are mechanisms in place to facilitate an immediate response to atrocity crimes, including genocide, through activities such as setting up early warning mechanisms…diplomacy to help resolve disputes, and…support to help with upstream prevention work…and be willing to make public statements condemning such atrocities.”

The Government have accepted recommendation 7 of Bishop of Truro’s report. That is one of our long-term projects, because it is absolutely crucial that we get prevention right. As a Government, we are committed to doing so, and work on that has begun.

[Bob Stewart]

I am jolly pleased to hear it, but I want to see that happen on the ground. Trying to stop it is very, very difficult.

I know the reality of what happened in that village— I was not there but I had an eyewitness. A few days later, I was having dinner with a BBC journalist called Martin Bell, when a woman walked into my house and said, “You have got rooms in this house. I want you to put up some children in it.” I said, “You must be joking. I am the British UN commander. How the heck am I going to look after kids in my house?” She said, “Can I remind you of your mission, colonel? Your mission is to save lives. I’ve got some children here whose lives need saving. I hope you will understand that you have no choice.”

I went weak at the knees at that because she then turned to my two bodyguards—who, I have to say, were big soppy soldiers—and said, “Boys, you’ll look after a little girl aged six who needs a home, won’t you?” Of course, they said, “Yes, ma’am.” Many people in this room know that woman—particularly the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), for whom she has rather an attachment—because she is my wife, Claire. She was the International Committee of the Red Cross delegate for central Bosnia. She embarrassed me into taking a child—a six-year-old girl called Melissa Mekis—whom she said she would bring the next day. I did not believe that she would, but she bloody well did! She walked out of the prison camp where the girl was, holding her by the hand, and was stopped by the camp commandant, who said, “What do you think you’re doing?” She replied, “Get the hell out of my way. I am a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Do you make war on children? Is that your way of dealing with things?” The commandant moved aside.

Claire walked into my house with the kid, who was filthy as she had been in the camp for about 10 days. The two soppy soldiers took her away, boiled up a billycan of water, took her clothes off, bathed her, went to Save the Children nearby, got her some clothes, put a little bed between their camp cots and looked after her. When Claire came two days later, to reunite Melissa Mekis with her family, the girl did not want to leave those boys.

Melissa told us what happened. Early one morning—I know that the time was 0500 because we heard this happening—soldiers came to her house in a box truck. Her parents told her to dress quickly and come downstairs. The soldiers grabbed Melissa, her mother, her father and her brother, and threw them all outside, where they killed the parents and shot the boy. Someone could not kill Melissa, so she ended up in a prison camp. When I was back in Bosnia last year, a boy came up to me—well, he is not a boy anymore, but middle-aged—and he said, “I was Melissa’s brother. Can I thank you and your soldiers? Your soldiers found me severely wounded nearby, picked me up, took me to a medical centre and saved my life.”

I do not really know where my speech is going because I have lost my script, but I will say one thing. I have given evidence about those events in four war crimes trials, after which four people were found guilty and did very long sentences. I care very much about freedom of religion. Who in this room does not? Of course we do. But what the heck can we do about it? The Prime Minister’s representative, my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) is here, and we can all put lovely words on paper—I had lots of lovely words on paper when I was in Bosnia. I was aghast at what I saw. To this day, I still wonder what the heck we can do when people are determined to act in that way, because words will not stop it.

After the genocide in Ahmići, Claire and I buried more than 104 people in a mass grave—women, children and some babies. We did not know how to do that—I was never trained as an undertaker—but Claire came along and insisted that we took the bodies out of the bags. Did you know that people cannot be buried in plastic bags? I did not. All those bodies were taken out of the bags and buried. Those people were Muslim, but I also found Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians dead. I was technically neutral because I was attacked by all three sides, who shot the hell out of me. We have got to find a way to move quickly when we see signs of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity—it is difficult. Crimes against humanity quite quickly become genocide.

Colleagues, what a ramble. What a load of twaddle; how unstructured. Please, let us believe. Although we in this place at least shout about it, what I would really like is more action from the United Nations and other international bodies to send troops in to stop such things as soon as they start. That is what our soldiers did in 1992 and 1993. We took more than 2,500 men and women out of Srebrenica in April 1993, and their lives were saved. If we had not, most of them would have been dead two years later. Colleagues, I am sorry that this has been a ramble. Thank you.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing us up to date on such an important issue. I will briefly mention the Bishop of Truro’s report later, but obviously we all want to hear from the Minister, too.

The hon. Member for Strangford mentioned the plight of Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan, and I will say a few words about that in a moment. Of the many contributions I have heard from him, the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), whom I am honoured to call a friend, gave one of the most powerful I have heard. He talked about his first-hand experience of religious fanaticism and violence in Bosnia, and told us horrific stories of death and destruction. This time he had the names of those people—I think he said he had just received them today.

[Bob Stewart]

I would like to place on the record that I have been invited to the funeral on 21 March, but the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has said no.

[Fabian Hamilton]

I hope the hon. Gentleman will find a way of getting there. He and his wife did outstanding work in Bosnia, saving so many lives. I thank him for detailing that information and for reminding us of the horrific murder on the basis of ostensible religious belief, which in fact has nothing whatsoever to do with true faith. I thank him for that and for the village of Ahmići.

In 2018 the US State Department issued a declaration stating:

“Among the range of universal, interdependent human rights, the freedom to follow one’s conscience in matters of religion or belief is essential to human dignity and human flourishing”

As we know, the United Kingdom is a signatory to the universal declaration of human rights, which protects freedom of religion or belief. The UK is party to the international covenant on civil and political rights. Article 9 of the European convention on human rights, which is part of the Human Rights Act 1998, protects freedom of religion or belief. But the number of countries that regulate religious symbols, literature or broadcasting has increased over the past 20 years. Religious persecution has increased globally every year since 2000.

In 2020, 260 million people—approximately 10% of all Christians in the world—were persecuted for their religious beliefs, which was an increase from 245 million in 2019, and approximately 215 million in 2018. According to Open Doors, 11 countries now fall in the “extreme” category for levels of persecution of Christians. That is up from just one country, North Korea, in 2014—just six years ago. The World Watch List estimates that last year 2,093 Christians were killed just for being Christian. Christian persecution is more prevalent in Muslim majority countries, especially those governed by some form of sharia law.

Violations of the right to freedom of religion or belief have not diminished over the past 10 years. Indeed, conditions have continued. Many conflicts are rooted in or exacerbated by religious differences around the world. Violations of freedom of religion and belief is a truly global issue. Around 80% of the world’s population live in countries with high or very high levels of restrictions or hostilities towards certain beliefs. Let me briefly detail some of those. We have mentioned Myanmar and the persecution of the Rohingya Muslims. There have been sporadic waves of violence against the Rohingya since 1978. The Rohingya are the world’s most persecuted minority. Those Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are not even considered one of that country’s 135 ethnic groups. They have been denied citizenship in their country since 1982, and thus are effectively stateless. More than half the Rohingya population of Myanmar, a total of 1.2 million, have fled the country during the current wave of violence, mostly to Bangladesh.

Let me move on to China. Article 36 of the Chinese constitution states that Chinese citizens

“enjoy freedom of religious belief.”

It bans discrimination based on religion and forbids state organs or individuals from compelling citizens to believe or not in any particular faith. However, the state recognises only five religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Taoism, Islam and Protestantism—interestingly, separated from Catholicism. The Chinese authorities tightly control religious activity in the majority Turkic-Uighur province of Xinjiang. Beijing has, as we have heard, allegedly incarcerated more than 1 million Uighurs in re-education camps. The state monitors what Tibetan Buddhists do, to quell dissent in what it regards as a province of mainland China.

Let me move to Iran. The Iranian authorities continue to persecute the Baha’i minority, who number about 300,000. Iran’s supreme leader issued a fatwa in 2013, calling on all Iranians to avoid dealings with the Baha’i, and labelled the group “deviant and misleading”. In March 2014 a United Nations report said:

“Under the law, religious minorities, including recognised Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians also face discrimination in the judicial system, such as harsher punishments”.

We know about Saudi Arabia’s persecution of Shi’a Muslims. Shi’a often have little access to Government services, and state employment continues to be limited for them.

Let me deal finally with Pakistan. As has been mentioned, Pakistan is affected by the experience of chronic sectarian violence targeting Shi’a Muslims, Christians, Ahmadi Muslims and Hindus.