Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion

David Burrowes Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

I am pleased to bring this debate to Parliament today. As someone who believes that equality and religious freedom are fundamental to democratic society, and that both must be promoted and protected, I have continued to work extremely hard in Parliament to promote religious freedom at home and abroad. I recognise that that freedom must extend not only to Christians and our beliefs, but to those of other faiths, and that it includes the right to freedom from religion for those who are not believers.

As hon. Members may be aware, I am Open Doors’s official representative in the House of Commons, and have been working closely with it on these issues. Its world watch list, which highlights the 50 countries where it is most difficult to live as a Christian, is a vital tool in monitoring restrictions on religious freedom throughout the world. That list should be of interest to all of us, given the links between religious persecution and the rescinding of civil liberties more generally.

As the vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on international freedom of religion or belief, today I want to look at our report, “Article 18: an orphaned right”, which explores the restrictions on freedom of religion and belief throughout the world, including the particularly heavy price currently being paid by Christians. Article 18 of the United Nation’s declaration of human rights is a noble vision of religious freedom for all, but it is sadly not the reality for many, or even most. It is a far cry from reality, and that is a point to which I will return.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for bringing forward this important issue, which is increasingly gaining attention across the House. She made the point that there are Members in this House of the Christian faith, of other faiths and of no faith, but we universally share the idea of the importance of religious liberty; that is the right thing to do, not just for those of all faiths and none, but socially, economically and politically.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on the timeliness of the debate, because it was only yesterday that Pakistan’s Prime Minister visited and met our Prime Minister. At the same time, Pakistani Christians were campaigning, and making the point that a report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has said that the situation in Pakistan is the worst in the world for religious freedom. Will she comment on that?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Hopefully, we will get shorter interventions. To be helpful to Members, I suggest an eight-minute limit on speeches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The thoughtful and very disturbing speech by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) is a piece of a jigsaw that I hope will be assembled in the course of this debate, building up a picture in country after country, affecting religion after religion—and not always just religious groups and communities—and showing a certain common template. The word that I expect to hear over and again is “intolerance”, which was flagged up by the opening speakers, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry). I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long), who has steered this topic to the Floor of the House and introduced it so comprehensively and with such a depth of detail.

Before I come on to questions of religious intolerance, I should like hon. Members to cast their minds back to 1978, when the great director Michael Crichton brought a terrifying film to the cinema screen. The name of the film was “Coma”; I do not know whether that rings a bell with any hon. Members. It was a fictional story about how people would be placed in a hospital for minor operations, reduced to the state of a living vegetable, and then have their organs taken from them and sold for huge profits in an extremely sinister way. I found that film immensely unsettling, but I was able to comfort myself with the thought that, well, it was only fiction and nothing like that could really happen.

Unfortunately, something like that has happened and is happening, apparently, to this day. In this connection, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), who sadly cannot be with us today, for putting into the schedules of Parliament a meeting at which I learned about the persecution of Falun Gong in China. We are talking about not just religious intolerance, but the intolerance of atheistic regimes such as the communist regimes of China and North Korea towards groups such as Falun Gong that are spiritual but not really religions. North Korea has been identified in report after report as the most dangerous place, or at least one of the most dangerous places, in which to be a Christian in the present day.

I find the phrase “organ harvesting” in relation to China and Falun Gong rather inappropriate. I would call it murder and butchery for money, which is what appears to be going on. It is a profitable business for the Chinese: I understand that a kidney can raise $62,000 and a heart more than $130,000. Interestingly, there has been an enormous increase in the number of transplantation centres in China in recent years, yet there is no national scheme for organ donation that could possibly account for the very large numbers of organs being made available for money by the Chinese.

It is not, I believe, denied that the organs of executed prisoners are used by the Chinese Government for that purpose. Many studies, including by special rapporteurs for the United Nations, have drawn attention to that terrible trade. As somebody from a Jewish background who read rather more than was good for my mental health at too early an age about what had happened in the medical block at the Buchenwald concentration camp, I think that the idea that that sort of atrocity could be going on in this day and age is absolutely unbelievable and abhorrent.

[Mr Burrowes]

I thank my hon. Friend referring on the Floor of the House to Falun Gong, which does not always get the attention it deserves. I have some constituents who practise Falun Gong and it is the most peaceful of groups. When it campaigns here and in China, it does so peacefully. It is not a physical threat to the Chinese Government, but it may well be a cultural threat because of its different views. It is standing up for its beliefs and views, and if we are going to stand up for Christians and others, we need to stand up for Falun Gong as well.

[Dr Lewis]

My hon. Friend, who stands up for Christians and other groups remarkably well—as I have had occasion to observe over years in this place—is absolutely right. In fact, my understanding is that, originally, the Chinese authorities were quite well disposed to Falun Gong. It was only when it became hugely popular that they felt that any mass popular movement, even one as harmless as that, posed a threat to their totalitarian control.

I fully expect my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), should she catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I hope she will, to give us chapter and horrible verse about what is happening to Christians in North Korea. I want to flag up the fact that the splendid report that the United Nations arranged to be compiled describes what is going on in North Korea as analogous to the crimes committed by the Nazis. It states:

“In many instances, the violations of human rights found by the commission constitute crimes against humanity. These are not mere excesses of the State; they are essential components of a political system that has moved far from the ideals on which it claimed to be founded”.

Pakistan has been mentioned in one context today and I am now going to mention it in another. In June 2009, a Roman Catholic woman, Asia Bibi, got into an argument with some Muslim neighbours over whether she should be allowed to drink from the same water supply as them. As a result, she was accused of blasphemy. I have to say that the blasphemy laws of Pakistan are a very handy weapon for those who have an enemy anywhere in society, because all they have to do is to say that someone has defamed or insulted the Prophet or the religion and that person may, like Asia Bibi, find herself under sentence of death.