Persecution of Religious Minorities: Middle East

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this debate, and for his faithfulness in highlighting the issue in this place over some years.

The most recent report from Aid to the Church in Need, “Persecuted and Forgotten?”, which analyses persecution in 22 countries, notes a serious deterioration since its previous report in 2013 of a deepening cycle of persecution. It states:

“The vast exodus of Christians from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East highlights the very real possibility that Christianity could soon all but disappear from much of its ancient homeland.”

It states that the cause is in large part

“the product of an ethnic cleansing motivated by religious hatred.”

The actions of Daesh, which have acted tragically to instil a fear of genocide, do not just impact on Christians, as we know, but have affected many other groups: Shi’a and Sunni Muslims, Mandaeans, Yazidis, Baha’is, Kurds and others. What should be our response to the suffering of those people? I want to briefly address three points.

First, we should speak out. Holding a debate such as this is valuable because it tells our brothers and sisters who are persecuted for their faiths that they are not forgotten. But we need to do more. Secondly, we need to work together with others, particularly internationally, for the religious freedom of those who suffer persecution. Thirdly, we need to work for justice and ensure that the actions of the perpetrators are stopped and that they are brought to justice. I want to speak briefly about those three issues.

First, on speaking out, here in Westminster Hall at the end of June we held the national prayer breakfast, which 740 community leaders from all over the country attended. The theme was the Church in the middle east and the aim was to highlight the concerns about persecution there. It was notable that 150 parliamentarians attended, the most of any national prayer breakfast. That highlights the concern that colleagues in this place have about this issue.

The keynote speaker was Bishop Angaelos, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the UK. He spoke powerfully about the importance of the role that we all have to play in speaking out honestly and graciously to express our concerns. He called for us to work together. He said:

“Christians in the Middle East are indigenous people and reject minority status. They see themselves as intrinsic members, and indigenous peoples...We need to address the reality of this situation...there has been a systemic, yet gradual prejudice, marginalisation and alienation of Christians and minorities allowed to continue over decades. This does not have to continue on our watch...We must realise that the current situation is greater than us all; it needs us all to work together…There can no longer be a concept of ‘over there’ because families of those affected in the Middle East are members of your constituencies, our Churches, and our society as a whole…We are one very large community…our paths cross, our experience is one and our journey is one that we must share. Regardless of which House one sits in, which Church one worships in, or...which faith one does or does not have, we must work together for the freedom and dignity of human life and speak with a collaborative voice.”

He particularly emphasised the oneness of the human family and how there is no more space for a “Muslim East” and a “Christian West”. He emphasised how we are now all members of a global community; our world is now intertwined. What happens in each part affects all the others and we must promote human dignity, equality and respect.

The speech was powerful; many in the room were deeply moved and looked to how they could take forward their responsibility in this respect. I shall now briefly touch on how the UK could work with others.

The United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, said:

“Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims.”

He has focused on the need for global attention to deal with the plight of religious minorities, particularly in Iraq and Syria. He has challenged the world to

“find the resources to help those harmed by these atrocities.”

Knox Thames, who has been appointed by him, has within the past few days put out a call, together with the ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom in the US, David Saperstein, and they are convening a conference on 29 July at the State Department in the US, entitled “Threats to religious and ethnic minorities under Daesh”. The purpose of the meeting will be to advance intergovernmental efforts to protect religious minorities in Iraq and Syria and to discuss with the international community what additional actions can be taken to help ensure a future for religious diversity. More than 20 countries will be represented, many at ambassadorial or head of department level.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way because I want to raise a point that I fear may not otherwise come up. I am sure she shares my concern that encrypted messaging services such as WhatsApp and Telegram are being used to sell Yazidi and other non-Muslim women as sex slaves alongside weapons and pets. One message shared with a Daesh group carried the description:

“Virgin. Beautiful. 12 years old...Her price has reached $12,500 and she will be sold soon.”

This is an area where every step must be taken not just to hasten the rescue of these women, but to ensure that the global digital platforms that are being used to carry out these atrocities are held to account and that this is prevented. There is a global role in this.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Lady makes a very pertinent point. The Yazidis have suffered particularly in this respect. The younger the girl, tragically, the more valuable the price extorted.

Will Her Majesty’s Government be participating in the conference organised by the US State Department on 29 July? Will the Minister ensure that we are indeed represented and that a report is brought back?

On ensuring that we work for justice for those who are oppressed, I will refer back to the debate on 20 April that has already been mentioned today. In that debate on the actions of Daesh as genocide, I called on the Government to make an immediate referral to the UN Security Council with a view to conferring jurisdiction upon the International Criminal Court so that the perpetrators could be brought to justice. Time inhibits my referring to everything mentioned in that debate, but we heard that girls as young as eight were raped; that a two-year-old boy had been killed and his body parts ground down and fed to his mother; and that mothers were seeing their own children crucified. No one could deny that these atrocities are genocide. Executions, mass graves, assassination of church leaders, crucifixions, systematic rapes, torture of men, women and children, beheadings—there are so many acts of violence that the evil seems fictional and medieval. Yet, despite the vote that day in the House of Commons—279 to nil in favour of the motion calling on the Government to refer Daesh’s genocidal atrocities to the UN Security Council—still no referral has been made.

The new Foreign Secretary, in an article in The Daily Telegraph on 27 March 2016, said that Daesh

“are engaged in what can only be called genocide of the poor Yazidis (though for some baffling reason the Foreign Office still hesitates to use the term genocide).”

The debate called on the Government to ensure that the unanimous will of Parliament was implemented. It was not. Now that we have a Foreign Secretary who has made such a clear statement of his view that Daesh’s actions against the persecuted constitute genocide, will the Government register the referral that has been requested by a unanimous vote of Parliament, with the UN Security Council, so that action in the international community can be accelerated to bring the perpetrators to justice? We know that recognition of genocide brings with it obligations on the part of the international community to prevent, punish and protect.

Finally, I ask all colleagues in the House to sign early-day motion 346 on the recognition of genocide by Daesh, which I placed in the Table Office yesterday. It expresses profound concern that our Government have still not called upon the UN Security Council to take such action.

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[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing the debate.

Religion causes all wars. We have heard that, have we not? A throwaway comment at a dinner table, or something overheard in a conversation? It is historical nonsense. It is a calumny of the highest order. Economics and doctrine, and their perversion, have been the root of most wars in the past 100 years, in our experience. The second world war was not caused by religion. In the first world war, religion had a marginal impact, perhaps in the tertiary areas of the conflict zone. In the 16th century, even the French wars of religion did not have all that much to do with religion.

The reality is that religion, which is about hope and about people trying to find a path through life and a way, with their loved ones, to a truth that they can believe in, is being used for the darkest of all possible purposes. It is, in effect, being perverted in the most extreme circumstances. It is being used to hang other issues on.

What we are experiencing in the world, however, is perhaps also a result of the 24-hour news culture, with this thing in our faces all the time, making us much more aware of the daily tragedies going on in the world. Furthermore, persecution on religious grounds seems to be more acute now than at any time in living memory, perhaps going back even beyond the Armenian genocide at the time of the first world war. Religion has become the basis for, or a means of bringing about, conflict, replacing conventional war, which has been put aside.

Given the changing nature of conflict, it is important for us as a sovereign, democratic and just society to stand up and say when we believe that something is terribly wrong. Therefore, what has happened to the Yazidi people in Iraq and beyond, and the Christians, is genocide. That is clear, and we absolutely should be saying so as a nation.

What do we do, apart from using that word and calling something genocide, rightly to force a programme on those who are indulging in such abominable acts? When Robin Cook was Foreign Secretary, we had an “ethical foreign policy”, which seemed to have a hint of post-imperial angst about it. To me, an ethical foreign policy should be one in which we link our aid and economic engagement to how countries treat their minorities. Surely a litmus test for any society is how it treats its minorities.

If intolerance reigns in a society, frankly, there will be little rule of law, or contract law, and little good governance. From a corporate viewpoint alone, that is a bad investment; from a moral viewpoint, it is also a bad investment. We should therefore think carefully about how we position our international aid budget, which I am glad to see that we have kept at 0.7%. I want to see us use it in future to target countries that show they will protect the rights of minorities in their societies.

[Fiona Bruce]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. He is absolutely right that we should be looking at religious persecution as a cause of poverty, displacement and many other degrees of suffering. Does he agree that if DFID did so, and looked more carefully at it as such a cause, we could prevent, down the line, a great deal of not only suffering, but humanitarian aid expenditure by the international community?

[Julian Knight]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, which returns to what I was saying about how the countries that indulge in such activities are actually bad investments. In effect, they are proving themselves to be unworthy of the aid that we are giving them. We need to be thoughtful about exactly how economically engaged we are with those countries.

In Turkey, we have seen increasing intolerance. Under Atatürk, the formation of modern Turkey was about a secular society—religion still played an enormous part in society, but the governance of Turkey was secular. It is now moving away from that and, too, hanging on to religion some of the darker elements in that society. We have to be very aware of that in an important neighbour on our doorstep. In 1999 or 2000, I think, when we were looking at the crisis in the Balkans, we were saying, “Isn’t it horrific that this goes on on Europe’s borders?” but Turkey is on Europe’s borders as well. We should be thinking about that in connection with our sphere of influence.

To conclude, we need to consider the APPG report. When we deal with individuals—after all, this is about individuals—we have to be much more thoughtful and better trained in how we do so. The better statistics help, so that we know the reasons why people are coming to this country—are they fleeing religious persecution?—as does better training for Home Office and UK Border Force personnel, in particular to assess whether an asylum seeker is a victim of religious persecution.

I imagine that it can be difficult for people to speak up, especially if they are members of a minority and have had to hide their religious light under a bushel. When they come to another country, the person they are seeing is not only in a uniform—perhaps not the reassuring figure that we might see, but a threat and authority—but someone from whom they would have kept things quiet, and now they are having to open up, often in a foreign language, and in a completely alien environment. I understand how people might find that incredibly difficult and their silence might be perceived as something different. We need to spend time with such individuals, and we need to support our staff to do so, in order to help all such people not only in our country, but in the camps, close to the conflict zones.

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[Fiona Bruce]

Will the Minister kindly undertake to discuss with the new Foreign Secretary the motion unanimously passed by the House of Commons on 14 April, asking the UK Government to honour Parliament’s request to refer Daesh’s actions to the UN Security Council as genocide?

[Mr Goodwill]

There are a number of issues that I should like to discuss with the new Foreign Secretary, and that is one of them.

We continue to deliver a huge humanitarian aid programme and have been at the forefront of the international response to the conflict in Syria. We have pledged more than £2.3 billion—our largest ever response to a single humanitarian crisis—which is delivering vital assistance to refugees in neighbouring countries, on the ground, right now. We are also providing £79.5 million in humanitarian support in Iraq. That is the best way to ensure that our efforts have the greatest impact on the majority of refugees who remain in the region; and we believe that our focus needs to be on providing support through humanitarian aid to countries that are facing particular pressures, while offering resettlement to vulnerable people for whom return and local integration is not viable. To that end, we operate several discretionary resettlement schemes in partnership with the UNHCR—Gateway, Mandate, the Syrian resettlement scheme under which we are resettling 20,000 Syrians, and the recently announced vulnerable children at risk scheme, which focuses on identifying and resettling vulnerable children and their families from the middle east and north Africa region. We have committed to resettling up to 3,000 individuals at risk under that scheme over the lifetime of this Parliament. It is open to all at-risk groups and nationalities, including religious minorities.