Treatment of Christians

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

May I apologise to everyone for not being in Westminster Hall at the very beginning of this debate, as I was attending the debate on financial assistance for the eurozone in the main Chamber? I thank Mr Deputy Speaker for allowing me to exit that debate early before going back later—I think that that was the way in which he put it to me.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) on securing this debate on a topic in which I am particularly interested and which needs to be highlighted. My hon. Friend and indeed other contributors have spoken eloquently. The Palace of Westminster, where laws are made, is certainly the right venue for this type of discussion and the importance of this subject cannot be denied.

I am very conscious of a particular verse from the Bible:

“In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

That is from John, chapter 16, verse 33. It gives many Christians in this world the strength to face daily something that we cannot imagine for one second—persecution. Hon. Members have spoken about that persecution very clearly today.

The horror stories are numerous. There is a tendency almost to become desensitised to the plight of others, but that must not happen. It is important for us all to remember those people who are persecuted and to help them, both practically and prayerfully. We must listen, be stirred by what we have heard, then do all we can to help.

The website, Persecution.com, says:

“Around the world, and especially in Africa and Asia, Christian populations are suffering severe discrimination and brutal attacks. Thousands are being killed. Systematic campaigns are being waged against Christians simply because of their faith, and it is not too dramatic to suggest that these are forms of ethnic cleansing and genocide.”

I believe that that is exactly what they are. The website continues:

“Yet there is little awareness of these continuing atrocities in the West, and even less response.

Christianity is no longer a predominantly Western religion. Since 1900, there has been a startling growth of Christianity in Latin America, Africa and Asia, to the point that now, 65 percent of the world’s 2 billion Christians live on one of those three continents. Christians now constitute the largest single religious group in Africa. Close to 350 million Christians live in Asia.”

Clearly, the Church is growing, but as it does, persecution grows with it.

If we go over a map of the world, we see that persecution is rife in many countries. It has been said that the blood of the martyrs is the seat of the Church, and that certainly applies to the Church in China, where churches have flourished despite opposition and years of underground worship. Although the Chinese Government now allow churches in homes, they are strictly regulated, and I recently read that the Chinese Government had enacted new regulations in a further attempt to control the growing Christian population.

According to some sources, pastors at some of China’s house churches face new reporting regulations. They must provide police with weekly reports detailing their whereabouts and how many people attend church meetings. If pastors leave a city, they must report their travel plans, and they are restricted to short trips. Clearly, persecution continues. The Chinese Government do not want the Church to grow any more than it has done, because they know that it has been growing in great leaps and bounds, and from the Chinese point of view, it is important that it is controlled.

If pastors fail to report, they are arrested. Churches must also organise under a specific name and advertise and meet publicly. That is hard to deal with, but the Church in China grows every week. The question is what we can do, and perhaps the Minister can enlighten us about what the Government are doing. We must ensure that our foreign ambassadors continue to exert pressure so that the Chinese Church has true religious freedom. We should raise the issue of religious persecution in all the churches we help with our aid across the world.

Christians in India continue to face systematic persecution at the hands of radical Hindus. Indeed, a couple of years ago, my hon. Friends the Members for Upper Bann and for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) and I spoke in a Northern Ireland Assembly debate about Christians in Orissa. Some Christians in India were doing some films outdoors, when extremists beat up the pastor and his son. The police arrested them and kept them in custody until the early hours of the morning. No police complaint was filed.

As the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) said, extremists seem to be very active in other parts of India, and they are not averse to dealing out physical abuse to Christians. A Christian professor’s hands were cut off after he was accused of blasphemy. In some countries, people do not actually have to commit blasphemy; they just have to be accused of it, and the story grows legs. Retribution then takes place.

In Nigeria, as the hon. Member for Banbury made clear, deadly religious violence occurs with regularity, with the result that hundreds of people are killed at a time. In the early hours of 7 March 2010, 500 Christians, most of whom were women and children, were murdered in their beds. That was not the end of it, however, and the village raids continued. On 17 March, another 12 Christians were massacred, including a pregnant woman, in a village in Plateau state. Other atrocities were also carried out against Christians. Thirteen Christians were murdered by a Muslim mob in Bei on 13 April and seven were murdered in Rikwe Chengu on 2 December.

Little information escapes North Korea’s borders, but the information that does indicates that Christians suffer harsher penalties than most criminals. An estimated 100,000 Christians are thought to be in labour camps, where they are being worked to death.

Our Government give substantial aid each and every year to Pakistan, where religious violence and anti-blasphemy laws are used to suppress Christians, and prominent Christian politicians and their defenders are clearly assassinated. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws authorise Government and societal persecution of Christians. Indeed, Pakistan absolutely refuses to progress towards being a religiously free society. According to Pakistani law, blasphemy against the name of Mohammed is a crime punishable by death, and desecrating the Koran warrants life imprisonment. Again, Christians do not actually have to do those things; they just have to be accused, and the retribution comes right away. Several Christians were killed in 2010 as a direct consequence of such laws, and many more people been imprisoned.

I am conscious of the time, so I will conclude shortly. I subscribe to a number of organisations that deal with these issues, as I am sure other Members here do, and Open Doors and Release International are two examples. Persecution is rife in many countries, and we should be grateful for our religious freedom in this country, but it cannot be taken for granted. Let me leave Members with an example of something that happened in our free, democratic and open country. A doctor who discussed with a patient the fact that Jesus helped him was reported to the General Medical Council. That is an indication of the fact that we in the United Kingdom must also make every effort to protect our freedom.

Again, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann on introducing the debate. The call that now goes out to everyone inside and outside this Room, as well as to everyone who reads the report of our proceedings, is this: what will we do about this?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Browne]

Before we broke for a Division in the main Chamber, hon. Members will recall that I was talking about the appalling murder of Shahbaz Bhatti in Pakistan on 2 March. Over recent months, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire, who covers Pakistan, had engaged regularly with the former Minister for Minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, on the importance of religious tolerance and freedom of speech in Pakistan. Mr Bhatti was a tireless and vocal proponent of those beliefs, and his appalling murder is a blow to those in Pakistan who share his beliefs and to all of us who believe in religious freedom and tolerance.

Following Mr Bhatti’s untimely and violent death, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has written to express his condolences to President Zardari, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, my noble Friend Baroness Warsi and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire, have all made statements condemning his killing. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who deals with Pakistan, is regularly in touch with his counterparts in the Pakistani Government on human rights issues. He will continue to engage with the authorities in Pakistan on these important issues and will raise them with the new Minister for Minorities.

My hon. Friend recently visited Pakistan, where he was able to engage on the issue of religious tolerance with Shahbaz Bhatti’s brother, Paul Bhatti, who has been appointed as the Pakistani Prime Minister’s adviser on inter-faith harmony and minority affairs. He also had the opportunity to meet religious leaders from across Pakistan as part of the Ministry’s inter-faith council. That highlighted how leading political and religious figures in Pakistan feel about religious tolerance, and the need to ensure that all of Pakistan’s citizens are accorded their rights under the Pakistani constitution. We will continue to support the Pakistani Government on this subject.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the Minister cast his mind back to the time of the floods in Pakistan, when the people of Great Britain, through their Churches and through aid, gave a lot of money to help overcome the difficulties in Pakistan? At that time, Christians sent word out of Pakistan back to the United Kingdom to indicate that they were not receiving some of that aid. Will the Minister pursue that matter? It is very clear to me as an elected representative, and to many others, that there is deep-rooted discrimination against Christians in Pakistan, which reaches as far as the UK aid that was given to help them as well.

[Mr Browne]

There were a number of points in that intervention. I pay tribute to all the British people who were extremely generous in their contributions to the victims of the natural disaster in Pakistan. Many of them were Christians or were involved with Christian groups that co-ordinated and led that charitable activity. I share the hon. Gentleman’s deep alarm—perhaps the word “alarm” is not strong enough—and profound anxiety about the circumstances of some Christians in Pakistan, and the fact that they cannot worship as freely as they would wish. I will certainly convey to the Minister with geographical responsibility for Pakistan, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire, the points that the hon. Gentleman has made. As I was explaining to the Chamber, my hon. Friend is extremely committed, on a personal basis, to the issue of religious freedom of practice for Christians and others. I know that he will, with great sincerity, want to take forward the exact agenda advised by the hon. Member for Strangford.