Persecution of Religious Minorities: Middle East

Julian Knight Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way—he is being most generous—and congratulate him warmly on securing this important debate. Does he agree that we need to know the extent of the problem in terms of people coming to the UK? Is he aware that the Home Office does not compile statistics on claims for asylum on the basis of religious persecution? Does he agree that we should perhaps consider doing so?

[Jim Shannon]

I shall address that issue later in my speech. The all-party group of which I am chair recently published a report called “Fleeing Persecution: Asylum Claims in the UK on Religious Freedom Grounds”, which contains lots of information. In it, we make 10 salient points that we feel are important. We will hold a meeting with the new Minister to discuss these matters and ensure that those points are taken on board. I am sure that other hon. Members will speak to them later in the debate as well.

Weak governance in Syria and Iraq has left societies in which violent terrorist groups wreak havoc and implement their own rule of law and punishments, in blatant violation of international human rights standards and law. Although it is not a legally binding statement, last month the UN commission of inquiry on Syria determined that Daesh is committing genocide against Yazidis. The commission also found that Daesh’s abuse of Yazidis—a small ethnically Kurdish religious community—amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

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[Jim Shannon]

The right hon. Gentleman brings a salient point into the debate. Yes, we need to be aware of that. We need to be aware of integration into society and of how we can do it well. We also need to be aware of the problems that come off the back of that.

When working with partners in the middle east, it is crucial that we discuss means for individuals to be free within their own nation’s context to manifest their religion or belief and that we build and implement action plans for each context. Although traditionally less of a focus in political and diplomatic discussion, long-term strategies that integrate lessons from the past must be encouraged and supported in Iraq and Syria and across the whole region. I look forward to the Minister’s response on that. To truly secure human rights and restore long-term peace, not just emergency responses but a long game and a considered perspective are necessary.

As chair of the all-party group on international freedom of religion or belief, I encourage DFID—the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) referred to this as well—to be sensitive to the complexities that religion brings, particularly to political action, which in many cases is contradictory to international law, that people use religion to justify. Even in the recent Turkish coup, we saw turmoil used as an opportunity to target and attack churches in Trabzon and Malatya. Using that and countless other incidents across the middle east to dismiss religion as too tricky and to determine that it is the main cause of violence and wrongdoing is simplistic. The underlying political motives must be recognised and tackled.

Let us just look at the coup in Turkey. The coup is over, but many, looking from the outside in, will say, “Is this a chance to suppress human rights in Turkey?” Many of us feel that it could well be a chance to clamp down on all opposition. Is that what we want? Is it what should be happening? No, it is not. Is Turkey a safe place for religious groups at this moment in time? The evidence says that it is not.

[Julian Knight]

Will the hon. Gentleman also reflect on the fact that Turkey’s Government used to be very secular and that there are now many disturbing indications that religion is being used as a battering ram to bring about intolerance within society to help the political elites?

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We all would concur with what he said, and we thank him for his intervention and for reminding us.

It is good sometimes to look where the story is beyond the headline stories and the media. The real story of Turkey is suppression, the denial of human rights and deliberate discrimination against other ethnic and religious groups. We have to look beyond the 6,000 people who have been arrested and the coup that failed because people did not want it and turn our attention to what will happen off the back of it.

The Department for International Development already works with faith communities to eradicate poverty, but I urge it to ensure that, where aid is provided or contracts are awarded overseas, those things are channelled to civil society organisations and Government programmes that can demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of freedom of religion or belief and how their work will have a positive rather than a negative impact. That will not only help DFID’s November 2015 strategic objective to strengthen global peace, security and governance but will help achieve sustainable development goal 16, which is to secure peace, security and global justice.

The all-party group for international freedom of religion or belief this year brought out another document entitled “Fleeing Persecution: Asylum Claims in the UK on Religious Freedom Grounds”, which I intend to speak about, because the motion we are debating is about the

“persecution of religious minorities in the Middle East and its effect on the UK”.

We need to look at how can we help influence what is happening in the middle east and best ensure that those coming here also have the opportunity to have their freedom.

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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.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Before I call Peter Grant, I assume that the proposer would like two minutes at the end of the Minister’s speech.