Freedom of Religion and Belief

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the special envoy, the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for securing this important debate, and I thank all my colleagues in the all-party parliamentary group, particularly the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for their work on the issue.

I will focus on the effects of social media on promoting misinformation, intolerance and inflammatory speech that challenges people’s right to freedom of religion or belief, especially in crisis areas. The danger of social media companies in that respect has been noted by the companies themselves. A Meta company worker said in 2019:

“We have evidence from a variety of sources that hate speech, divisive political speech, and misinformation on Facebook…are affecting societies around the world. We also have compelling evidence that our core product mechanics, such as virality, recommendations, and optimizing for engagement, are a significant part of why these types of speech flourish on the platform.”

That is partly why Labour has repeatedly warned that the Government’s Online Safety Bill may not go far enough in its focus on content rather than on social media platforms’ business models.

In 2021, many fake social media accounts pretended to be “#RealSikh” members of the community in India. A groundbreaking report by Benjamin Strick of the Centre for Information Resilience, reported on by the BBC, found at least 80 fake accounts, many using profile pictures of celebrities, posting divisive posts seeking to discredit Sikh political interests such as the farmers’ protests, often labelling them as extremist or claiming their infiltration by extremist groups. Benjamin Strick said that the aim of the network appears to have been to

“alter perceptions on important issues around Sikh independence, human rights and values”

Those accounts have now been suspended because they were fake. The danger of such information has led to religious and ethnic violence and tensions.

I took a close interest in the report at the time because many of those fake accounts also targeted me and other politicians. I could see how effective they seemed to be in generating a narrative and abuse that seemed to take on a life of their own. I have no problem with individual voters challenging me on x—it comes with the job—but I am concerned about politically motivated misinformation campaigns that appear to have money behind them and to be co-ordinating across platforms on a large scale. Areas of the media in which it is possible to buy political influence and distort debate are generally carefully regulated, but that is not the case with social media, which it is why it has become such a target for manipulation.

The network used so-called sock puppets—fake accounts controlled by real users, as opposed to automated bots—posing as independent people. Nikhil Pahwa, a digital rights activist, has noted:

“These 80-odd accounts will not necessarily make something trend, but with consistent posting, they try to discredit a point of view…This seems to be a sophisticated approach, and seems to be a part of a larger operation.”

The farmers’ protests and the decades-old Sikh independence movement were two discussion topics targeted by the network, with attempts to delegitimise both.

The same phenomenon has had incredibly grave consequences elsewhere in the world. As the United Nations found in Myanmar, hate speech and calls for violence on Facebook played a major role in fomenting the Rohingya genocide and later religious and ethnic violence in the country. The continued exile of nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh is surely a testament to the seriousness with which we should be taking the issue.

Similar speech is reported to have greatly contributed to the violence and potential genocide in Tigray. Meta is currently facing a $2 billion lawsuit, backed by Amnesty International and filed in Kenya, for allegedly contributing to the violence against the Tigray community. Facebook has allowed the incitement of violence in the region for years, and although there are efforts to stop it, they have not been entirely successful.

As Internews Europe told the International Development Committee in evidence submitted to its inquiry on atrocity prevention,

“media, online and social media platforms with significant reach have been deployed as part of deliberate efforts to dehumanise particular ethnic or religious groups, disseminate grievance-based narratives and incite violence”.

His Majesty’s Government must do more. More must be done to enforce respect for FORB throughout the world, particularly in the United Kingdom and its partner nations. When we see persecution and hate still rife across the world, it is incumbent on all parliamentarians across the House to reaffirm our commitment to the values and principles set out in the 2021 G7 summit communiqué, which for the first time referred specifically to freedom of religion or belief. As the Prime Minister absconds from the role of international statesman that British Prime Ministers used to hold, failing even to show up at many of the international fora at which issues such as FORB will be raised, I hold out hope that his Ministers will take a stand for human rights in his stead.