Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak on this subject in the House. Since I last spoke about atrocities in North Korea, the devastating 400-page report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has been published. I pay tribute to Mr Justice Kirby, who chaired the commission. More than 80 first-hand testimonies were taken from witnesses and victims at public hearings in Seoul, Tokyo, London and Washington DC, and there were more than 240 confidential interviews and written representations. The commission found a gravity and scale of violation of the freedoms of thought, conscience and religion that have no parallel in the contemporary world. Indeed, they are almost completely denied, as are the rights of freedom of opinion, expression, information and association.

The North Korean state considers the spread of Christianity a particularly serious threat, since it challenges ideologically the official personality cult of the leadership. Christians are prohibited from practising their religion and persecuted in particularly severe ways.

I wish to focus largely on the fact that the freedom of thought of every individual in the North Korean state is minimised. Indeed, there is an attempt to virtually eliminate it from childhood. I will quote some of the examples in the commission’s report:

“The State operates an indoctrination machine that takes root from childhood”,

which is intended to

“manufacture absolute obedience to the Supreme Leader…effectively to the exclusion of”

any independent thought whatever. One witness said:

“You are brainwashed…don’t know the life outside. You are brainwashed from the time you know how to talk, about 4 years of age, from nursery school, brainwashing through education, this happens everywhere in life…even at home.”

Children are taught even before they can read that the only drawings that they should make are those of the supreme leader or those that would give him pleasure.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

It is crucial that the hon. Lady’s points are ventilated internationally, because we simply must expose this horror. Does she agree that, although there is no hierarchy of horror, one of the most terrifying aspects of the North Korean society is family guilt by association? Children who are born of mothers in concentration camps will live their entire lives there. Is that not taking the horror to a new, nightmarish level that is almost unprecedented?

[Fiona Bruce]

I absolutely agree. Guilt by association, whereby if one member of the family offends the regime three generations can be incarcerated, is absolutely heinous.

For children, participation in mass games is required, to instil a high degree of organisation, discipline and collectivism. Schoolchildren, conscious that a single slip in their action might spoil the mass gymnastic performance, make every effort to subordinate their thoughts and actions to the collective. One student described in her testimony to the commission how she had missed an entire semester of university education because her class was required to practise for six months, 10 hours a day, for a parade. Participants fainted from exhaustion, and many suffered injuries. Those who repeated mistakes were made to remain on the training ground until midnight as a punishment. She told of a seven-year-old boy who had practised through the intense pain of appendicitis and then died.

Children in the DPRK are introduced at an early stage to confession and criticism sessions resonant of the Nazi period. They gather in groups weekly to describe how they have grieved the leadership’s teaching during the previous week, and they are encouraged to identify the failings of at least one of their peers in the same group. The number of indoctrination sessions across the country appears to be increasing.

All citizens have to become members of workers’ parties, and from seven onwards children are made members of the children’s union—no doubt so that the indoctrination that happens in school can continue outside as well. Membership of the association serves several basic functions. One is to organise and monitor the daily activities of individuals. The foremost duty is to worship the Kim family, and another is to secure the nation through the monitoring and assessment of loyalty. In other words, any independent thought or belief, and certainly any independent faith, is to be eliminated. The possibility of holding such thoughts is to be extracted from individuals before they can think independently for themselves, from the earliest stage of their life.

The propaganda continues in local administrations, place of work and at various other levels. Pictures of the leader are promoted everywhere, and any offence against the leadership will be punished severely. One witness described how his father had unintentionally soiled an image of Kim Jong-il, the leader, which was printed in a used newspaper that he had used to mop up spilt drink. He was sent to a political prison camp. The rest of the family were spared his fate, but suffered years of harsh official discrimination.

In another testimony, a journalist who made a typographical error and misspelt the leader’s name in a report was sent to a camp for six months as a punishment. The central propaganda unit ensures that all content prepared by journalists goes through several layers of review and censorship to ensure that it is completely in line with state ideology.

There is some hope. CDs and other forms of new media are getting into North Korea, so that not only is information getting out and telling us what is happening, but information about the world outside is also going in, albeit at great risk to those who take it in. One witness in China informed the commission that a relative of hers had watched a CD-ROM and given it friends. He was arrested by the local authorities, publicly tried and executed. Another person who had imported “capitalist goods” such as CD-ROMs from South Korea was told that they would be shot or imprisoned for 10 to 15 years, depending on the severity of the crime and level of involvement. People living along the border with China have started to use mobile phones. It means that information is going into North Korea through that route, but again, those who are discovered are subject to interrogation, often under torture.

One man tell of how, in detention, agents took turns beating him with pieces of wood; he lost his teeth and his lower jaw. Another was interrogated and severely tortured for using a mobile phone, and this resulted in head injuries and fractured bones. Writers talk about the fact that to write in protest is equivalent to death. Someone can slip just once in their writing and disappear over night. Their family can be gone over night—three generations wiped out.

It is a privilege to speak about this in the House, and I know that people in Korea take note. When I first spoke in this House of the sufferings of the people in North Korea, I was deeply moved to receive a letter from their compatriots in South Korea which said, “Carry on.” Today I say to the people of North Korea: “Be encouraged. We are not unaware of your sufferings. In a global age, testimony of your plight is increasingly reaching the world, not least in the form of Mr Justice Kirby’s authoritative and powerful report. The world now knows and we must not stand by without acting. Hold fast. Change must come. Your plight cannot last for ever. History has shown that kingdoms rise and fall; chains can be loosed and tyrants pulled down. Know that MPs across this House are deeply concerned about your suffering, and will continue to speak out about it until change comes.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

There is no doubt that we must move very carefully, and must ensure that Iran is genuinely complying with all the international obligations with which an accepted state should comply. Although—as we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis)—there has been an occasional act of generosity towards Christian and other faith communities in Iran, it remains a matter of concern that since the election of President Rohani many Christians have been arrested, and more than 50 remain in prison. I think that the new regime is very much on probation, and that Britain, together with our allies, must be vigilant in ensuring that not too easy a ride is given to those who may wish to push it back in a reactionary direction.

Iran is indeed an important factor, but I want to say a little about two other issues which, although well known, are worth referring to again. What is happening in Syria is a horror story by any account. It is a horror story for all Syrians, regardless of their faith and regardless of where they find themselves in that country. There is particular concern about what is increasingly being shown to be the targeted persecution of the Christian community in Syria. The Christians are not alone: Alawites and Shi’a and Sunni Muslims have also been targeted in some cases. However, there is a real fear that the Christian community—which, after all, is one of the oldest communities in the middle east: we all remember the Damascene conversion, which is one of the roots of Christianity and dates back to its very earliest days—is under unacceptable and very frightening pressure.

The Christian charity Open Doors has been doing valuable work in screening many international media sources to find examples of persecutions of Christians. Its global researches have established that some 2,123 Christians have been killed because of their faith, and that 1,213 of them have been killed in Syria. We have also seen the systemic targeting of Christian churches, 83 in Syria and 492 in Egypt. Mass graves were discovered in the ancient Christian town of Sadad, which had been overrun by rebel extremists.

[Stephen Pound]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is as informative as he is generous. Does he agree that one of the most extraordinary aspects of his speech so far is the fact that it has featured no examples of the mass conversions from Christianity that occurred in the Ottoman empire? Should we not be remembering, in our thoughts and in our prayers, the Christians who keep their faith even in the most horrendous circumstances? Is that not truly the most remarkable fact that has emerged from this afternoon’s debate?

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Those of us who are not afraid to regard ourselves and publicly label ourselves as Christians should consider that to be an important and integral part of the faith that binds him and me, and many others in the Chamber, to the Christians who are suffering outside. That strength is the great value that Christianity brings not only to this country, but to the world as a whole. As we know, there have been examples of mass conversion elsewhere in the world. Reference has been made to Nigeria, and heaven knows what has befallen some of the young girls who were abducted recently in the north of that country.

It is important that the western powers, in seeking to bring peace to Syria and to deal with a vile regime in the form of the Assads, do not allow that regime to be replaced by one of the many others that are dominated by foreign jihadis who are determined to destroy a vulnerable community in one of its ancient heartlands.

Although we of course welcome the opportunity for democracy that the Arab spring has brought, we must accept that there is a real concern that it has also brought something of a winter of persecution for Christians throughout the wider middle east. Open Doors and Christian Solidarity Worldwide have done a lot of work in this area. They have discovered, for example, that some 200,000 Christians are thought to have fled Egypt—a country where I have personal connections and which I have visited—since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. He was not perfect, but I am afraid that the situation for Christians has deteriorated greatly since then. At the end of March, a Christian woman, Mary Sameh George, was beaten, stabbed and shot to death in Cairo, apparently because in her car—a car she used to deliver food and medicine to the elderly—there was a crucifix. As Bishop Kyrillos of the Coptic Church has said, when such things occur, there is no sense that even the present regime has a full commitment to tackling those issues. It is very important that Britain and our western allies use every available means of pressure to ensure that, if the new regimes in Egypt and elsewhere want to be accepted in the world community, religiously motivated sectarianism is bore down on wherever it comes from.

We have sought to do our bit. Many parliamentarians from this place and the other place are part of the UK delegation to the Council of Europe, where we have the opportunity to debate these issues at length. However, we need that consistent approach from Her Majesty’s Government. Support for religious minorities is not tradeable against any other interest in the conduct of foreign policy.

The examples overseas are important, but I want to finish by saying a word or two about the situation at home. I am not afraid to define my political activity as influenced in part by my faith, as is that of many others, and we should not therefore allow a degree, which we sometimes see, of surprisingly illiberal secularism to drown out the mention of faith in our public space. I was genuinely saddened that the Prime Minister—indeed, it could have been the leader of any other major political party—was criticised for having raised the importance of faith in the public debate. That letter from a number of no doubt eminent intellectuals was the most illiberal exposition of liberalism that I have seen in many a long day, and we ought to say that clearly.