---

Human Rights: Religious Belief

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, not only for securing the debate, but also for her distinguished tenacity in this matter over many years. One striking feature of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the indivisibility of this right to freedom. It follows that those who profess a particular faith may not claim a right that does not apply to others, and also that those whose beliefs are commonly described as ““religious”” may not claim a right that does not apply equally to those who disown religious faith—I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord MacDonald, for what he said about that—and vice versa. Obviously, no freedoms can be unlimited, and it may be that one of the more interesting background questions to this debate is what happens when freedoms come into conflict. However, that appears not to be the main point of the debate. I want to draw attention to a few issues and suggest a warning. Last year I had the privilege at the Lambeth Conference of sitting at the feet of Samson Das, the Bishop of Cuttack in Orissa state, who was able to testify at first hand to the sufferings of the individuals, congregations and institutions in his diocese. The noble Baroness has already said enough about the numbers of those involved and the details of their sufferings, so I do not need to repeat any of that now. However, it does of course concentrate the mind wonderfully to spend time with those directly involved. Bishop Das’s description of an appalling situation could, tragically, be told of many parts of the world and in relation to an enormous number of conflicts, in many of which the borderline between religious differences and cultural or ethnic tensions is not always very easy to distinguish. The very fact of that difficulty suggests that, without in any way trying to minimise those wider issues, we need to identify and acknowledge the particularly religious elements involved in such aggression. It would, I suppose, be unrealistic not to mention in this debate the situation of Christians in the Holy Land and elsewhere in the Middle East. In places where different faiths have coexisted for centuries we see the rapid attrition of the Christian church in its ancestral homelands. In Iraq, Christians have suffered extreme deprivation, sometimes due to sheer religious hatred, sometimes just caught in the cross-fire, sometimes because, amazingly and quite wrongly, they are regarded as representatives of a western faith. So we cannot disown our own particular responsibility and the pressure on Christians in some parts of the world. Of course, persecution does not always take a violent form; there are sometimes perfectly legitimate attempts to persecute minorities or other people based on legitimate rule of law. Just across the border from Iraq, in south-east Turkey, a part of the world that I know particularly well, court cases are alleging the theft of land from local villages by monasteries in Tur Abdin which have stood there since the late fourth century. There is a certain degree of ridiculousness about some of this, but that does actually affect the sufferings of those Syriac villagers and others who are suffering so greatly. The last issue I want to draw attention to is closer to home and also reinforces the point that not all persecution is necessarily bloody. The suspension of Caroline Petrie, a community nurse, for offering to pray with a patient, not surprisingly led to incredulity. But as well as incredulity this was also an occasion for some interesting examples of social cohesion. A spokesman for a local Muslim forum in Sussex, in my own diocese, observed: "““This is crazy. These people need their heads testing. Someone from the goodness of their heart does a good deed and people punish her … We should make every effort to bring peace, calmness and above all hope to our patients. This is a christian country and a majority of the patients believe in God. This was a kind and charitable gesture and we should praise the nurse””." End of Muslim quote. It is a welcome sign of how faith communities can hold together in the face of a growing hostility to faith. One might even say, if one wanted to be naughty, that it is a sign of diversity and equality in action. Of course I welcome Mrs Petrie’s reported return to work. I finish by drawing attention to one particular aspect of the situation which is addressed directly by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and I am very grateful to the noble Lord who quoted Article 18 in its entirety. The right upheld in Article 18 is not only about freedom of faith and freedom to change one's faith, it is also about the right to hold and practise one's faith in public. This freedom is curtailed not just by communal hostility but, in many cases, by public authorities in many parts of the world today. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will take strenuous steps to make sure that that does not happen here.