Extract from Lord (David) Alton’s remarks
Diplomats take their cue from their governments – so if a government thinks its other interests matter more than religious freedom it will put FORB on the nice to do, might get round to it, list of political priorities.
In the right hands, hard-headed diplomacy can, of course, be a crucial element in championing religious liberty. But, in the wrong hands, diplomacy can too often become a pretext for doing nothing or for appeasement.
Think of the diplomats who still refuse to name the Armenian Genocide – for fear of upsetting Turkey; or the diplomats who pander to the CCP, while it commits genocide and aggressively persecutes; or the diplomatic obfuscation that deliberately muddles concerns over climate change with mass murder in Nigeria rather than confronting the ideology which drives the persecution.
Diplomats and diplomacy must be part of the arsenal in championing religious liberty and not part of the problem in impeding it.
The silence in the face of such persecution is truly awesome.
An Independent Inquiry reported to the British
In a world where 80% of people have a religious faith, a report to a former UK Foreign Secretary said that the persecution of 250 million Christians
comprises the “most shocking abuses of human rights in the modern era”.
If a Government is itself a persecutor – and there are plenty of those – from China to Saudi Arabia, from North Korea to Nicaragua – it will not only tell its diplomats to deflect criticism and to defend its record, it will actively position itself inside international institutions – such as the United Nations Agencies and Committees – think of China as a member of the UN Human Rights Council – or as part of a security alliance –think of Turkey inside NATO.
Dictators and despots too often believe that they can get away with persecution, atrocity crimes and even genocide because the democratic world puts its economic consumer interests first.
Hitler took the world’s indifference as a signal that he could butcher Jews, disabled people, gypsies, homosexuals, Roma and non- compliant religious minorities, famously saying,
“Who now remembers the Armenians?”.
In 1915 the wider World War was used as a reason not to act to save the Armenians. During the Holocaust, claims that things could not be so bad, triggered silence until it was very late. In Srebrenica, appeals for help were ignored, even by the commanders of European soldiers stationed nearby.
I have visited the harrowing genocide sites in Rwanda, where we ignored the warning signs, too. To other their targets Rwanda’s genocidaires called their victims ‘cockroaches’ .
A senior diplomat at the UN at the time has told me that, having seen the reports of what was underway, his failure to speak out represents the greatest failure of his diplomatic career. An estimated 800,000 people died in Rwanda’s genocide.
In 2014 we knew what ISIS was doing, how it was “othering” minorities as “infidels”.
But few voices were raised as people were thrown from high buildings, prisoners burned in metal cages, women raped, and homes looted – atrocities against Yazidis Christians, and others, intensifying in number and scope – including a wave of beheadings.
Even now, many Governments – influenced by the diplomats who pull so many of the levers of foreign policy – refuse to name these crimes as genocide, saying it is a matter for the legal authorities, knowing that no process exists to give this effect with diplomats doing little to insist that mechanisms are made to work or to bring to justice those who ignore even the crime above all crimes.
I co-chair the British Parliamentary Group on North Korea, which I have visited on four occasions.
An edict from Kim Il-sung once declared that, “religious people should die to cure their habit”. And for 70 years that is exactly what has happened.
In 2014 a United Nations Commission of Inquiry, concluded that it is, “a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world; that Christians have been singled out for especially brutal treatment in “the horrors of camps that totalitarian States established during the twentieth century”.
The Inquiry found “an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,”; and that “Severe punishments are inflicted on…people caught practising Christianity”.
It catalogues crimes against humanity, including “extermination,
murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions”,
enforced disappearances, and starvation, detailing “unspeakable atrocities” faced by 120,000 incarcerated in the prison camps .
During Hearings in Parliament we heard from two Christian women escapees from those camps. Jeon Young-Ok said: “They tortured the Christians the most.” Hea Woo said: “The guards told us that we are not human beings …the dignity of human life counted for nothing.”
Mr. Justice Kirby, who chaired the Inquiry said evidence adduced “was very similar to the testimony one sees on visiting a Holocaust Museum by those who were the victims of Nazi oppression”
The CCP, in blatant contravention of the 1951 Convention on Refugees, forcibly repatriates North Korea escapees, including Christians, to a territory where they will be tortured, imprisoned and often executed, North Korea is part of the Axis of Dictators and Despots – umbilically linked with Putin, the CCP and Iran’s theocrats – and all of whom persecute and are united in their fear of religious freedom.
Notwithstanding the military threats which they now pose why did our diplomats not do more to call out the findings of the 2014 Report?
Ignore the crushing of religious freedom and it emboldens perpetrators who believe we are too weak or too disinterested to ever bring them to justice or to hold them to account. It is always the canary in the mine. We mustn’t abandon the pursuit of truth as a way of avoiding polarisation. We cant be “nice” people and fail to speak out in the face of heinous crimes through fear of offending someone.
Whatever happens next in the Taiwan Straits of South China Sea, the Chinese Communist regime has been at war with faith and religious freedom for years – but when did our diplomats last raise this violation of Article 18 of the UDHR?
Show trials, executions, and the torture of prisoners are among its hallmarks. Believers and their lawyers have disappeared. Churches and shrines destroyed. This week a Chinese Catholic bishop celebrates his 94th birthday in jail or under house arrest – half his life has been in prison or detention.
Chinese Christians are imprisoned, arrested or silenced. Churches have been bulldozed. In the face of this, the Holy See’s diplomats have returned to the failed realpolitik of the 1960s – a system of politics or principles based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations – rather than the effective and fearless determination of St.John Paul II to work in solidarity with the persecuted and oppressed to confront political oppression; or recalling the fearless work undertaken by Vatican Nuncio Angelo Roncalli (later St.Pope John XXIII) in aiding the escape of people, most of whom were Jewish, persecuted by the Nazi regime.
Today there are echoes of the 1933 Reichskonkordat signed with Hitler’s Nazis in the absurd belief that it would stop Nazi persecution of Catholic institutions – and deaf to the misery awaiting the German Jews. And the Concordat with Xi Jinping’s CCP has been signed in secret and remains secret.
Why have the Holy See’s diplomats been silent about the widespread persecution, or about the destruction of Hong Kong’s liberties – 1800 pro democracy activists in prison or arrested – including Catholics like Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee and Cardinal Joseph Zen?
At least 1 million Muslim Uyghurs have been detained without charge in Siberian-style re-education camps.
Why has it been silent about the genocide of Uyghur Muslims?
When did our diplomats last actively engage with Muslim nations to create a démarche on behalf of the Uyghur victims of genocide?
The crimes against humanity committed against Tibetan Buddhists, or the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners whom the independent China Tribunal found have been subject to forced organ harvesting and that crimes against humanity, as defined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute, have been committed?
And if we don’t care about them – or the sanctioning by China of UK, European and American Catholic politicians who have spoken out on behalf of the persecuted – I declare an interest – have we no place in our prayers and public statements about the 23 million beleaguered Taiwanese people who religious and political freedoms are daily threatened by the CCP?
With 1 billion adherents worldwide and the world’s oldest diplomatic service, John Paul knew better than Comrade Stalin the value of the Divisions at the Vatican’s disposal.
When you ignore religious persecution it leads to the incarceration of Uyghurs in China, to the unfolding Jihad in Nigeria, the burning alive of Christians in Pakistan, the displacement of Muslim Rohingya and Christian Kachin in Burma – and to the forced repatriation of North Korea Christians.
Diplomats need to be telling their governments that when you ignore religious persecution – and say, for instance in Nigeria’s case, it is attributable to climate change – it leads to mass displacement and is a major contributor to the global refugee crisis – 114 million displaced worldwide – In addition, it hobbles economies and entrenches poverty.
Conversely, societies that have religious freedom are the most prosperous and the least dependant on foreign aid and military assistance.
Diplomats need to do more heavy lifting in shaping our aid and international policies to reflect this priority: and do it because it is the right and the wise thing to do.
I have given diplomats a hard time.
Let me end by remembering what difference one good diplomat can make.
The Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg used his position as a diplomat in Nazi occupied Budapest to issue protective passports and to shelter Jews .
He said “I will never be able to go back to Sweden without knowing inside myself that I’d done all a man could do to save as many Jews as possible.”
Among those he saved was the future US Congressman, Tom Lantos.
Wallenberg was himself taken by the Nazis and then the Soviets, lost his own freedom, and was himself never rescued.
Diplomacy today needs similar courage.
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