The Catholic Church says people could be punished for expressing views on same-sex marriage
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Christians risk being criminalised for quoting passages of the Bible if new proposed hate crime legislation is passed, the Scottish Catholic Church has warned.
New legislation which is making its way through Holyrood would make “stirring up hatred” against certain groups a criminal offence.
The proposals have provoked a backlash amid fears they could lead to people being charged over comments perceived to be offensive even if that was not the intention.
Anthony Horan, director of the Catholic Parliamentary Office, said that it could clog up the courts, stifle freedom of expression and enshrine a damaging “cancel culture”.
He also claimed that Christians fear they could end up in the dock for expressing Biblical views on same-sex marriage or opposing plans to make it easier.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton will make it even more difficult for parents to educate their children in line with their values. (Photo: fizkes/Getty Images)
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bostock v. Clayton, which ruled that the Title VII prohibition on sex discrimination in employment extends to discrimination based on sexual orientation and transgender status, is likely to have more widespread implications than many people realize.
Many (including Justice Samuel Alito in his scathing dissent) warn that the ruling may undermine religious freedom and freedom of speech, as well as women’s athletics and women’s privacy in bathrooms and lockers rooms. Yet few have considered how Bostock may imperil the fundamental right of parents to educate their children in line with their values.
The current culture already makes it difficult for parents to teach their children that, for instance, maleness and femaleness are grounded on objective biological reality rather than subjective self-perceptions, or that the purpose of human sexuality is not ultimately pleasure or self-expression, but to unite a man and woman in marriage and enable them to form a family.
And whatever one’s beliefs about these issues, parents, not the state, should be the ones to decide what their children are taught about these controversial and sensitive matters.
Many parents who seek to pass on a traditional understanding of sexuality send their children to private or religious schools where these values will be taught and modeled—or at least not directly undermined, as they are in an increasing number of public schools. But will private and religious schools be able to teach and model these traditional understandings of sexuality in the wake of Bostock?
What happens when the first-grade teacher Ms. Clark announces that she is transgender and henceforth expects to be treated as Mr. Clark? According to Bostock, a school that fires Ms. Clark because her gender transition will confuse students and undermine the school’s mission would violate Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination.
A religious school might be protected by Title VII’s exemption allowing religious institutions to make hiring decisions on the basis of religion, or by the Hosanna-Tabor ruling’s “ministerial exception,” which protects the right of religious institutions to choose their own ministers.
The Bostock decision, however, doesn’t help matters.
Thankfully, the Supreme Court just strengthened the ministerial exception in Our Lady of Guadalupe v. Morrissey Berru, offering a broad interpretation of who counts as a “minister” that likely extends to any teacher, and perhaps even other employees.
But schools will have to fight for these protections in court when challenged, and the fight itself will be punishing. Further, what about private nonreligious schools that are not eligible for these exemptions?
LGBT activists will also seek to get courts to apply Bostock’s expansive redefinition of the meaning of sex discrimination to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any school or educational program that receives federal financial assistance.
Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion explicitly declines to address questions about bathrooms, locker rooms, women’s sports, and so on. But the logic of Bostock implies that it would violate Title IX, for example, to prevent a student with male anatomy who identifies as female from changing and showering in the girls locker room or competing on the girls track team.
These implications of Bostock’s logic could also affect the many private and religious schools that receive federal financial support indirectly through states and school districts that fund things like busing, textbooks, or free meals for low-income students.
If a second-grade boy at a Catholic school declares himself to be a girl and wants teachers and other students to treat him as such, will the school be forced to comply to avoid a lawsuit, regardless of whether this contradicts the school’s religious teachings?
If, as is plausible, the answer to that question is yes, a growing number of parents will have no choice but to send their children into an educational environment that may sow profound confusion about the basic truths of human identity.
Further, insofar as Bostock is interpreted (perhaps mistakenly) as affirming that sex is determined by a person’s inner sense of gender identity rather than by biology, parents of gender-confused children may find themselves unable to protect their children from the “gender-affirming” path of social transition, puberty blockers, and eventually cross-sex hormones and surgery.
Never mind that the vast majority of gender-confused children naturally come to accept their biological sex if allowed to undergo puberty, or that the “gender-affirming” path has not been proven to resolve gender dysphoria in the long run, and results in permanent loss of fertility and serious long-term health risks.
Such arguments were of no avail to the Ohio parents who lost custody of their teenage daughter because they would not allow her to begin hormone treatments to transition to a male gender identity. The combined legal and cultural impact of Bostock threatens to make such tragic cases increasingly common.
The dangers of Bostock for parental rights are grave, but not entirely unavoidable. To avert these dangers, we need to take proactive steps to prepare for the challenges to come.
Specifically, it is now more crucial than ever to oppose state and federal legislation like the Equality Act, which would further undermine the freedom of private and religious schools to hire in line with their mission and values, and mandate admittance to single-sex facilities and sports based on gender identity.
Such legislation could even lead to court-mandated curricula promoting radical views of gender and sexuality in all public schools.
Parents and all concerned citizens should tell their elected officials they want laws clarifying that single-sex sports and private facilities do not constitute discrimination, but rather are essential to maintain fairness and protect student privacy and safety.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo alongside Mary Ann Glendon of the Commission on Unalienable Rights during a press conference in July, 2019. (Wikimedia (CC BY 3.0).)
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explained the need for the commission on Thursday, noting that an increase in the number of recognized human rights presents “risks of collision” between rights claims, as well as “risks of trivializing core American values.”
Matt Hadro/CNA.
WASHINGTON — A draft report from an advisory body to the U.S. State Department on human rights says that religious freedom is “foremost” among human rights.
“Foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure, from the founders’ point of view, are property rights and religious liberty,” stated the draft report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights, released on July 16.
“A political society that destroys the possibility of either loses its legitimacy.”
The commission was established last July by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who announced that Mary Ann Glendon, former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, would lead it.
Pompeo explained the need for the commission on Thursday, noting that an increase in the number of recognized human rights presents “risks of collision” between rights claims, as well as “risks of trivializing core American values.” In his time at the State Department, he said, as cables from around the world came in he realized officials were discussing rights in ways that were “deeply inconsistent.”
Last year, Pompeo charged the commission with studying the nature and historical foundations of human rights, with the hope that it would be part of “one of the most profound reexaminations of the unalienable rights in the world since the 1948 Declaration.”
On Thursday, the commission released its report at an event in Philadelphia, with Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York offering the invocation.
God has “bestowed upon and ingrained into the very nature of his creatures certain inalienable rights enshrined by the founders,” Dolan said, noting that they are “rights flowing from the innate dignity of the person,” are “self-evident in reason and nature,” and are “celebrated” in Divine Revelation.
Dolan asked God’s blessing “upon this noble project” of the commission, “as we renew our sense of duty to share our country’s wisdom on rights inherent to the very nature of the human person, never, ever to be trampled.”
Glendon, introducing the report, noted various threats to human rights around the world, especially China “aggressively promoting a very different concept” of rights that puts “national priorities” over freedoms of speech and assembly, and free elections. She also pointed out recent technological advances that pose threats to human rights, such as artificial intelligence, data collection, and surveillance techniques.
Pompeo explained his hope that the tradition of rights outlined in the report could be used to give other countries the “courage” to speak up when authoritarian regimes abuse their own citizens.
Some critics of the commission, following its creation, alleged that it would emphasize rights such as religious freedom at the expense of other rights such as women’s rights or LGBTQ advocacy.
On Thursday, one senior administration official said it was “disturbing” how many human rights experts claim that focusing on religious freedom means a “deviation” from U.S. foreign policy priorities, or draws attention away from other human rights.
Today, religious freedom advocates are criticized as theocrats, the official said, but “those who seek toleration” shouldn’t be confused with “religious fanaticism.”
“To the extent that the United States” is successful in promoting religious freedom, the other freedoms “will be vindicated” too, the official said.
In addition to Glendon, commission members included Notre Dame Law professor Paolo Carozza; Katrina Lantos Swett, former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; and philosopher Christopher Tollefsen.
On Thursday, Pompeo expounded upon the findings of the commission, noting that its emphasis on religious freedom underlines that “no society can retain its legitimate or a virtuous character without religious freedom.”
The current unrest, with mass anti-racism protests occurring around the country, is connected to America’s very ability to put its founding ideals into practice, he said.
The U.S. “fell far short” of its ideals with chattel slavery being the “gravest departure,” he said, along with expelling Native Americans from their land.
However, he noted, the founding principles gave a standard and framework to abolish slavery and codify equality in law.
The world is ill-prepared for the global crash in children being born which is set to have a “jaw-dropping” impact on societies, say researchers.
Falling fertility rates mean nearly every country could have shrinking populations by the end of the century.
And 23 nations – including Spain and Japan – are expected to see their populations halve by 2100.
Countries will also age dramatically, with as many people turning 80 as there are being born.
What is going on?
The fertility rate – the average number of children a woman gives birth to – is falling.
If the number falls below approximately 2.1, then the size of the population starts to fall.
In 1950, women were having an average of 4.7 children in their lifetime.
Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation showed the global fertility rate nearly halved to 2.4 in 2017 – and their study, published in the Lancet, projects it will fall below 1.7 by 2100.
As a result, the researchers expect the number of people on the planet to peak at 9.7 billion around 2064, before falling down to 8.8 billion by the end of the century.
“That’s a pretty big thing; most of the world is transitioning into natural population decline,” researcher Prof Christopher Murray told the BBC.
“I think it’s incredibly hard to think this through and recognise how big a thing this is; it’s extraordinary, we’ll have to reorganise societies.”
Why are fertility rates falling?
It has nothing to do with sperm counts or the usual things that come to mind when discussing fertility.
Instead it is being driven by more women in education and work, as well as greater access to contraception, leading to women choosing to have fewer children.
In many ways, falling fertility rates are a success story.
Which countries will be most affected?
Japan’s population is projected to fall from a peak of 128 million in 2017 to less than 53 million by the end of the century.
Italy is expected to see an equally dramatic population crash from 61 million to 28 million over the same timeframe.
They are two of 23 countries – which also include Spain, Portugal, Thailand and South Korea – expected to see their population more than halve.
“That is jaw-dropping,” Prof Christopher Murray told me.
China, currently the most populous nation in the world, is expected to peak at 1.4 billion in four years’ time before nearly halving to 732 million by 2100. India will take its place.
The UK is predicted to peak at 75 million in 2063, and fall to 71 million by 2100.
Image copyrightBBC SPORT
However, this will be a truly global issue, with 183 out of 195 countries having a fertility rate below the replacement level.
Why is this a problem?
You might think this is great for the environment. A smaller population would reduce carbon emissions as well as deforestation for farmland.
“That would be true except for the inverted age structure (more old people than young people) and all the uniformly negative consequences of an inverted age structure,” says Prof Murray.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionThe world faces a shift from young to old
The study projects:
The number of under-fives will fall from 681 million in 2017 to 401 million in 2100.
The number of over 80-year-olds will soar from 141 million in 2017 to 866 million in 2100.
Prof Murray adds: “It will create enormous social change. It makes me worried because I have an eight-year-old daughter and I wonder what the world will be like.”
Who pays tax in a massively aged world? Who pays for healthcare for the elderly? Who looks after the elderly? Will people still be able to retire from work?
“We need a soft landing,” argues Prof Murray.
Are there any solutions?
Countries, including the UK, have used migration to boost their population and compensate for falling fertility rates.
However, this stops being the answer once nearly every country’s population is shrinking.
“We will go from the period where it’s a choice to open borders, or not, to frank competition for migrants, as there won’t be enough,” argues Prof Murray.
Some countries have tried policies such as enhanced maternity and paternity leave, free childcare, financial incentives and extra employment rights, but there is no clear answer.
Sweden has dragged its fertility rate up from 1.7 to 1.9, but other countries that have put significant effort into tackling the “baby bust” have struggled. Singapore still has a fertility rate of around 1.3.
Prof Murray says: “I find people laugh it off; they can’t imagine it could be true, they think women will just decide to have more kids.
“If you can’t [find a solution] then eventually the species disappears, but that’s a few centuries away.”
The researchers warn against undoing the progress on women’s education and access to contraception.
Prof Stein Emil Vollset said: “Responding to population decline is likely to become an overriding policy concern in many nations, but must not compromise efforts to enhance women’s reproductive health or progress on women’s rights.”
What about Africa?
The population of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to treble in size to more than three billion people by 2100.
And the study says Nigeria will become the world’s second biggest country, with a population of 791 million.
Prof Murray says: “We will have many more people of African descent in many more countries as we go through this.
“Global recognition of the challenges around racism are going to be all the more critical if there are large numbers of people of African descent in many countries.”
Why is 2.1 the fertility rate threshold?
You might think the number should be 2.0 – two parents have two children, so the population stays the same size.
But even with the best healthcare, not all children survive to adulthood. Also, babies are ever so slightly more likely to be male. It means the replacement figure is 2.1 in developed countries.
Nations with higher childhood mortality also need a higher fertility rate.
What do the experts say?
Prof Ibrahim Abubakar, University College London (UCL), said: “If these predictions are even half accurate, migration will become a necessity for all nations and not an option.
“To be successful we need a fundamental rethink of global politics.
“The distribution of working-age populations will be crucial to whether humanity prospers or withers.”
Christians faithfuls hold signs as they march on the streets of Abuja during a prayer and penance for peace and security in Nigeria in Abuja on March 1, 2020. The Catholic Bishops of Nigeria gathered faithfuls as well as other Christians and other people to pray for security and to denounce the barbaric killings of Christians by the Boko Haram insurgents and the incessant cases of kidnapping for ransom in Nigeria. | AFP via Getty Images/KOLA SULAIMON
A Nigerian civil society group estimates that 1,202 Christians have been killed in Nigeria in the first six months of 2020 by jihadists, radicalized herdsmen and others as 22 more Christians were reportedly killed in the Kaduna state last weekend.
As rights groups continue to voice concern about “genocidal” crimes being committed in Nigeria, the Anambra-based International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law has released a new report stating that no fewer than 1,202 Christians were killed between January and June 2020.
Intersociety, an organization headed by Christian criminologist Emeka Umeagbalasi, relies on what it deems to be credible local and foreign media reports, government accounts, reports from international rights groups and eyewitness accounts to compile statistical data. Due to the lack of adequate government record-keeping, death tolls reported by media outlets should be construed as estimates.
According to the report, the majority of Intersociety’s estimated 1,202 Christian death toll through the first six months of 2020 comes mostly from the 812 killings committed by members of the predominantly Muslim Fulani herding community who have been radicalized to carry out attacks against predominantly Christian farming communities in the farming-rich Middle Belt States.
Additionally, 390 Christian deaths were attributed to killings committed by radical Islamic groups in the northeast, like Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province, in addition to other perpetrators such as armed bandits.
“Thousands of defenseless Christians who survived being hacked to death have also been injured and left in mutilated conditions with several of them crippled for life,” the Intersociety report states. “Hundreds of Christian worship and learning centers have been destroyed or burnt; likewise thousands of dwelling houses, farmlands and other properties belonging to Christians.”
Intersociety reports that between January and the end of June, Boko Haram killed over 600 people of different religions, 260 of which were killed between May 15 and June 30.
According to Intersociety, 100 of those people killed by Boko Haram and ISWAP between mid-May and the end of June “were strongly believed to be Christians.”
Additionally, the organization notes that at least 258 killings were committed by radicalized herdsmen between May 15 and June 30.
As Fulani radicals have increasingly attacked Christian farming communities in recent years, the killings have been labeled by the Nigerian government and some human rights groups as part of the decades-long conflicts between herders and farmers in Africa. However, advocates for Nigerian Christian communities contend that the “herder-farmer conflict” label is misleading because it doesn’t take into account other factors at play, such as religious elements.
“All the areas under Jihadist Herdsmen attacks are Christian communities, as to date,” the Intersociety report reads. “There are no pieces of evidence anywhere showing killing of Muslims and taking over of their lands, farmlands and houses or destruction or burning of Mosques by the Jihadist Herdsmen.”
The organization also warned that there has been a “rapid increase” in the number of young girls and women who are abducted by radicals nationwide.
“In other words, Nigeria’s genocidal and atrocious Jihadists including Jihadist Herdsmen and Boko Haram/ISWAP have rapidly increased their rate of abduction of the referenced females, both legally married and unmarried,” the report explains. “Such abducted women hardly return when abducted.”
According to the report, abducted women are sometimes used as sex slaves by their captors and are forcefully married and converted to Islam.
Intersociety’s new report was released the same weekend in which 22 more people were reportedly killed and an unknown number of people were injured and displaced by a series of attacks in remote areas of the southern Kaduna state between July 10 and July 12.
Last weekend’s attacks in Kaduna were said to have been carried out by suspected Fulani assailants, according to the Southern Kaduna People’s Union.
Christian Solidarity Worldwide, an organization that works with the persecuted church in over 20 countries, reports that nine people were killed and many more injured during an attack carried out in the Chibwob community in the Gora ward of the Sangon Kataf local government area of Kaduna last Friday.
Most of the victims were women and children. Assailants are accused of burning down over 20 homes, burning motorcycles and destroying farms.
The next day, Fulani assailants reportedly attacked settlements close to Chibwob that include the Kigudu community. In that attack, 10 women, an infant and an elderly man were reported to have burned to death inside a home.
On Sunday, suspected Fulani assailants attacked the Ungwan Audu village in the Gora ward.
The assailants reportedly killed one person and burned down the entire village. The village consisted of 163 households.
According to CSW, over 1,000 people and 11 pregnant women were displaced by last weekend’s violence and are now taking shelter in an educational facility owned by the Evangelical Church Winning All denomination.
On Sunday, the Southern Kaduna People’s Union released a statement condemning the attacks and pointed out the fact that police officers assigned to the area to enforce a 24-hour curfew were nowhere to be found when the attacks began.
“With the curfew still in rigid enforcement, Anguwan Audu, a Surubu village, still under Gora ward was invaded this morning of 12th July, 2020, where the village was looted and entirely burnt and one person killed,” SOKPU Public Relation Officer Luka Binniyat said. “This brought to a total death toll of 22 persons in three days of unbroken attacks under a 24-hour strictly imposed curfew that has been running for 31 days today.”
Binniyat argues that the recent attacks “confirm a veiled but documented threat” issued on June 17 by the leaders of five Fulani supremacist groups at a press conference in Kaduna.
“We are dismayed by the actions of the security forces, who reportedly attacked peaceful protestors and arrested farmers for violating the curfew, yet failed to prevent armed non-state actors from terrorising civilians for three consecutive days,” CSW Chief Executive Mervyn Thomas said in a statement.
“The ongoing violence and loss of life in southern Kaduna is emblematic of an enduring failure or unwillingness on the part of both levels of government to fulfill the responsibility to protecting all citizens in an effective and unbiased manner.”
In the Tse Chembe district of the Logo local government area of Benue state, another seven people were killed by suspected Fulani radicals last Friday. Benue Gov. Samuel Ortom calledon President Muhammadu Buhari to declare Fulani radicals as terrorists.
Nigeria ranks as the 12th worst country in the world when it comes to Christian persecution on Open Doors USA’s 2020 World Watch List.
Last year, the United States-based nongovernmental organization Jubilee Campaign advised the International Criminal Court in Hague that the standard for genocide against Christians in Nigeria has been reached and urged an investigation.
There is growing pressure in Washington, D.C., for the U.S. government to appoint a special envoy to Nigeria and the Lake Chad region to investigate the mass atrocities being committed there. The U.S. State Department placed Nigeria on its special watch list of countries that engage in or tolerate severe violations of religious freedom last December.
A Hungarian Christian Democrat member of the European Parliament has warned that growing secularism is to blame for Europe’s silence on human rights violations against religious minorities. As the parliament debated the 2019 human rights annual report, György Hölvényi MEP insisted that “if Europe, guided by extreme secularism, is silent on violations against religious minorities,…
Yet, one world power refuses to take action to stop it: the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), according to the Church Militant.
Officially, UNFPA opposes sex-selection abortions. According to its “State of World Population 2020” report, “Decisions to carry to term male but not female fetuses is a reflection of gender-discriminatory views that women and girls are worth less than men and boys.”
The agency rightly describes sex-selection abortions as a form of discrimination that “sends a message of girls’ and women’s inferiority, offending human rights through their ultimate devaluing.”
“As such, the practice of gender-biased sex selection is both a cause and a consequence of the ‘persistence of deep-rooted stereotypes on the roles and responsibilities of women’ and violates the human right to be treated equally, without regard to gender,” the report continues.
Later in the document, however, UNFPA refuses to support legislation to stop sex-selection abortions. The Church Militant described the contradiction as “abortion newspeak.”
The document states that “bans on sex selection are often ineffective and also infringe reproductive rights, including access to safe abortion in countries where abortion is legal. … solutions to gender-biased sex selection likely lie in tackling the preference for sons through changes in social norms.” But UNFPA does not suggest any meaningful solutions to the problem.
Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D., of the Center for Family and Human Rights, or C-Fam, said UNFPA cannot have it both ways, “condemning one reason for abortion as a human rights violation and every other reason as a human right.”
Sex-selection abortions are a huge problem. In some cultures, especially in Asia, cultural preferences for male children are prevalent. As a result, unborn baby girls often are targeted for abortions.
Yoshihara said experts estimate that 1.2 million girls are killed every year in the practice.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups fight to stop states from protecting unborn girls from sex-selection abortions. Only a few states ban the discriminatory practice. As one Planned Parenthood leader to the AP last year, “EVERY reason to have an abortion is a valid reason,” including for sex-selection.
A session of the Parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe / Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The European Union’s Special Envoy for promoting the Freedom of Religions and Belief outside of Europe will soon be appointed. Maragaritis Schinas, vice-president of the European Commission, announced the Office’s re-establishment in a tweet on July 8.
The announcement brought to a close what had been at times a very lively debate.
The president of the European Commission originally decided not to appoint somebody in the role of advisor to her in the capacity of special envoy “at this time”.
Then, after protests from many organizations, the Commission reversed itself. The position is still vacant, so everything is still up in the air and anything could happen: Why, then, is it so important to have a special envoy for religious freedom in Europe?
The special envoy’s Office was established in 2016, right after Pope Francis had been awarded the Charlemagne Prize. Jan Figel became the Special Envoy. During his mandate, Jan Figel traveled worldwide, opened bridges of dialogue, and had a crucial role in the liberation of Asia Bibi, the Pakistani woman who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy and then acquitted.
Many backed the re-establishment of the position. Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, Archbishop of Luxembourg and president of the Committee of the Bishops of the European Union (COMECE), noted that “in some countries, the religious oppression reached the level of a genocide” and for this reason “the European Union must continue to campaign for religious freedom, with a special envoy.”
This semester, Germany is president of the Council of the European Union. So 135 German members of Parliament asked the government to use the position to press the EU to restore the Office.
Austrian members of Parliament signed a joint resolution with the same goal, and Jewish, Orthodox, and Muslim labels protested against the cancellation of the position.
In the letter, the Commission confirmed that they would advance religious liberty according to the 2013 EU guidelines, which recognize the human right to freedom of religion and belief and understand that right under European law to mean that everyone is free to believe, not to believe, change their beliefs, publicly witness their beliefs and share their beliefs with others.
In the letter, the Commission also said that violations were going to be monitored by the EU delegation. The delegation and Eamon Gilmore, special representative for human rights, were supposed to report on the violations
After that, and all the protests, the Commission changed its mind and announced that the Special Envoy position for religious freedom was going to stay. Everything, by the way, is still suspended. We yet do not know who will be the next special envoy, and under which mandate.
There is another issue. The special envoy takes care of religious freedom outside of the EU, but religious liberty is at risk within the EU borders. There are many pieces of evidence that religious freedom is subtly dwindling in Europe.
Religious freedom inside the EU border is guaranteed under the EU charter of fundamental rights which is policed by the EU fundamental rights agency in Vienna. In addition, all the member states of the EU are constrained by fundamental democratic principles for which the commission can hold them to account if their laws don’t correspond.
And yet, there are cases that show that show that religious freedom is at stake.
The most recent cases came from Finland and Sweden.
Päivi Räsänen, a member of Finnish Parliament and former minister, faces four investigations after tweeting a Bible passage questioning that the Evangelical Church in Finland sponsored the Pride 2019.
Ellinor Grimmark and Linda Steen, two Swedish midwives, appealed to the European Court for Human Rights because they found unemployed and could not apply for any job since they refused to help to perform abortions. The appeal was, however, declared inadmissible.
These are not the only cases, and it is not a new situation. It is worth remembering that the Holy See personally took the floor in 2013. Following the discussion of two cases at the European Court for Human Rights, the Holy See sent a note and widely explained why the religions are not “lawless areas” but instead “spaces of freedom.”
The first case was about a labor union formed in 2008 by the clergy in an Orthodox Church diocese to defend their “professional, economic, social, and cultural interests” in their dealings with the church.
When the Romanian government registered the new union, the church sued, pointing out that her canons do not allow for unions and arguing that registration violated the principle of church autonomy.
A Romanian court agreed with the Church, and the union challenged the court’s judgment in the European Court for Human Rights. The union argued that the decision not to register violated Article 11 of the European Convention, which grants a right to freedom of association.
In 2012, the chamber reasoned that, under Article 11, a state might limit freedom of association only if it shows “a pressing social need,” defined in terms of a “threat to a democratic society,” This did not happen in Romania. So the chamber faulted the Romanian court, and Romania appealed to the Grand Chamber – the final EU judicial appeal venue.
The second case regarded Fernandez Martinez, a Spanish instructor of religion. In Spain, public schools offer classes in Catholicism, taught by instructors approved by the local bishop. Fernandez Martinez did not get his bishop’s approval. A laicized priest, Fernandez Martinez, took a public stand against mandatory priestly celibacy. When the school dismissed the instructor, he brought suit under the European Convention. His dismissal – he argued – violated his right to privacy, family life, and expression.
A section of the European Court ruled against him, because in withdrawing approval – the section stated – the bishop had acted “in accordance with the principle of religious autonomy”; the instructor had been dismissed for purely religious reasons, and it would be inappropriate for a secular court to intrude.
These two cases – the “Vatican foreign minister”, then-Archbishop Dominique Mamberti noted – “call into question the Church’s freedom to function according to her own rules and not be subject to civil rules other than those necessary to ensure that the common good and just public order are respected.”
One should say that this is a vexata quaestio (an already widely discussed issue), with significance far beyond Europe.
Europe, however, is living in a particularly worrisome situation. The Observatoire de la Christianophobie in France and the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christian in Europe report an increasing number of cases that are food for thought.
Religions became even more vulnerable after the coronavirus outbreak. Many provisions of various governments to counter the spread of the infection also jeopardized freedom of worship. It was an emergency, and everybody understands that, but at the same time, it is always essential to re-establish a principle, in order not to set a precedent.
While watching over the religious freedom in other countries, it would be good that Europe had some more proper monitoring of the situation within its borders.
As the Holy See keeps saying, religious freedom is “the freedom of all the freedoms,” a litmus test for the state of liberty in each country. The appointment of an EU special envoy for religious freedom will be a welcome thing, therefore. It is yet to be seen, however, what will be the precise mandate and the powers of the Office. It would be good to expand its scope to address the violations of religious freedom within the EU, as well.
State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell speaks at a daily news conference on the coronavirus situation in Stockholm, Sweden, June 8, 2020.(Andres Wiklund/via Reuters)
We have seen how the most vulnerable to death from COVID have been abused in this country with, for example, New York and other states’ ordering infected COVID patients to be admitted to nursing homes, spreading the disease.
But this is even more awful. Reports out of Sweden say that elderly COVID patients there were not only denied life-sustaining treatment at hospitals, but in some cases, were pushed over the edge into death in nursing homes. From the Bioedge story:
The health authorities have received many complaints about how elderly relatives were treated. A consistent theme is that nursing home residents with suspected Covid-19 were immediately placed on palliative care and given morphine and denied supplementary oxygen and intravenous fluids and nutrition. For many this was effectively a death sentence.
“People suffocated, it was horrible to watch. One patient asked me what I was giving him when I gave him the morphine injection, and I lied to him,” said Latifa Löfvenberg, a nurse. “Many died before their time. It was very, very difficult.”
How could that happen?
The problem seems to have been the guidelines issued by the National Board of Health and Welfare. At the start of the pandemic it suggested that doctors triage patients according to their so-called biological age, weighing overall health and the prospects for recovery, before making treatment decisions…
The idea was to keep hospital ICUs from being overwhelmed by older patients with a low chance of survival. However, the surge never happened. Instead, the elderly were denied access to unused facilities. “These guidelines have too often resulted in older patients being denied treatment, even when hospitals were operating below capacity,” according to critics who spoke to the WSJ. “Occupancy in the country’s intensive-care units, for instance, has yet to exceed 80%, according to government officials.”
That devolved into active killing:
Yngve Gustafsson, a geriatrics specialist at Umea University, told the BMJ that the proportion of older people in respiratory care nationally was lower than at the same time a year before, even though people over 70 were the worst affected by Covid-19. He, too, was aghast at the practice of doctors prescribing a “palliative cocktail” for sick older people in care homes over the telephone.
“Older people are routinely being given morphine and midazolam, which are respiratory-inhibiting,” he told the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper, “It’s active euthanasia, to say the least.”
That’s what happens when there is an explicitly invidious health-care rationing policy. The nuances get lost and the discriminated-against population are deemed better off dead.
Women in the aftermath of violence in Agatu, Benue, Nigeria in February 2016.
“The incessant killing is more dangerous than Coronavirus”
…The words of a community leader in central Nigeria – after coronavirus had reached his country – after an April attack in which nine people died, including a pregnant woman and her three year old.
His reaction is one of several testimonies – frequently harrowing to read, let alone to have experienced – that feature in an Inquiry into the scale of death and destruction caused by conflict occurring along the Christian-Muslim faultline running across the ‘Middle Belt’ of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation.
(However, since the Coronavirus pandemic, violence appears to have grown even as international media have been otherwise occupied).
“APPG members have been alarmed by the dramatic and escalating violence in Nigeria characterised as the farmer-herder conflict. This violence has manifested along ideological lines, as the herders are predominantly ethnic Fulani Muslims and the farmers are predominantly Christians. There has been significant debate about what factors are driving and exacerbating this crisis. Therefore, the APPG launched a parliamentary inquiry to help develop a nuanced understanding of the drivers of violence”.
The resulting report ‘Nigeria: Unfolding Genocide?’ points out that the violence has claimed the lives of thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more. It has caused untold human and economic devastation and heightened existing ethno-religious tensions. “The [age old farmer-herder] conflict has evolved from spontaneous reactions to provocations and now to deadlier planned attacks” it quotes the International Crisis Group as saying.
Despite the scale of the violence, the conflict is much less well known internationally than the 10 year long Boko Haram insurgency which has claimed over 30,000 lives (112 Chibok girls are still ‘missing’ after 6 years) and now its offshoot Islamic State West African Province’s (ISWAP) atrocities. These also feature in the APPG report and appear to have escalated in recent weeks and months. (In the latest Boko Haram-linked incidents this past week, over a hundred have died and hundreds more been injured; a UN humanitarian hub and a police station were reported burned down).
However, this APPG report echoes the Global Terrorist Index (GTI) 2019 by the Institute for Economics and Peace, which indicates that the primary driver of the increase in violence in sub-Saharan Africa is a rise in activity in Nigeria attributed, not to Boko Haram, ISWAP or Ansar ul Islam, but to Fulani militant extremists. In 2018, it appears Fulani extremists were responsible for the majority of terror-related deaths in Nigeria.
Its geographical footprint is also larger, with conflict manifesting in more States.[1] According to global NGO, Search for Common Ground (SfCG), “between 1 January 2019 and 1 January 2020, inter-communal violence represented the most severe threat to civilian lives in Nigeria.”[2]
In his report for the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office a year ago, the Bishop of Truro concluded “the religious dimension is a significantly exacerbating factor” in clashes between farmers and herders and “targeted violence against Christian communities in the context of worship suggests that religion plays a key part.”[3]
The Nigerian Government’s attempts to resolve the ethno-religious conflict have been ineffective; there seems to be no end in sight. The long-term consequences of failure to reduce the violence are severe, says the Inquiry: “There is the enormous cost in terms of human lives but there is also the potential for economic collapse, famine, further mass displacement of civilians and even more conflict, as the two major religious groups in the country become increasingly polarised”.
The Inquiry has taken evidence from a wide range of institutions, people and global NGOs, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the UK government, experts from Oxford University, the BBC, Search for Common Ground, Mercy Corps, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the Institute for Economics and Peace, Open Doors, Christian Solidarity International and many more. Nigerian expertise included a former Deputy Governor of the Nigerian Central Bank, the Muslim Public Affairs Centre Nigeria, the National Christian Elders Forum and the Forum on Farmer and Herder Relations in Nigeria.
This Inquiry found that Nigerian Christians experience devastating violence, with attacks by armed groups of Islamist Fulani herders resulting in the killing, maiming, dispossession and eviction of thousands. The exact death toll is unknown. However, one NGO, Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust – whose founder is Co-Chair of the APPG – quotes reliable reports that over 1,000 Christians were killed between January-November 2019, in addition to the estimated 6,000+ deaths since 2015.
The Inquiry acknowledges that there are multiple difficulties in capturing all available data and then verifying it, including inability to access areas in the aftermath of violence due to security concerns. World Watch Monitor’s former Africa Bureau Chief witnessed to the Inquiry on this from our reports on Nigeria over many years; for instance often early counts of victims are heavily under-reported by official sources.
These restrictions have been exacerbated by the Coronavirus crisis.
The Inquiry report notes that sometimes misinformation and even, occasionally, active disinformation can exacerbate the ability to gather credible reports from both sides of the ethnic-religious divide. The widespread use of social media without checking also contributes to violent incidents.
The APPG Inquiry quotes Mercy Corps’ report that this ethno-religious violence is costing the Nigerian economy £10.5 billion per year.[1]
It also acknowledges that the underlying causes of the herders-farmers conflict are deeply-rooted and complex.
Rapid population growth, climate change and desertification have decreased the water available for land and grazing and put pressure on resources. The UN estimates that “roughly 80% of the Sahel’s farmland is degraded [and] the land available to pastoralists [herders] is shrinking… Declining grain and food production is forcing pastoralists into a desperate search for fertile pasture.”[2] As herders travel further distances in search of water and land for grazing, they come into conflict with local farmers, who accuse the herders of encroaching onto their land and damaging their crops. Poor management of resources, urban growth, encroachment onto traditional grazing routes used by herders and land grabs by elites increases the pressure on land and resources.
On 26 February 2019, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice censured the inadequacy of the Nigerian Government’s efforts to protect citizens and investigate acts of violence involving farmers and herders. The court ordered the government to investigate the killing of about 500 people and the destruction of properties committed by Fulani herders in the AgatuCommunity in Benue State in 2016. The court stated that the Government “is obliged to protect the human rights of its citizens” and ordered the Government to identify and prosecute the perpetrators and redress the victims.[3]
The Co-Chair of the APPG, Baroness Cox argues: “While the underlying causes of violence are complex, the asymmetry and escalation of attacks by well-armed Fulani militia upon these predominately Christian communities are stark and must be acknowledged. Such atrocities cannot be attributed just to desertification, climate change or competition for resources, as [the UK] Government have claimed.”[4]
Vice Chair Lord Alton of Liverpool said: “Some local observers have gone so far as to describe the rising attacks as a campaign of ethno-religious cleansing. Armed with sophisticated weaponry, including AK47s and, in at least one case, a rocket launcher and rocket-propelled grenades, the Fulani militia have murdered more men, women and children in 2015, 2016 and 2017 than even Boko Haram, destroying, overrunning and seizing property and land, and displacing tens of thousands of people. This is organised and systematic.”[5]
The APPG’s Inquiry report is dedicated to Leah Sharibu, who at the age of 14 was abducted in 2018 by Islamist extremists from her school in Dapchi, north-east Nigeria. She was raped and impregnated, giving birth to a child, and has been denied her freedom for refusing to convert to Islam. Her case, while extreme, is symptomatic of the wider treatment of some Christian women and girls in northern Nigeria, to which President Buhari’s government apparently turns a blind eye, even when a State Governor is caught on video coercively converting a young teenager to Islam.
Leah Sharibu, aged 14, was abducted by Boko Haram 19 February, 2018. (Photo from family)
Footnotes are references in the APPG Inquiry report on Nigeria:
[1] Emmanuel Ogebe, ‘Rivers of Blood on The River Benue Parts 1& 2: Consolidated Human Rights Fact-Finding Report on Killings by Herdsmen in Nigeria’s Benue State In 2018’ (2018).
[2] Katie Smith, Analysis of ACLED Data, Search for Common Ground, Email Conversation with APPG Director, 24 Feb 2020.
[3] Rt. Rev. Philip Mounstephen Bishop of Truro, ‘Bishop of Truro’s Independent Review for the Foreign Secretary of the FCO Support for Persecution Christians’ (2019). Available at: https://christianpersecutionreview.org.uk/storage/2019/07/final-report-and-recommendations.pdf.
1] Andras Beszterczey, Testimony to APPG FoRB Inquiry, Mercy Corps, 22 November 2018.
[2] Robert Muggah and José Luengo Cabrera, ‘The Sahel is Engulfed by Violence. Climate Change, Food Insecurity and Extremists are Largely to Blame,’ World Economic Forum, 23 Jan 2019. Available at: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/all-the-warning-signs-are-showing-in-the-sahel-we-must-act-now/.
[3] The Economic Community of West African States Court of Justice, Rev. Fr. Solomon Mfa et al. v Federal Republic of Nigeria et al., Judgment No. ECW/CCJ/JUD/06/19, 26 February 2019, 29. Available at: http://prod.courtecowas.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/JUD_ECW_CCJ_JUD_06_19.pdf.
[4] House of Lords Hansard, 7 January 2020, col.123
[5] House of Lords Hansard, 28 June 2018, cols.284-285
György Hölvényi MEP
Source: 
Leah Sharibu, aged 14, was abducted by Boko Haram 19 February, 2018. (Photo from family)