West Papua

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they have made to the government of Indonesia concerning human rights abuses in West Papua.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)]

My Lords, we raise our concerns about West Papua on a regular basis. Our ambassador and his staff visit West Papua periodically, most recently last month. President Joko Widodo has committed to a peaceful and prosperous West Papua and taken steps to improve the situation there. We support these initiatives and would like to see further progress in implementing the President’s vision. We will continue to engage with the Indonesian authorities on this issue.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

I thank the Minister for her reply. Sadly, however, human rights violations have dramatically increased since 2014, particularly the denial of the West Papuans’ right to freedom of expression. A particularly sinister development is the appointment of retired General Wiranto, who has been indicted by a UN-sponsored tribunal for crimes against humanity. Despite what President Widodo has said about free and fair access to the press, that is simply not the case. Therefore, will Her Majesty’s Government support what is now a range of nations in the South Pacific that are continuing to raise these issues at the General Assembly of the United Nations?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, we should recognise that overall the human rights situation in Indonesia has improved significantly since the late 1990s. Of course, we have some specific concerns, including about respect for some communities, and the noble and right reverend Lord has raised specific issues about West Papua. Throughout all these issues of concern on human rights it is important to note that the President has made it clear that he pays more attention than his predecessors to the importance of the future prosperity of West Papua—and it is the case that prosperity tends to follow proper respect for human rights, which we uphold through the UN.

LGBTI: Human Rights Conference

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My noble friend is right to raise this. The UK Government believe that laws to criminalise consensual same-sex relations are wrong and should be changed and this underpins the work that we do, both as Ministers and throughout our posts around the world. We have, of course, carried out a lot of lobbying on this and I am very pleased to see that Mozambique recently changed its penal code so that “acts against nature”, which had previously been widely interpreted as homosexuality, have now been decriminalised.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

Would the Minister say that there were some positive results from the recent Commonwealth conference, and will she ensure that those who go to the next conference take those positive results with them?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

Indeed. That is a very important point. Both my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and my noble friend Lady Verma, the DfID Minister, raised these issues at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. In fact, my noble friend Lady Verma held a side event on these very issues. I have undertaken to take these matters forward at the Human Rights Council and in the United Nations.

India: Human Rights

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the current human rights situation in India.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)]

My Lords, India has a strong democratic framework and its constitution guarantees fundamental human rights. However, it also faces numerous challenges relating to its size and its social and economic development. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister discussed human rights with Prime Minister Modi during his visit in November and welcomed Mr Modi’s commitment to preserve India’s traditions of tolerance and social harmony and to promote inclusive development.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

I thank the Minister for her reply. India does, indeed, have vast problems because of its size, but the human rights situation is extremely worrying in a number of aspects. My particular concern is access to justice for minority groups and, in particular, for the Dalits. Every week 13 Dalits are murdered and five have their homes burned, and every day three Dalit women are raped. The problem is that while legal mechanisms are in place, their enforcement and implementation are weak or non-existent. Will Her Majesty’s Government encourage the Indian authorities to strengthen the whole legal justice system so that perpetrators are charged and brought to justice?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the noble and right reverend Lord is right to point to the importance of implementation of laws where they exist on these matters. The British High Commission in India regularly discusses the treatment of minorities with India’s National Commission for Minorities and with state governments across India. It is important that we are able to continue dialogue with India about how best it can implement the strong legislation it already has.

Nepal

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I have seen reports such as those that the noble Baroness has carefully described. The World Food Programme has an agreement with the Minister for Supplies to fly in fuel from Calcutta—that is a recent development—but there would still be challenges in storing and distributing the fuel once it had arrived. The noble Baroness points very properly to the importance of the Nepali Government ensuring that there is fair distribution.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister may be aware that the Dalits, who were expecting much greater representation under the new constitution, are bitterly disappointed by it. They represent some 13% of the population and have suffered centuries of discrimination and marginalisation. Will Her Majesty’s Government, in their relationships with the Nepalese Government, encourage them to take positive steps—economic, political and social—to ensure that the Dalits and other minorities are fully included in the development plans for the country?

LGBTI Citizens Worldwide

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, I am very glad to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, for initiating it and for his excellent speech, as well as for the excellent speeches of so many of your Lordships.

As has been made abundantly clear by all those who have spoken, LGBTI people worldwide face an appalling, inhumane situation. Same-sex intimacy between consenting adults in private, which is now regarded as a fundamental right in Europe, remains a crime in 78 jurisdictions. LGBTI people are liable to be arrested, imprisoned, harassed, blackmailed and, in eight jurisdictions, still put to death. To avoid criminal prosecution they have to live lives that are isolated, fearful and above all subject to humiliation.

Again, as has also been made clear, we are dealing not just with a few people but with millions. On a conservative to moderate estimate that 2% to 6% of adults in the general population identify as LGBTI, we are talking about 58 million to 174 million people. In India alone, there are 41 million to 63 million people who are potential criminals as a result of the law.

The Human Dignity Trust, which does such excellent work on this issue, helpfully sets out 10 recommendations to the Government on how this issue can be made a fundamental feature of policy, and eight spheres in which action can and should be taken. Others among your Lordships have mentioned many of these actions, all of which I very strongly support. However, I want to focus on one area that the trust did not address: namely, religion. There is no avoiding the fact that hostility to same-sex relationships is shaped and fuelled by the teaching of most religions, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, so eloquently indicated. We cannot sensibly address this challenge without facing the uncomfortable truth head-on. In the Middle East, the dominant religion is obviously Islam. In the target areas that the Human Dignity Trust suggests—the Caribbean, west Africa, southern Africa and parts of the Pacific—it is Christianity.

On the whole, religious institutions, like all institutions, are slow to change. There is an understandable rationale to this, in that their role is to garner the insights of the past and convey them through time and space to future generations. But, as Cardinal Newman said:

“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often”.

Religious institutions, while remaining true to their foundational principles, have to unfold and develop in response to the new insights of each generation. Inevitably, in every age there will be turbulence caused by disputes about what is an authentic development and what leads people astray. This process of discernment is not any easy one. Change can take a long time but it can take place: we know it has happened in at least some churches.

That change can take two forms. One is a change in the teaching itself, so that churches might come to see committed lifelong partnerships between people of the same sex in the same way that they understand marriage—in the lovely words of the Book of Common Prayer,

“signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church”.

The other change, which is the one I want to focus on, does not involve any change in the teaching on the issue itself, at least in the short term, but involves an acceptance of the civil sphere as valid in its own right. Some Christians, while not able to accept same-sex marriage as a Christian option, have, however reluctantly—some have been very reluctant indeed—come to accept civil partnerships as a valid option for society as a whole. It is that second kind of change that I believe we have to work to achieve first in relation to conservative religious institutions.

In short, church leaders and institutions in those countries where LGBTI people are criminalised have to be urged to make a distinction between teaching which may be applicable for their own members in their private lives and the basic rights and dignity that need to be accorded to everyone in their society, whatever their religion or belief. Of course, working through secular channels to challenge the laws in those countries is fundamental. But behind those laws is a culture, as the noble Lords, Lord Black and Lord Paddick, mentioned and stressed—very often, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, said, a “toxic” culture. That toxic culture is, sadly, intertwined with religion.

It is no secret that the Anglican Communion has become very frayed at the edges on this issue. That is what I wrote in the first draft of this speech, but from what we read on the front page of some papers today, “frayed” is much too weak a word. The churches in countries such as Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda are taking a very conservative and hard line and see themselves as quite apart from churches in North America. Nor is that the sum of it: the frontier of the culture wars in the USA has moved to Africa, with conservative forces in America lining up with and reinforcing the conservative forces in some African countries, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, quite rightly mentioned. Indeed there is evidence, which the Human Dignity Trust has on film, of some American churches actively proselytising in Uganda with a view to strengthening hard-line attitudes to gay and lesbian people.

In those countries, the Christian churches have been and continue to be very strong. In contrast to Europe, they are a major influence in shaping the lives of people. If it is unrealistic to think of changing the minds of those churches on the issue itself in the short term, what can and should be done is to work on getting them to accept the legitimacy of the civil sphere, and, in particular, laws which protect the rights of minorities, not least LGBTI people.

The way that such people are treated in those countries is an affront to any concept of human decency, and the church must be challenged to see that its support for their criminalisation is a direct cause of this. It is an offence against the human person: the unique value and dignity of the individual, whatever their sexuality. It is a violation of everything that the Christian faith is meant to stand for. As a minimum, those states must be urged to act against those who commit acts of violence against LGBTI people.

In its excellent set of recommendations, the UNHCR recommended among other things that those states should:

“Conduct prompt and thorough investigations of incidents of violence against LGBT citizens, holding perpetrators to account and providing redress to victims”.

Further, they should:

“Collect data on the incidence of such offences”.

Of course, such offences are encouraged by the harsh laws, and there can be no fundamental change until the laws themselves are repealed, but states can be urged to see that such violence is criminal even by their own standards, and churches must be forced to see that, whatever their teaching, this kind of cruelty is totally unacceptable and they must speak out against it.

The UNHCR and the Human Dignity Trust outlined various forms of action that can be taken in the way of working for legislative reform, highlighting breaches of human rights according to the UN charter, working with businesses, and so on. All these are important, but behind the opposition to change will be a highly influential culture that has been soaked with religious attitudes, and this must be faced.

I have not addressed this issue in relation to Islam, and I recognise that the challenge there is even greater: first, because of the decisive influence Islam has over so many societies; and, secondly, because of the claim that its teaching applies to all society in all its aspects. The distinction between a secular sphere with its own legitimacy and the religious one is not one that is natural to Islam—at least as it has developed so far—but it has always been a proper option for Christian churches, and it is this that the churches in countries that have harsh penal laws against LGBTI citizens must be urged to see.

As a number of your Lordships mentioned, there is a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta. Some 40 members of the Commonwealth’s 53 countries still criminalise homosexuality: the laws are a hangover from the time of the British Empire. The Royal Commonwealth Society has written about these laws:

“This harsh legal situation is exacerbated by wider discriminatory social attitudes and in some cases violence”.

It states that the situation is now very,

“polarised between those in favour of improving LGBT rights and those who are more reluctant”.

So the November conference is not going to be easy.

Behind those wider discriminatory attitudes there is a strong religious influence because, as I mentioned, most of those Commonwealth countries still have a strong Christian presence and continuing influence. That has to be addressed. I know that the main focus of diplomatic work is Government to Government, but there are opportunities to relate to wider civic society.

My concern, of which I hope that the Government take account, is that all those involved in setting up diplomatic meetings or organising conferences recognise the key role that Christian leaders play in many of the countries which have the most conservative attitudes, such as Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda. If they are not to change their church teaching, they might be encouraged at least to acknowledge, and to help their churches to acknowledge, the validity of the civil sphere in its own right as safeguarding the rights and dignity of all human beings, whatever their sexuality.

I recognise that the main responsibility lies with the Christian churches here to help the churches in those countries to acknowledge the validity of this distinction, but I believe that our Government, through our normal diplomatic channels and intergovernmental agencies, also have opportunities to engage with wider civic society. Here, the Christian leaders, especially in the countries I mentioned, the Anglican archbishops and bishops, have an influential role. They themselves need to be decisively influenced to speak out for the human rights of LGBTI people.