Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on May 12th, 2016

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Religious persecution is related to the repression of other human rights.

[Julia Bicknell]

We talk a lot about human rights, and I would say that the fundamental human right that we all have is freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. That is number one. As a human being, that is the one everything else stems from, in a sense.

Of course, if people of one religious persuasion decide that other members of their population are not allowed to have that same freedom, that's when you get religious conflict and that's when you get religious persecution. If we're standing for human rights, then we have to stand for that fundamental human right of freedom of religion.

In the U.K. we're very clear: we say “freedom of religion or belief”, and that includes the right not to have a religion and the freedom to hold a belief.

When we have our all-party parliamentary group on freedom of religion or belief, a representative of the British Humanist Association is involved there. He is very much part of that group, but he's alongside the Baha'i, the Ahmadiyya, the Sikhs, and the Hindus as well.

You can't ignore people's right to chose their religion when you are defending other human rights.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

We've been doing a study of the Rohingya Muslim population in Myanmar. I don't know if you're familiar with Myanmar at all, but if you are, could you give us some advice about what we might recommend in our study on how to deal with some of these issues and the way religious minorities are being treated in that country?

[Julia Bicknell]

I visited Burma, as I call it, about three years ago. Of course, I'm really delighted that although Aung San Suu Kyi is not actually leading the country, she's very involved in leading the country. I know there have been decisions and some disquiet that she hasn't spoken out as strongly as she might have done, or a lot of people would like her to have done, about the plight of the Rohingya. I know there's also a discussion as to whether we, or rather they, should even use the term Rohingya.

My colleague and friend Benedict Rogers, an activist with Christian Solidarity Worldwide, is a real expert on the Rohingya, particularly in Burma. From my experience of Burma and looking at Burma, it does seem very strange that the government has introduced a law forbidding a person of one religion from marrying a person of another religion. I just don't get that. It just seems so strange. Of course they want to preserve the Burman identity of the majority population, but I don't see how that is actually going to be the way to go about it, and I don't think many Canadian citizens would—

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Ms. Bicknell, I'm going to ask you to wrap up that answer. Would you like another 10 seconds?

[Julia Bicknell]

No, that's fine. I think I've made my main point. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

The second question is going to come from Ms. Khalid.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you very much, Ms. Bicknell, for coming in today and giving us this presentation. It's definitely an honour to have you here and to listen to your perspective.

I think it was Weber who said that religion is the opium of the masses. Having been born in Pakistan myself, I have experienced first-hand the troubles undergone by countries like Pakistan, where religion seems to dominate the discussion and seems to be the dominant reason for conflict.

You've had experience with many other different countries. Is there a basic socio-economic reason that you think really defines religious conflicts in these regions? Do you think there are reasons other than religion, underlying core reasons, that could initiate conflict in these areas?

[Julia Bicknell]

I think Pakistan is a particular case, because obviously, going back to 1947 and partition—and again, I'm sorry, I'm a Brit, and the British were the colonial power—it was decided that they would carve out a separate country to accommodate the Muslim population, the vast millions of population that were part of colonial India. In a sense Pakistan was set up for the Muslims.

However, Jinnah, its founder, was very clear. He said this is a country of all faiths, and he named the minority faiths, and he said Pakistan is for all of them. That was what his vision was. It was never to become a country in which someone who does not hold Islam as their faith should be a second-class citizen or discriminated against.

As I see it, and you may know Pakistani history better than I do, people like General Zia brought in the blasphemy law in 1987. He said they were going down a path of Islamization, that this was going to be enshrined in law. That law, dare I say—and many people around the world agree—has been abused to settle land scores, to settle disputes with neighbours, etc.

Now, there are a whole lot factors, as you and I know. Again, my facts are a bit out of date, but when I was a correspondent there, Pakistan spent something like 65% of its GNP on its military. That meant it wasn't spending it on schools, hospitals, roads, infrastructure, whatever; it was spending it on its military.

Why is it spending on the military? Because it's afraid of war with India, and other such things. If you have a country that's spending 65% of its GNP on its military, that means you have very high levels, similar levels, of illiteracy amongst the majority population. Therefore you have all those factors that go along with it. There is poverty, lack of money, leading to lack of education. When you don't have money, you can't buy health, so you have all these problems.

I think creating a country for Muslims out of India combined with a lot of other factors. Then you throw in Afghanistan, you throw in what was happening there with the rise of the Taliban. Let's not forget that I was there in the 1990s. The Americans, the ISI in Pakistan.... There was a lot behind the creation of what is now the Taliban, and we shouldn't be ignorant of that. I think if you throw in Afghanistan and throw in al Qaeda, you have a country that has a lot of problems with its religious minority.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you for that.

You have mentioned that the fundamental right that every person has is the right to religion and the right to belief. I will respectfully disagree. I think it's the right to life, liberty, and security of person, that fundamental right as to whether we can exist or not, and I don't think that should be based on what we believe in at all.

As our colleague mentioned, we have been studying the Rohingya Muslims specifically and the whole plight of that region in general. My question to you is, are there any socio-economic concerns that, if alleviated, could help the plight of specifically those people in that region?

[Julia Bicknell]

I have friends in Pakistan now who are working on the educational curriculum of Pakistan, and you might have seen that there was a recent report just a few weeks ago. I think the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, or one of those bodies, did a report on the education system and the textbooks in Pakistan. When you look at the textbooks, you see that right from the very beginning children are taught that those people who are Ahmadi, those people who are of Christian background—I can't even remember the language—are described in language that I would hate to see in my educational textbooks.

There are some positive initiatives I've seen and reported about, actually, which bring majority faith and minority faith together in dialogue. In places like Lahore, they are getting together and getting to know the other, but they have to overcome all of this, dare I say, misinformation and miseducation about what these people are in their midst. I think the education system would be a really good place to start.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

You have 45 seconds.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Then I'll just pass. My question's a bit longer than that, but that's fine. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Fair enough. All right.

We have a guest on the committee today, MP Weir.

You're up.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thanks very much for having me at this committee. I appreciate your testimony.

Regina's St. James Anglican Church is in the middle of my riding, and it has been involved in sponsoring two families of Iraqi Christian refugees. I've attended some fundraisers in support of that project, so I have met Christians who speak Arabic and I appreciated the point that you made.

I should perhaps clarify that the congregation was quite open to sponsoring refugees of any faith, but the initial family was Christian, and I think that family played a role in identifying another related family to bring over.

On this theme of the persecution of Christians, I did want to just touch on the Open Doors World Watch List. The top violators of the religious freedom of Christians seem to be countries that have dictatorial governments and a history of conflict.

Could you speak a little bit about the relationship between conflict and religious persecution?

[Julia Bicknell]

That's a big question. When you say the “relationship”, could you be a bit more precise about what's behind your question?

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

We're trying to get at the root causes of religious persecution, at why it happens and how it can be alleviated and prevented. You could, I suppose, speak to any factors that might help us with that evaluation, but I wonder if there are certain types of characteristics that would cause this problem in certain countries.

[Julia Bicknell]

If you look at many countries around the world, you'll see that there's a whole combination of factors.

I live in London. It's a very multicultural city. We've just elected our first Muslim mayor. I live side by side with people from different backgrounds and I don't have a problem with that, but in many of these countries, if you think about it, what's happening is the other, the other person. They have more money, they have a bigger house. They have privilege, they have this, this, and this, and if I'm poor and I don't have a job and I don't have any prospects of a job, if I feel that I am marginalized in my own society, or whatever it might be, I am likely to take it out against the other.

If, as I go about that, I'm hearing that the other is maybe not to be trusted, maybe always corrupt or whatever—as I was talking about in the Pakistani educational system—If that is in me from childhood or if I'm in a society where the narrative I've grown up with is these people are evil or these people are this, that, and the other, then of course when I come to it with all of those factors and a man comes along and offers, in some cases I've heard about, $20 or $50 to join Boko Haram or join Islamic State or whatever, I have to say that tends to appeal to a particular type of person.

Those are the factors that feed into a community turning against another community.

So yes, there are all the social and economic factors, and politicians can play a part as well. Politicians are very good at using religion to whip up a particular position, saying that if you support me, you will do this to those people or whatever. I'm sorry to say that the church can and in the past in my country, back in the 1600s, has used the other, as in “We don't want the other. They're evil. They're wrong. We will get rid of them. We'll kill them.”

That's what's happening. It's a whole complex system of factors, I think.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

In terms of the role of the church, Pope Francis has been fairly outspoken about the persecution of Christians around the world. Do you believe his efforts have been effective? Have they made a difference?

[Julia Bicknell]

I'm an admirer of Pope Francis. He's living out his Christian faith through the very practical things he does in washing the feet of homeless people and those very tangible symbols that he enacts in his own life. When he goes to a refugee camp like the one on the island of Lesbos, in Greece, and he meets the refugees and talks to them and takes some of them back on his plane to Rome, I think he is showing what living out his Christian witness is all about.

I think he's also drawing attention to the fact that many of these refugees are in fact Christian—not all of them, of course, by any means. He's allowing that discussion to get into the mainstream of society to increase the understanding of the factors that have driven Christians, if they've been in a country like Syria or Iraq, to get on a boat and try to cross over from, say, Turkey to Greece—all these things I've talked about, such as discrimination in jobs, in education, or in employment.

In Eritrea, certain churches are registered. Anyone who is not a member of those five registered churches not only risks military conscription, which affects everybody, but also is completely without opportunity to practise their own faith, so eventually they jump on boats or they cross Africa first, which is in itself a massive achievement, and try to come to the U.K. or to France.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thank you.

In terms of the work you've been doing, could you speak to the main barriers to investigative journalism on human rights abuses? Are there things that Canada could be doing to try to promote and facilitate that work around the world?

[Julia Bicknell]

The main barriers are just protecting our sources and protecting the people whose story we want to tell. Quite often they're terrified, and the last thing they want is for us to spread in the media the story of what's happened to them, so we're always dealing with a very complex discussion about whether we can name them.

As you know, when we as journalists verify our sources, one of the key things is to ask where we got our information and how we know what we know. If we're talking to someone who's in fear for their life, who's maybe deeply traumatized but who has witnessed an atrocity, the last thing we want to do is to risk having them victimized again, either immediately or later. Maybe their family could be targeted.

When we interview people who've come even as far as the U.K., often they say, “I'm happy to talk to you, but I do not want you to put my name out there, because my family are back in the country and they may get killed”. A country like Iran is a good case in point. You might have someone who's converted from Islam to Christianity, who's found their way to Europe, and they are being harassed. Maybe they're being taunted; maybe they're even being attacked by other refugees in a refugee camp. Two of my reporters have been to one of the refugee camps and have met these people, and they're very afraid for their family back in their own country.

That's the key thing: building the relationship, having them trust you, being able to trust what they say to you, and also checking them out.

I'll give you a very practical example. I was talking to my colleague, a woman called Lindsey Hilsum, who's the chief international correspondent of Channel 4. She went to the refugee camps and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Ms. Bicknell, can I ask you to finish?

[Julia Bicknell]

Yes, let me just finish this one; it's quite interesting. She said that because the German government had said it would take Syrian refugees, everybody was claiming to be Syrian, so she was starting to say to them, “What's your name? Which part of Syria are you from?” She said it was amazing how many of them were not in fact from Syria; they were Afghans or they were from other countries.

But of course she knows, because she has that experience, the same way I do. If someone says to me—

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you.

Because we have only about 10 or 12 minutes left, if it's okay with the committee, I'm going to suggest we move to shorter questions for this period. That way we can get through everybody with a three-minute question.

Starting with that, it would be Mr. Tabbara.