Brights News Feed

In October 2000 a Pakistani, Dr Younus Sheikh, was arrested on the charge of “blasphemy” and he was later found guilty and sentenced to death. He had been an active humanist and campaigner, and only after a concerted effort on behalf of humanist and other NGOs and rights groups was he finally freed in 2004, after three years spent mostly in solitary confinement.

This week, another man who by coincidence is also named Younus Sheikh — a writer who has criticized Islam — has been found guilty of “blasphemy” and sentenced to life in prison. And once again, the media outrage is limited — at this moment there are just two related news stories on Google, one from Pakistani newspaper The News, and the other from the UK’s National Secular Society.

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The IHEU’s former President, Roy Brown, has made a series of criticisms against the Human Rights Council to which he is now the IHEU’s representative at the UN.

Even in his worst nightmares former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan could hardly have dreamed when he called for the replacement of the failing Commission for Human Rights by a new Human Rights Council, that he was driving the first nail into the coffin of human rights at the United Nations (Roy Brown reports from Geneva). The last nail was hammered home on Tuesday 19 June 2007 when, after a year of often heated debate, the Council adopted without a vote a new set of procedures that will permanently limit its ability to deal effectively with human rights violations. […]

The root cause of the problem in the Council is the geographical distribution of its membership. The African and Asian states have an in-built majority. Whilst this can be justified by the number of states and the populations involved, it enables a group of states, euphemistically called the “like-minded” group, to control the Council. Sadly, these states, as diverse as China, India, Pakistan and Cuba, are like-minded only in their determination to shield one another from accusations of human rights abuse.

See “A Catastrophe for Human Rights“. Also see last week’s “Is the Council of Europe really impartial on religion?” and today’s “Council of Europe rejects report calling creationism “dangerous” and a “threat to human rights“.

The government has responded to a faith schools petition on the Downing Street website. The petition read:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ban within government-funded schools the promotion or practice of any particular faith or religion. […] Faith-based or sect schools encourage and propagate divisions within our society. Schools should be places where our children are taught to think about the world around them and come to their own conclusions. In short, they should be taught, not only about the profusion of religions and faiths but also about how moral and socially responsible lives can be led without them; rather than, at a time before they have sufficiently developed critical faculties, being indoctrinated.

The government response follows below.

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The Catholic hierarchy has in the last few months raised criticism in Scotland, South America and in Italy due to increased “moral” or political meddling over various issues. Its most recent act of pontification (as it were) is over Amnesty International’s refusal to concur with the papacy’s demands on abortion policy. The president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Renato Martino, last week encouraged Catholics to withdraw support from Amnesty because the organization advocates the decriminalization of abortion in cases where rape or abuse for example have taken place.

The Cardinal said “By pushing for the decriminalization of abortion as part of their platform, Amnesty International has disqualified itself as a defender of human rights”, and he suggested that Catholics should withdraw financial support from the internationally respected human rights lobby group.

Interestingly the backlash has come not only from Amnesty, and other human rights campaigners, and secularists concerned about undue religious intervention in humanitarian matters, but from many ordinary Catholics increasingly disenfranchised from the hierarchy. Ekklesia, for example, carries a typical response from one Catholic.

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A 17-year-old woman from Ireland known only as Miss D had been told by the Health Service Executive (HSE) that she needed permission to travel abroad because she was seeking an abortion, which is against the law under almost all circumstances in Ireland, where many political and legal debates retain heavy Catholic influence. Miss D is four months pregnant and the foetus has anencephaly and will not survive long after birth. Even this does not constitute legal ground for abortion in Ireland.

Today the High Court ruled that the HSE’s decision that Miss D could not travel abroad for an abortion was entirely without merit and that no such law restricting her right to travel existed. Mr Justice Liam McKechnie also rebuked the HSE for trying to shoehorn her case into a model which they (falsely) believed necessary in order for her to travel abroad — they had advised her to claim that she was suicidal. The Justice praised Miss D’s moral stance of refusing to comply with the request and her courage in the face of her ad hoc travel ban.

Also see RTE News.

UPDATE (11 May): And Joan Bakewell has an astute comment piece in the Independent.

The International Campaign Against Honour Killings (ICAHK) reports a large demonstration yesterday in Arbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, against so-called “honour” killings, and against the large mob-murder of one young woman, Du’a Khalil Aswad, in particular. Hers is only one story; the UN has already recorded 40 such “honour” killings in the Kurdistan region over a three-month period this year.

ICAHK’s full story follows, of the tragic circumstances which led to her death and the brutal nature of the murder itself. The ICAHK are running a petition to the Kurdistan regional government, here.

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Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced yesterday (release) that — following a decade long debate and a lawsuit — the Department of Veterans Affairs had finally settled with them. Americans United said: “The litigation charged that denying a pentacle to deceased Wiccan service personnel, while granting religious symbols to those of other traditions, violated the U.S. Constitution.” The Veterans Affairs department has agreed to add the neo-pagan pentacle to the list of 38 other symbols which it already approves for engraving on the memorial markers of deceased service members.

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A couple from Powys, Wales, have been pursued by a church in Warwickshire for seventeen years under the auspices of an archaic law which holds them responsible to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds of church repair costs, despite the couple having nothing to do with the church in question.

Today a High Court judge upheld around half of the church’s claims, landing the Wallbanks with a colossal bill of £186,969 plus VAT. The couple will be forced to sell their farm in Powys, the source of their livlihood, to pay for the Warwickshire church of St John the Baptist’s bills. And of course, they still cannot sell the land in Warwickshire that comes with the repair liability because of what Gail Wallbank called the “vicious circle” that the obligation puts them in, i.e. no one will buy the land. In response to today’s verdict she accused the church of “not living by its teaching” and of hiding behind the “archaic law”.

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The lawyer for the Jehovah’s Witness parents of premature sextuplets (earlier reporting), two of which have since died, yesterday called the bringing of the children into state care an “unwarranted interference”. Two of the children have now received blood transfusions on doctors’ advice, under state mandate. The parents are taking the provincial government to court, claiming that the intervention violated their religious rights.

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The debate is over. Despite threats from the Catholic Church — backed by the Church of England, and regarded as “blackmail” by many — that their adoption agencies would be closed if they were forced to treat gay couples the same as heterosexual couples, the British Government has today confirmed that the Sexual Orientations Regulations in the Equality Act will apply to religious institutions. A transitional period will stretch to 2008. It may or may not herald the closure of the agencies, but either way it will ensure that vulnerable children will not be neglected, Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly insisted.

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