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Good afternoon everyone.
On behalf of the NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief in New York
and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, I welcome
you to this
meeting. It's a briefing by Professor Heiner Bielefeldt,
the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief,
but I would like to call it a celebration.
A celebration of the mandate,
twenty-five years of his mandate and thirty years
since the declaration
1981 declaration and
I don't have my papers before me because I
can never get that name right my
Vice-Chair, Matt, has it down pat.
But, anyway, you have it in your program
and I’m not going to try to take too much time talking but I want to
let you know that we have some membership forms for our NGO Committee we'd love to have
a breath of input and
collaboration so I’m going to put them out there. It's only 25 dollars to
Join, per year.
But, anyhow, we're very happy you're all here
and even more delighted to have Heiner Bielefeldt with us.
Thank you.
Thanks again, also for
your hospitality.
I remember very well last year when I had
my first speech to the General Assembly
shortly
after taking the post from Asma Jahangir,
who I think you all hold in high esteem.
I also had the opportunity to address
you in CONGO meeting
and at that time
last year we had a discussion on everything
and I gave a short presentation on how to understand my mandate,
because it was very new.
I think we should do the same thing in terms of the discussion. And to discuss
literally everything you are interested in
but I wouldn't
repeat the same things from what I said last year
about
the mandate, in general,
but rather if you'd allow me
let me
summarize in five minutes
gist of my thematic report that I've
just presented to the
Third Committee of the General Assembly
and then we may decide to discus that.
But feel free raise all sorts of questions or to make your comments on whatever you'd
like as long as it's slightly related to
our common topic freedom of religion or belief.
So, very briefly,
the thematic report
on the role of the state
in promoting inter-religious communication and
as always
when saying something
on the topic of freedom of religion or belief, I would like to say it again.
The most shocking experience
when dealing with
cases of violation of freedom of religion or belief is the
extreme degree of hatred
that you frequently
come across.
Extreme manifestations of hatred
I think you all know
what I have in mind,
but let me cite
two of three examples, nothing new to you but sometimes we have to say it,
nevertheless. I mean things like
the following, in a
situation of natural disaster like the flood in Pakistan you would expect
that people stand united
against the tsunami against
natural disasters and that they feel we have to
base our cooperation on our common
humanity. But then,
I received reports, including from the organizational of Asma Jahangir,
that even in that extreme situation
religious minorities were
partially excluded from shelters from life-saving shelters.
Just imagine what that means.
in such a situation.
But everyone under threat that some people are
excluded just because of their
different religious or belief,
orientation,
or something
that I recently
experienced when I did my country mission in Moldova.
I heard repeatedly
stories, especially from Protestant Groups
saying that when they wanted to
burry their dead
family members
they often had difficulties to enter
the graveyard.
The graveyard owned by the municipality
but in a way also claimed by the Orthodox Church
Hegemonic Orthodox Church has claimed it as their graveyard.
and again imagine what that means. If
a family, the bereaved family, has just lost their
mother father, brother, sister
can not hold a funeral under dignified circumstances. Imagine what degree of hatred that is.
And we have countless examples,
countless examples,
and that's why
this is something that really worries me
and which I will never be able to understand.
But knowing I will never be able to understand it
one has of course
to look for possible reasons.
And so what my
my feeling is
that very often
these manifestations of hatred are connected to
two sources
to a combination of
fear and contempt.
Fear that sometimes can escalate to paranoia.
Stoked paranoia. Politically fabricated paranoia.
And then contempt,
also fabricated.
So it's not natural. I think hate is not a natural thing.
It's natural that people have fear. It's natural that people want to have reasons for
why they feel afraid.
but those who give the easy answers, they fabricate hatred.
Political entrepreneurism.
And then in coping with that
with the two sources
that paradoxically combine sources of
hatred.
It's paradoxical, because I mean your fear of someone who is
indeed more powerful
with contempt it's the other way around, you look down on people.
And also two sources of
aggressiveness can emerge. Aggressiveness from a feeling of
vulnerability of your group, and a feeling of moral superiority of your group.
And that is very dangerous and of course one has to do something about it.
One has to do with a lot of things
like education, education, education,
like media work.
Being present in the media.
Not restrictions on the media
freedom
but more creativity
and collaboration with the media.
many many many things and one element of what we have to do is
communication, inter-religious communication.
That's why I chose that as the topic of my
current thematic report:
inter-religious communication and the role of the state.
So I think
communications has to play a role
because I mean we don't have an eternity. The only way
of overcoming
hatred is
by facilitating encounters of people.
It will not solve all the problems.
It's not that then people will naturally love one another,
but what it can facilitate is at least
to overcome these stereotypical pictures. I mean,
if you really meet people you
will discover they are human beings.
Human beings are diverse.
We don't have only
the diversity of this group or that group
but also a lot of inner diversity as well.
You will find common ground, you will find also limits of understanding,
but you will always see
people are different.
You can communicate with people. Sometimes
in a very productive way, sometimes in a less productive way.
There are limits. But to discover that
the humanness of all human beings and and the diversity, the real diversity that goes
beyond dichotomies of groupings,
predefined groupings.
I think this is very healthy, it's healthy. So it should be encouraged it should
be promoted. The state
has to play a role because on the freedom of religion or beliefs, the states
are not only obliged to respect freedom of religion or belief
but also to
protect it and also to promote it which means also promoting
a general societal atmosphere of mutual appreciation, of tolerance, of
appreciating diversity, which is not always easy. It’s not about having a harmonized
picture of society. I'm always skeptical when people invoke too much harmony.
Life is not easy. Life is complicated.
And we have to cope with difficulties with
limits of understanding, but at least we have to meet. We have to communicate and the state
must play a role in that.
That's why I am
calling upon states to do that
by using what is available to them
including simply
encouragement of inter-religious communication because as social psychology has
clearly demonstrated
encounters of people
are productive if they take place in the general atmosphere of societal
appreciation.
I mean, if there
is a general appreciation an
affirmative attitude towards
such direct projects it helps.
Then states can of course use their financial resources and they can also invite
religious groups and sometimes it's only through faith activities that some of the groups meet
Which, I mean,
on the voluntary base. I mean it should still be voluntary
but sometimes one has to a person or authority to take an initiative.
So, this is the positive
message I want to
convey in the report.
States have an obligation and they have possibilities.
But it's not only the positive
message.
At the same time,
I point to some
possible side-effects sometimes
unintended side-effects, sometimes intended side-effects, one never know.
And negative side effects I mean even inter-religious communication which I'm
very in favor, of course,
can have negative
side effects.
I think you all know what I mean
because very often it's the
prestigious projects between the big guys
as I always said the big bearded guys. I count myself among them.
I'm not the only one here,
luckily, I'm not the only one. So the big bearded guy is reaching out
with his cameras,
videotaping that, the big bearded guys.
Male.
I think most bearded guys mostly are male.
Okay.
And what's missing, then?
Female voices.
Women are very present
on grass root level, on the informal levels, but on the formal and higher levels,
rarely, not really.
What is also missing is
less
known groups.
We have lots of talk about Christian-Islamic dialogue
and I'm all for it, I'm in favor of it
and pro, of course.
Christian-Jewish dialogue,
and again I'm in favor of it
but you'd hardly would find, let's say,
dialogue projects between Christian minority groups and the Mormons.
Mainstream groups and not the majority.
Christian mainstream groups and the Mormons
and Jehovah’s Witnesses are more complicated
or between mainstream Islamic groups and Ahmadis
or ***’ite Muslim groups and Bahá'ís
or Muslims and atheists.
So, we have the typical settings
and again I mean, I’m repeating myself, I’m in favor
but you realize sometimes that some things are missing
and it can even happen that at the end of the day,
those who used to be marginalized end up
becoming even more marginalized.
If the women are never there,
if some groups are not present
and if intra-religious diversity is not taken into account because dialogue projects are very often count
on the big guys and
those representing the mainstream, you want to have a real Pope
rather than a crazy dissident.
The real Popes, the real ***’ites, the real big Rabbis.
So again there's a certain bias towards
making the strongest persons even stronger
and so at the expense of
non-discriminatory, fair inclusion
of women,
of marginalized groups, of
dissident voices, within also mainstream groups.
And that's why
my emphasis
is in favor of
having states
on board
in their promotional obligations
but also
to link that with a couple of caveats and warnings
so that states should not monopolize things, that they should always respect
that real diversity which is not only that diversity between groups but also
within groups.
It's very complicated,
and that it should
try to
do justice to what I call
conceptual inclusiveness conceptual. Inclusiveness means that the sum total
of state-sponsored activities should not discriminate. I mean
you still can have
bilateral meetings
I mean it would be a wonderful idea a meeting between
Bahá'ís and Jehovah’s Witnesses without anyone showing up. It need not always be everyone.
So exclusive meetings are sometimes necessary.
A Christian-Jewish has a history of mutual mistrust, okay, sometimes it's good
to have a bi-lateral.
But some total of state sponsorship
must include everyone at least try to.
I know it's very difficult but if This
inter-religious communication
is to be
based on human rights approach.
Then one cannot have it
totally excusive. I mean we can have an exclusive things but it cannot be just always the same
big groups and the big guys leading the
groups. The bearded males.
Reaching out to one another dividing the world, sometimes in a mafia-like fashion.
Yeah?
So, and that's why 0:15:51.779,0:15:57.589 I’m in favor but with critical caveats and also with the idea that
it would be healthy
to combine the formal
inter-religious communication
by which people operate on the basis of
their self identification as being Bahá'ís as being Jehovah’s Witnesses.
As being Christians in a traditional Catholic sense.
As being ***'a Muslims. Okay, that's one thing, but also to have
informal communication
that are not
based explicitly on denominational lines so that people can met for instance in a school
or other infrastructure, in which,
I mean, the real pluralism
manifests itself including
people who would not
define themselves primarily along denominational lines. And some people
Who don't care much about religion and even
they don't know about
theology that much and would feel a bit uncomfortable if they
were expected to do that
but must also have a voice.
So, combining formal with informal
projects
based on the idea of
conceptual inclusiveness the sum total
must be fair and non-discriminatory,
and always in the spirit of
respect for
freedom of religion or belief. Because this is
the basis of all of it.
And I think then
inter-religious
communication including
state promotional activities in this regard are
one of the many many
components that we need in
addressing the root causes of those extreme manifestations of hatred,
which we all find so appalling.
Thank you very much.
And now I’m looking forward to discussion on whatever is…
whatever you are interested in.