EUROPEAN UNION Resolution to protect Christians fails
Jonathan Luxmoore In Warsaw
EUROPEAN UNION foreign ministers have failed to agree a resolution condemning reli- gious persecution, despite calls for a tougher EU response after a Christmas Day bomb attack against Coptic Christians in Egypt. “The final text firmly condemned acts of terrorism targeting places of worship, but also showed an excess of secularism,” Italy’s Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, told the EUobserver website in Brussels. “It didn’t include any mention of Christians, as if we were talking about something else. So I asked for the text to be withdrawn.” The politician was speaking after Monday’s summit of the Foreign Affairs Council, which had been expected to direct the EU’s British High Representative for Foreign Affairs and
■THE EUROPEAN Union has been accused by a senior Turkish official of turning into a “Christian club” and failing to offer an “open-door policy” to non-Christian countries like his own, writes Jonathan Luxmoore. “We always thought of the EU as a great peace project – but the enlargement process is now blocked, purely and simply,” said Ali Babacan, a vice premier. “The open-door policy is no longer there, and one of the main reasons Turkey cannot become a member is because the EU is a Christian club. In
ROME Discrimination ‘should not provoke fear’
POPE BENEDICT XVI, who in the past several weeks has increasingly deplored anti-Christian violence and secularist-driven “Christiano - phobia”, said on Sunday that Catholics should not be afraid of discriminatory treatment, writes Robert Mickens. “The Church does not fear poverty, derision or persecution in a society that is often attracted to material wealth and worldly power,” the Pope said at the Sunday Angelus. Speaking from his study window in the Apostolic Palace to several thousand people below in St Peter’s Square, the 83-year-old Pope said Jesus was willing to be “persecuted and despised to the point of being condemned to death”. He did so, Pope Benedict said, “so that people might be granted salvation”. The Pope was reflecting on the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, the focus of last Sunday’s Gospel reading. “The Beatitudes are a new programme for living, in order to
free us from the false values of the world and open us to the things that are truly good, both those in the present and those in the future,” he said. Pope Benedict then urged all people to
prayerfully unite themselves to the Third International Day of Intercession for Peace in the Holy Land, which was also observed on Sunday. Just two days earlier he said Christians of all denominations in the region needed to “work together in mutual accept- ance and trust in order to serve the cause of peace and justice”. In an address to a dialogue commission of the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, he prayed that the courageous witness of the martyrs and saints might sustain and strengthen all the Churches. He said the regions where Christian individuals and communities faced trials and difficulties were “a cause of deep concern for us all”.
Security Policy, Baroness (Cathy) Ashton, to draw up “concrete proposals” for protecting Christians.
Another EU diplomat said calls for “refer- ences to specific minorities” had been opposed by Britain and the Scandinavian countries, who feared a “clash of civilisations”, adding that the 27 member countries had agreed to “go back and reflect” further on how to help “individual communities of whatever religion who find themselves harassed”. Calls for EU action to combat anti-Christian violence have mounted since the Christmas attack, which killed 23 Copts and injured over 70 in Alexandria. The Vatican’s Fides agency said in January it had recorded 149 separate attacks on Christians during 2010 by Hindu militants in India, while human-rights cam- paigners in nearby Indonesia said they had logged 46 attacks by Muslim extremists.
our view, this is very, very dangerous.” The 43-year-old Economics
Minister was speaking last Saturday alongside the EU’s Belgian Catholic president, Herman van Rompuy, on a panel at the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland. He said people in the Muslim world were “looking closely” to see whether the EU would “open its doors to Turkey”, most of whose 71.5 million inhabitants are Sunni Muslims. However, he added that he was concerned that the
In another recent report, the Dutch-based Open Doors International said persecution of Christians was currently worst in Communist-ruled North Korea, but listed predominantly Muslim Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen and Mauritania as among the worst offenders. Baroness Ashton assured the Strasbourg parliament on 19 January that the EU would not “turn a blind eye” to the plight of “long- established Christian communities” and would also seek to “rally strong cross-regional sup- port” on the issue at the United Nations Human Rights Council in March. Two senior Christian Democrat MEPs, Elmar Brok and Mario Mauro, said the draft foreign ministers’ resolution had spoken “only generally about defending religious minori- ties”, and failed to mention Christians or propose “specific steps”.
27-country union was “turning in on itself”. “Everyone is looking at what is going on,” said Mr Babacan. “What kind of EU we are going to see in future will be of immense importance in terms of the message our region gets.” Turkey has been negotiating accession to the EU since 2005, but has faced opposition to its membership bid from France and Germany, because of its refusal to open ports to Cyprus and lack of internal reforms, as well as persistent accusations of a denial of equal rights and
IRAN
Security agents step up religious arrests
RIGHTS AGENCIES are warning that state security agents in Iran have intensified their campaign against Christians, writes Abigail Frymann. Elam Ministries issued a report on 25
January that found that 202 house-church Christians had been arbitrarily arrested in the last six months, whereas in a 12-month period from 2008 to 2009 there had been 80 arrests. Most of those detained have since been released, but 26 remain in prison. A spokesman for Elam Ministries said the Government’s treatment of Christians amounted to “religious cleansing”. Christian Solidarity Worldwide said on 26
January that the more than 100 arrests of Iranian Christians in the last three to four months had taken place in 24 cities across the country.
5 February 2011 | THE TABLET | 27
protections to ethnic and religious minorities. In an interview last week with
the Milliyet daily, President Abdullah Gul said his country’s treatment of Christians, who have repeatedly complained of discrimination, was a “disgrace”, adding that all citizens should be accorded equal chances in jobs and professions. However, he added that he believed Turkey had other options to consider besides EU membership, as it became “clear that obstacles have been placed in front of us”.
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