Today Malta assumes the presidency of the Council of the European Union. Next Tuesday a trial will continue to be heard in Jakarta, Indonesia. The two events held in two countries thousands of kilometres apart are – or, at least, should be – connected.

Next Tuesday there will be the third hearing of the trial of Indonesia’s only Christian governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, popularly known as Ahok. He is being accused of blasphemy just two months before the election for governor. Indonesia’s blasphemy law provides for a maximum penalty of five years in jail. A statement of his was manipulated in such a way as to seem that he said that the Quran was lying to Muslims when he just said that interpreters of the Quran were lying to people.

Abuse of blasphemy laws has been a scourge for Christians in many Muslim countries. Pakistan is a prime example. Christians have been falsely accused, even lynched, while Christian villages are routinely pillaged and church buildings attacked.

Christians are being persecuted in several countries for other reasons as well. Last Monday, feast of St Stephen, the first Christian martyr, Pope Francis paid tribute to Middle East Christians who remain strong in their faith in spite of unrelenting persecution by Islamist militants. This year persecuted Christians in Iraq, whose number dwindled from 1.5 million in 2003 to just 200,000 today, were able to celebrate their first Christmas since 2013 in churches after towns and cities were retaken from Islamic State.

“There are more Christian martyrs today than in the first centuries,” said the Pope.

A democratic institution based on human rights such as the European Union cannot but be active in the fight against persecution of Christians and of members of other religions. In December 2015 the European Parliament (EP) President Martin Schulz said that the persecution of Christians was “undervalued” and “hasn’t been properly addressed”. The EP in February 2016 recognised the atrocities committed by ISIS against religious minorities including Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen, as genocide. Then this October the European Parliament overwhelmingly voted for a motion presented by the European People’s Party aimed at protecting  religious minorities including Christians and Yazidis in Iraq following the expected defeat of ISIS in Mosul and, hopefully, in  the rest of the region.

The resolution states that it is indispensable that the EU, together with other countries, shows solidarity with minorities and, within the framework of Iraq’s federal structure, plan for the creation of maximum regional autonomy for Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen. This motion is non-binding on the European Commission but its significance is enormous.

One expects the Maltese government to use the presidency… to address the intolerance faced by Christians in Europe’s public life

It is all very well and good for the Maltese government to champion gay rights. But it should now do its utmost to use the presidency of the EU to champion the rights of those minorities that are being discriminated against because of their religious beliefs – whatever they are – and wherever they are: Indonesia, Pakistan or the Middle East, all included.

But one expects the Maltese government to use the presidency to do much more. It should use it to address the intolerance faced by Christians in Europe’s public life. Pope Francis calls it the “polite persecution of Christians”. On December 19, Mgr Antoine Camilleri, the Vatican’s undersecretary for relations told the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that this “polite persecution” that Christians are suffering in Europe’s public life many times happens in the guise of “political correctness”. Christian faith and morals are considered by secularists to be hostile and offensive, and therefore, something to be removed from public discourse.

Camilleri added that “this fear of Christianity playing its legitimate role in the public square betrays a ’reductionist’ view or approach to the freedom of religion or belief, confining it merely to the freedom of worship. …To act and speak out publicly as a committed Christian in one’s professional life has never been more threatened,” Mgr Camilleri told the delegates at OSCE.

“There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere,” he added.

The Church showed how concerned it is at the discrimination suffered by Christians in Europe that it tasked Mgr Janusz Urbanczyk, its representative to the OSCE, to speak about the same subject on December 14.

“Manifestations of intolerance, hate crimes and episodes of violence or vandalism against religious places or objects continue to increase… Moreover, offending, insulting or attacking Christians because of their beliefs and their values, including in the media and in public debate, based on a distorted and misinterpreted concept of freedom of expression, often goes uncontested.”

Urbanczyk spoke of aggressively orchestrated actions, especially in the media against Christians. “Freedom of expression… seems to be threatened, and believers who share publicly their convictions are often labelled as intolerant or accused of bigotry.”

Our government has two problems in this regard. Its relationship with the European Parliament is far from ideal. The strong condemnation of the European Parliament of Joseph Muscat’s sale of citizenship scheme; the EP resentment at the government’s deep involvement in the Panama Papers scandal and the EP’s massive vote against Leo Brincat are a few examples.

Moreover, there is another reason why Muscat will find it difficult to muster the EU against the ‘polite’ discrimination and intolerance against Christians. Read again the speeches of Camilleri and Urbanczky and local parallels come to mind. Our government pays a well-placed aide to regularly rubbish the Church and the Archbishop. Besides, the pro-government media go the extra mile to militate against the Church even exhorting its readers to boycott Church collections. Moreover several legislative measures attacking the Christian ethos were enacted. The Archbishop has just warned that the forthcoming so-called Equality Bill, a law “intended to guarantee equality”, could become “an instrument of repression”.

One hopes that despite these problematic situations Malta’s presidency could validly contribute to fight the “polite” and not so “polite” persecution of Christian and other religious groups in Europe and beyond.

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt

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