UK should lead the way on North Korea: accountability, information, critical engagement

Benedict Rogers is a human rights activist, a former Parliamentary Candidate, and is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.

Two events took place yesterday which have the potential to contribute to making our world a better place. One was President Barack Obama’s inauguration – or more specifically, his speech. The other was a debate in the House of Lords on the security, humanitarian and human rights situation in North Korea. Both had a ‘carpe diem’ feel to them.

Obama’s speech had the soaring, inspiring rhetoric which we have come to associate with him. But, beneath the rhetoric, it contained some truths that all of us, wherever we are in the world, should internalise and turn into action. He talked about the founding truths of the United States of America, which are universal to all mankind – of all men being made equal, with unalienable rights, including life and liberty. But he added a challenge to us:

"For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth".

In other words, we must work for it.

Ben Rogers: International Religious Freedom: A Human Right for Everyone

By Ben Rogers

Five months ago, I sat in a remote prison in the hills in West Sumatra, Indonesia, and met a young man, Alex Aan, who had been jailed for his beliefs. I travelled over 1,300 kilometres from Jakarta to see him, involving a flight and a four hour drive through the mountains.

Alex, aged 30, had been imprisoned not because of his religious beliefs, but because he has no religious beliefs. He had declared himself an atheist. Yet Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on the freedom of religion or belief (FORB), applies just as much to Alex as it does to any of the millions of religious believers around the world persecuted for their faith.

A few days before visiting Alex, I had stood with a church congregation just outside Jakarta, surrounded by a mob of extremist Islamists shouting “Christians get out, kill the Christians”.

The previous year, I had met Ahmadi Muslims who had survived a brutal attack on their community. One man described how he was stripped naked and beaten severely and a machete was held at his throat. He was dragged through the village and dumped in a truck like a corpse. Another man fled into a fast-flowing river, pursued by attackers throwing rocks and shouting “kill, kill, kill.” He hid in a bush, dripping wet and extremely cold, for four hours. A third suffered a broken jaw, while a fourth, pursued by men armed with sickles, machetes and spears, was detained by the police for three days, treated as a suspect not a victim.

Benedict Rogers: Democracy against dictatorship and Islamism in the Maldives - it cannot be in our interests to betray our friends and our values

Benedict Rogers is a human rights activist, a former Parliamentary Candidate, and is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.

Tonight, the man the Prime Minister described less than a year ago as his “new best friend” will address the Royal Commonwealth Society. I recommend you come if you can.

It was six years ago that I first met Mohamed Nasheed in the Maldives. At the time, he was the opposition leader, under house arrest, in a country ruled by one of Asia’s longest serving dictators, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. I visited him in his home, which he was not permitted to leave. I also visited a journalist, Jennifer Latheef, also under house arrest.

Nasheed, or “Anni” as he is known, had spent years in prison, in solitary confinement, in exile, and subjected to torture and beatings. He was the Maldives’ Nelson Mandela or Aung San Suu Kyi, an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience defying a typical brutal, corrupt dictator.

I visited the Maldives on behalf of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, in 2006, and found that Gayoom had appointed some reform-minded ministers, perhaps with the intention of giving a veneer of change while hoping to retain a grip on power. I wrote a report following my visit. It was a simple, common-sense document, which made two key recommendations:  if the reformers in Gayoom’s regime were serious, the first thing they should do is free Nasheed and Latheef; and if they were freed, Nasheed and his party, the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), should enter into a dialogue with Gayoom’s reformers, and chart a transition to democracy together.

Ben Rogers: Our country must face up to the challenges of radical Islamism and social breakdown

Benedict Rogers is a human rights activist with Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission and a former parliamentary candidate in the City of Durham.

9/11 and 7/7 seem a long time ago. The riots last summer appear all but forgotten. Yet two new books have just been published which remind us, in a deeply personal and profoundly important way, of two distinct but equally significant challenges our country continues to face but has still not yet fully grasped: radical Islamism and social breakdown.

For those of us who live in leafy surburbia or the countryside, grew up in comfortable, loving middle-class families, were educated in good schools and universities, read literature, go to the theatre, appreciate a variety of forms of music, travel abroad for work or holidays, the world described by Harriet Sergeant in Among the Hoods: My Years with a Teenage Gang and, for different but equally challenging reasons, by Maajid Nawaz in Radical: My Journey from Islamist Extremism to A Democratic Awakening appears completely foreign. Yet the people and issues described in these two books may only be a few miles away.

These two books are among the most important books I have read in a long time, and are essential reading for anyone with a mind, a heart, a soul and a brain. They present, in stark, shocking and moving ways, the twin challenges of radical Islamism and social breakdown in a way which must surely wake us from our slumber. Gripping, heart-breaking, inspiring, they tell the story of two very different individuals – Sergeant and Nawaz – who have travelled an extraordinary journey of discovery and are now sounding the alarm. They could almost be described as prophets in our time.

We will honour Aung San Suu Kyi when she addresses Parliament this week. But the best honour we could pay her is to heed her words.

Benedict Rogers is a human rights activist with Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission and a former parliamentary candidate in the City of Durham. He is the author of Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads, which was published this month. He has visited Burma and its borders more than 40 times and taken senior politicians, including Andrew Mitchell and John Bercow, on fact-finding visits to the borders.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s visit to Britain this week is a reflection of the extraordinary turn of events in Burma in recent months. Less than a year ago, such a visit was inconceivable.

Twenty-four years ago, Aung San Suu Kyi left her home in Oxford to return to Rangoon to nurse her dying mother. She told her husband, academic Michael Aris, and two young sons that she would be back soon. Instead, as the movement for democracy unfolded in a series of mass protests against Ne Win’s regime in 1988, the people turned to her, as the daughter of Aung San, the leader of Burma’s independence who was assassinated in 1947, to lead them.

Benedict Rogers: Cameron's Burma message must be: "So far so good, but there is much more to be done".

Benedict Rogers is a human rights activist with Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission and a former parliamentary candidate in the City of Durham. He is the author of a new book, Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads, to be published in July by Random House. He has visited Burma and its borders more than 40 times, and taken senior politicians, including Andrew Mitchell and John Bercow, on fact-finding visits to the borders.

For years, I used to say that I had hope for freedom in Burma, but such hope flew in the face of the facts. My hope was based on a belief that the courage of the Burmese people would be rewarded in the end, and that history shows that dictators do not last forever. It was, however, a vague hope which I had to hold onto to ensure that my advocacy efforts were not in vain. Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest for most of the past two decades, over two thousand dissidents were in jail, and the country’s military was carrying out crimes against humanity. A visit by a British prime minister was inconceivable.

Today, Burma may be beginning to change. A year ago, I was deported from the country, because the authorities disliked a book I had written about the previous dictator, Senior General Than Shwe. As they threw me out, a military intelligence officer told me assuredly there was “no change, no change”. Just a few months later, the new president, Thein Sein, stunned the world by meeting the woman the regime had refused to talk to but failed to defeat: the democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Ben Rogers: Read David Lammy MP's book and make him an adviser on social justice

Ben Rogers is a human rights activist, focused on Asia, and a former Conservative candidate. Follow him on Twitter.

David Lammy is a ‘Big Society’ conservative. That may be ‘conservative’ with a small ‘c’ – he is, after all, a Labour MP and former Minister – but if his new book is anything to go by, he has more in common with David Cameron, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove and Oliver Letwin than with Ed Miliband, Harriet Harman, Gordon Brown and Ken Livingstone.

His book, Out of the Ashes: Britain after the Riots, is the most sensible piece of analysis of modern Britain by a Labour politician in a long time. There is, in fact, little to separate it from the ‘broken Britain’ analysis which the Prime Minister and IDS have been highlighting for years. It is almost as if he has taken the enormous, excellent, weighty Centre for Social Justice policy reports such as ‘Breakdown Britain’ and ‘Breakthrough Britain’, and translated them into a quick-and-easy-read designed for the man in the street.

Bigger than party politics

What is most striking, and an example to us all on both sides of the political debate, is the lack of partisan rancour. Lammy talks passionately and authentically about the issues themselves, and avoids pointing the finger or scoring cheap party political points. “No single political party, no single government and no single factor was to blame for the riots,” he argues.

Benedict Rogers: Healing our sick society

I am not a father, but this year I became an uncle. My six-month old nephew has had a more profound impact on me than I had ever anticipated. And I am deeply concerned about the society in which he will grow up.

Twelve days ago, I wrote on the site about threats to our civilisation. In the past week, some of those threats became all too apparent in a horrific, vivid and tangible way on the streets of many of our cities. What I had thought was a slow-burning, smouldering undermining of society became, for a few days, a frighteningly accelerated, intensified, violent, mindless, anarchic reign of terror. Watches and wedding rings torn off diners at The Ledbury Restaurant in Notting Hill, ordinary people forced to strip and hand over their clothes, a Malaysian student beaten, injured and then robbed by people pretending to help him, children aged 11 or younger looting and stealing, girls who had been drinking all day laughing about the awful arson in Croydon, shops and homes and buildings that survived the Blitz destroyed forever: it was as if Mao’s Red Guards had taken over.

Benedict Rogers: We should call time on the Burmese regime's crimes

Twenty three years ago today over 3,000 people protesting for freedom in Burma were gunned down by the country’s military regime. Thousands more were killed during previous months, as the democracy movement swept the nation. Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma after many years living abroad, and rapidly emerged as the democracy leader and a voice of hope. 

Since 1988, thousands more people have been killed. Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), overwhelmingly won elections held in 1990, spent most of the subsequent two decades under house arrest. The junta refused to recognise the results and instead of handing over power, those elected were jailed, killed or exiled. Even though Aung San Suu Kyi was freed nine months ago, almost 2,000 prisoners of conscience remain behind bars. The military has intensified its offensives against the ethnic nationalities, using rape as a weapon of war, forced labour, the forcible conscription of child soldiers, human minesweepers, torture and killings as a matter of policy on a widespread and systematic level. More than 3,600 villages have been destroyed in eastern Burma alone. 

In November last year, twenty years on from the election won by the NLD, the regime held a new, heavily rigged sham poll, and formed a supposedly new, civilian government. Yet in reality the change is cosmetic – a few changes of personnel, perhaps some subtle changes of tone, and a change of clothing from military uniform to civilian suits, but no change in behaviour. In the past nine months the human rights and humanitarian crisis has continued. On 9 June the regime ended a 17-year cease-fire agreement with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), resulting in the displacement of over 20,000 civilians, and the rape of at least 32 women and girls. Of the cases of rape, at least 13 victims were then killed. And these are only the cases that have been documented and reported. A few months earlier, the regime broke a 22-year ceasefire with one of the Shan ethnic armed groups, wreaking death and destruction upon thousands more civilians. 

Benedict Rogers: Our civilisation is under threat: from ourselves, as well as from extremists

I am an optimist. I don’t generally buy the Victor Meldrew view of the world. But events of recent weeks have made me deeply concerned for the future of Western civilisation and, in particular, Britain as a civilised state.

On many previous occasions, I have written on this site about the threat posed to our liberal democracy by radical Islamism. That threat still holds. The terrorist massacre in Norway exposed in a stark and tragic way the threat from far-right ideology in Europe. But there is another threat: ourselves, our ruling classes and, more precisely, our lack of vision.

In recent years, one by one shocking scandals have been exposed in key institutions that are meant to be pillars of stability and reassurance in our society. MPs’ expenses drastically undercut whatever remaining vestiges of respect there may have been for politicians, and damaged the reputation of Parliament, perhaps irreparably. The banking crisis unleashed distasteful stories of city fat cats claiming large bonuses while ordinary hard-working honest people saw their savings disappear. The phone hacking scandal has torn apart our trust in the media, the police, and perhaps even each other.

Benedict Rogers: Yesterday, Pakistan lost its Martin Luther King

Benedict Rogers is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission and East Asia Team Leader at Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

Pakistan has had many dark days in recent years, and yesterday was even darker. The assassination of the Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs, Shahbaz Bhatti, robs the country of another of its leading voices for religious freedom, equal rights, justice and peace. It also robs the country of a true patriot, and the world of an inspirational and courageous activist. It may be no exaggeration to say that Pakistan has now lost its Martin Luther King.

I had the privilege of working with Shahbaz Bhatti for five years, during which I supported his campaign for the repeal of Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws. I counted Shahbaz as a friend, as well as a close partner. He always impressed me with his personal integrity, deep faith, unflinching commitment to religious freedom, social justice and human rights, and his love of Pakistan.

Shahbaz, founder of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, was one of the most selfless and compassionate people I have ever met. He and I shared some profound experiences together. I will never forget meeting a little seven year-old girl, Sharee Komal, who had been brutally raped and tortured because she came from a Christian family. Shahbaz was helping her and her family, because no one else would. He and I missed a bomb at the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad by five minutes in 2004. He faced daily death threats and attempts on his life for many years, long before he became a Cabinet minister. He worked extraordinary hours, never took a holiday or a day off, and was entirely focused on helping the poor, the oppressed, the persecuted and the marginalised minorities. In 2007, for example, a Christian community in Charsadda, in the North-West Frontier Province, received threats from extremists, giving them an ultimatum: convert to Islam or face the consequences. The night the deadline expired, I telephoned Shahbaz to ask for an update, and to my surprise he told me he was in Charsadda. The community were terrified, he said, and they expected an attack at any moment, so he had gone to be with them. That was typical of Shahbaz.

Ben Rogers: End the grievance culture and unite in defence of liberal democracy

David Cameron's speech at Munich on Saturday is one of the best and most inspiring speeches I have read in a long time. It is one of the most robust defences of freedom and democracy, and one of the most balanced and honest analyses of radical Islamism. In contrast with a previous Conservative prime minister's famous words after a Munich conference seventy two years ago, Cameron has shown that if we really want peace in our time, we have to be prepared to fight for our values.

That Yvette Cooper, Sadiq Khan and Jack Straw decided to score cheap party political points rather than engage with the substance is disappointing, though unsurprising. That the Muslim Council of Britain, and people such as Inayat Bunglawala from Muslims4Uk don't like it is indicative of their Islamist sympathies. But that Cameron's speech has been praised by Muslims such as Haras Rafiq and Maajid Nawaz, a left-wing journalist like Nick Cohen, and the Equalities and Human Rights Commission's Trevor Phillips suggests to me that he has got it absolutely right.

Ben Rogers: Learning the lessons of Sharia from Aceh, Indonesia

By Ben Rogers

Martin Parsons, and Rashad Ali and Haras Rafiq, have done us a great service in their articles on sharia and Islamism last week. These have been issues which I have written about regularly on this site, and I found myself in broad agreement with Martin Parsons, Rashad Ali and Haras Rafiq.

This week, I read a shocking new report, on the impact of legislative sharia on human rights and women's rights in Aceh, Indonesia. The report, Policing Morality: Abuses in the Application of Sharia in Aceh, Indonesia, is published by Human Rights Watch, and offers a wake-up call to the effects of full legislative Sharia.

In the first of his three articles on this site, Martin Parsons observes that: "Non-violent Islamist groups have the same ultimate long term aims as violent Islamists - the imposition of sharia in Britain and elsewhere." I agree completely. He adds: "In broad terms it is not their strategic aims that differ, but merely their tactics. Non-violent Islamists have long recognised that Britain is unlikely to become an Islamic state overnight, so they have concentrated on pursuing a gradual Islamisation process." In that process, key figures such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chief Justice and the heads of major banks have slept-walked into becoming the Islamists' allies.

Rashad Ali and Haras Rafiq, however, provide a vital amendment to Parsons' analysis, by reminding us that there are several different interpretations of sharia. Broadly speaking, we can differentiate between two categories of sharia: personal, private, devotional, religious sharia, and legislative, judicial, punitive and polical sharia.

Compassionate, intelligent George Bush. Humane, purposeful Tony Blair.

I have just finished reading the memoirs of two people I am not supposed to like: George W. Bush, because no one is meant to like him, and Tony Blair, because I am a Conservative and he kept us in opposition for 13 years. Yet their memoirs, respectively Decision Points and A Journey, are gripping, fascinating, well-written, and revealing of some of their lesser-known, more positive characteristics.

Both books are written thematically, and convey the two men's ideas, values and philosophies rather than simply a chronoligical record of experiences - and are much more interesting as a result. Both men governed through some momentous events, which of course are described in the books: the dominant themes of 9/11, 7/7, Afghanistan and Iraq, but also - in their respective countries - public service reform, social security and welfare, and natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and foot-and-mouth disease.

The two dominant themes in both books, at the heart of the Bush and Blair agendas, are freedom and faith. They share a profound Christian faith, which they articulate clearly in their memoirs, and they share a passionate commitment to freedom.

What is striking about Bush's book is how much more compassionate, reasonable, intelligent and bi-partisan he comes across compared with the caricature we have come to know. He recalls his unusual friendship with Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy, drawn together by a shared concern for school reform. The arch-liberal Democrat was one of the strongest supporters of Bush's No Child Left Behind education policy.

Benedict Rogers: North Korea - Time for Action, Time for Dialogue, Time for Peace

Benedict Rogers, Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission and East Asia Team Leader at Christian Solidarity Worldwide, returns from five days in Pyongyang with Lord Alton and Baroness Cox and advocates a peace conference facilitated by the United Kingdom, and a “Helsinki Process with a Korean Face”.

North Korea has one of the world’s most deplorable human rights records, is one of the world’s most isolated nations and is one half of the world’s most dangerous peninsula. That is why I travelled to Pyongyang last week with Lord Alton and Baroness Cox, to meet the regime.

Our visit came at a historic time. A week earlier, military parades marched through the streets of Pyongyang celebrating the 65thanniversary of the founding of the Workers Party of Korea, and the world’s media was given unprecedented access.  Earlier in October, Kim Jong-Il’s son, Kim Jong-Un, was made a four-star General and Vice-Chairman of the Party’s Central Military Commission at the age of 27, a clear sign that he is being prepared as the successor, to perpetuate the world’s only dynastic dictatorship.

This year also marks some important anniversaries: the tenth anniversary of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and North Korea, and the sixtieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War – a war in which three million Koreans died, along with thousands of American, Chinese and other nations’ troops. Over 1,000 British soldiers were killed in the Korean War, more than Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falklands combined.

We went to North Korea at a time when tensions on the Korean peninsula are at their highest for many years. Earlier in the year, the sinking of the South Korean naval vessel, the “Cheonan”, led to the loss of 46 lives. Within 48 hours of our departure, North Korean soldiers opened fire across the border at the 38th parallel, the first skirmish since 2006.

The North Korean regime stands accused of crimes against humanity and criminal involvement in narcotics, arms sales and money laundering. Over recent years, I have met exiled former prisoners who have survived the country’s notorious gulags, with horrific stories to tell.