Andrew Copson on the Freedom of Thought Report 2023

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/09/03

Andrew Copson was appointed Chief Executive of Humanists UK in 2009, having previously been its Director of Education and Public Affairs. He is also the current President of Humanists International, a position he’s held since 2015.

His books include The Little Book of Humanism (2020) and The Little Book of Humanist Weddings (2021) with Alice Roberts; Secularism: a very short introduction (Oxford University Press, 2019); The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Humanism (2015) with A C Grayling. His writing on humanist and secularist issues has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, The Times and New Statesman as well as in various journals.

He has represented the humanist movement extensively on television news on BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky, as well as on programmes such as Newsnight, The Daily Politics, and The Big Questions. He has also appeared on radio on programmes from Today, Sunday, The World at One, The Last Word, and Beyond Belief on the BBC, to local and national commercial radio stations.

Andrew served for many years as a director and trustee of the Religious Education Council, the Values Education Council, and the National Council for Faiths and Beliefs in Further Education, and the European Humanist Federation. and has advised on humanism for a range of public bodies such as the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Authority, the Department for Education, the BBC, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Home Office, and the Office for National Statistics. He was a member of the Advisory Group for the Humanist Library at London’s Conway Hall and, in a previous post in the office of Lord Macdonald of Tradeston in the House of Lords, he provided the secretariat for the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group (APPHG).

Andrew was educated at Balliol College in the University of Oxford, where he read Classics and graduated with a first in Ancient and Modern History. He was a member of the winning team of the 2005 Young Educational Thinker of the Year Programme and is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and of the Royal Society of Arts, and an Associate of the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff University.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We are here today with Andrew Copson. We’ll be covering the Freedom of Thought Report. It is not yet out; it is upcoming. I want to give credit to Bob Churchill for his time and service in developing much of the foundation and framework of the Freedom of Thought Report when he was involved with Humanists International. Last time around, the focus was democracy in 2023. So, why was democracy the central focus for 2023?

Andrew Copson: The Freedom of Thought Report has been ongoing for many years. It started as a project of the American Humanist Association. Humanists International took it on and developed most significantly under Bob Churchill’s editorship, as you mentioned. The report has always monitored violations of human rights and discrimination against non-religious people. However, it has also increasingly examined how hospitable the wider social context in different countries is towards expressing humanist ideas. These include not just ideas about gender equality, racial equality, and LGBTQ+ equality but also human rights generally, as well as ideas about democracy, the rule of law, the way politics should be conducted in society, and how freedom should be framed and respected.

It was a natural consequence of reviewing the annual report that democracy was finally highlighted as a significant theme. Additionally, 2023 was the year of the World Humanist Congress in Copenhagen, which also focused on democracy. That is how the theme came about, and it proved very fruitful for the Freedom of Thought Report. What the researchers discovered, as they updated the report with this democracy lens, was that humanists are on the front lines of democracy, pro-democracy campaigning, and the defense of democratic freedoms, it is often part and parcel of how humanists find themselves marginalized, discriminated against, or persecuted. They are often targeted not just for their rights but for their support of democracy itself.

Jacobsen: What kinds of discrimination do we see when people advocate for democratic values?

Copson: Typically, politically active humanists—humanists who are human rights defenders—and almost to be a humanist and part of a humanist organization is to be an activist. Humanist organizations are not just communities of fellowship for people with a humanist approach to life; they are platforms for change. They are platforms for social, political, and legal change. Humanist groups are not inward-looking; they are much more often outward-looking. It is almost intrinsic to having a humanist approach that you will want to be active for change and progressive change, which often means either the defence of or the promotion of democracy wherever you are. The discrimination against humanists because of their beliefs is extensive.

For example, in jurisdictions where they cannot legally register their worldview as humanists, they may be forced to choose a religion. Alternatively, they may not legally establish humanist organizations, as such things are banned in a few dozen countries. Government agencies may privilege religious parties in legal disputes or religious perspectives in state curricula through the education system or family law.

All of these disadvantages that humanists face are significant. When humanists want to speak out in favour of their rights, they often have to do so from a broader argument for democracy. Democracy is implicated in every bit of activism that humanists engage in to respond to the discrimination they face. This includes many other types of discrimination as well, such as religious instruction provided without alternatives in state schools or punishments for speaking critically of religion, insulting religion, or expressing non-belief, which can carry a prison or even a death sentence.

We have seen blasphemy “by the backdoor” laws in many countries that have been used to target humanists. Whether judicially in Nigeria, where, of course, as we all know, the head of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, Mubarak Bala, is still currently in prison, though we hope that the campaign to free him is turning the last corner there. Alternatively, in Pakistan, where humanists who post about humanist ideas on social media have been murdered by their neighbours. Wherever that persecution occurs, the democratic score for the country in question is usually very low. It is a general fact that countries that score low on the human rights index also score low on the democracy index. These things tend to go together. Suppose you do not have equal citizenship, equal participation, and a stake in the political life of your nation or community. In that case, your rights will likely not be respected by the jurisdiction in which you find yourself.

Although, as I say, democracy was, in a sense, just the next theme that the Freedom of Thought Report decided to address last year, it did turn out to be pretty much all-consuming. Questions of democracy became the backdrop for many other challenges that humanists faced regarding their persecution.

Jacobsen: Do healthier, wealthier, and more educated societies tend to be more democratic? Do these go hand in hand?

Copson: As an observable fact, yes, whether that is a coincidence is another question, Norway, for example, was pretty democratic even before it was very rich, in the way that it is now very rich. Of course, in the past, societies that have been more democratic have sometimes been very poor relative to the countries surrounding them. But it depends on what you mean by wealth. Does an enormous GDP or a growing GDP mean national wealth? Democracy might make it more likely that national wealth translates into benefits for individuals within that population. However, is an individual in India or China, for example, guaranteed to benefit from the growing national productivity in those places? That is questionable. I would say that democracy is almost certainly necessary if you want as many people as possible to enjoy the wealth of the nation they happen to be in.

So economic success and productivity are not the only measures, are they? However, if you think about it, is wealth inequality likely lower in democracies? Is sharing national wealth through social security more likely to be present in democracies? Are more people better off, on average, in democracies? Yes, that is the case.

Jacobsen: What are the more extreme examples of discrimination humanists face through advocacy for democracy, at least in your report?

Copson: Yes, so what the report focused on, in particular, was those humanists who are going into battle for general democratic rights and freedoms and then facing individual persecution as a result. If you want to take a case from Europe, Panayote Dimitras, the leader of the Humanist Union in Greece and also monitoring minority rights in particular, wrote the foreword for the 2023 report. He faced all sorts of official and semi-official, quite intense harassment from Greek authorities when he began to call out the Greek state’s treatment of asylum seekers, in particular.

His bank account was frozen, and he found it hard to get it unfrozen. Money laundering proceedings were opened against him, which were completely fraudulent. There was nothing he did; it was completely unjustified. This is petty official harassment of the kind that has happened to humanist leaders in the past.

In India, for example, when they are travelling internally within the country by air, they get deplaned for no reason, questioned about their business, and detained until the plane has left. All sorts of petty official harassment that people can suffer. In Panayote’s case, this all came about as a result of his campaigning against anti-Semitism and homophobia by Greek clerics, as well as for the rights of asylum seekers. You could not get a more obvious example of unjustified persecution than that.

Then, of course, we know that with humanists in Bangladesh. This was long before the current democratic uprising in Bangladesh, but a lot of the same people demographically are involved in that as were involved in the humanist blogging platforms of previous years and the general pro-democracy campaigning there. In Malaysia, for example, humanists were arrested ostensibly for having a humanist organization or a humanist page on social media. However, what motivated the authorities to take action wasn’t humanism per se, but the advocacy of pluralism, liberalism, democracy, and general human rights and freedoms.

It’s often difficult for humanist organizations in the West to get their governments to support humanists who are persecuted overseas for reasons of this sort. While Western governments are willing to be active on human rights grounds and say, “We’ve all signed up to the human rights charters; you shouldn’t be depriving this person of their human rights, freedom of thought, conscience, religion, or belief.” They are less willing to say, “Hey, you shouldn’t be persecuting this person for political advocacy.” When something becomes political in international relations, one state is more reluctant to call out another about it. It’s seen as moving beyond the universal human rights world and almost into the national politics of that country.

So there’s a greater extension of appreciation for the fact that countries sometimes need to govern their affairs and keep order in their jurisdictions. That’s a significant barrier to having these cases addressed. If one country can say to another, “Hey, I’m managing my own business here. This is a political question, not a human rights issue or a matter of freedom of belief or religion,” it makes the advocacy that another country might want to engage in on behalf of the humanist in question much more difficult.

I know from my work that a good example is the situation for humanists in Bangladesh. When we were trying to get the UK government to speak out—now I’m speaking from a Humanists UK perspective rather than a Humanists International one—the fact that many of those who were being disadvantaged or discriminated against because of their humanist beliefs were also being victimized by the government for their political activity made it almost impossible for the UK government to speak out about their treatment meaningfully. This is a significant challenge for humanists who are persecuted. Humanists are often persecuted wherever they are.

They’re seldom persecuted only for their humanist beliefs but often also for their pro-LGBT equality beliefs, their pro-democratic beliefs, or their pro-race equality beliefs. They’re campaigning against untouchability in India and elsewhere. They’re campaigning for LGBT rights in jurisdictions where that’s still illegal. They’re campaigning for democracy in places that are still only partially democratic or not democratic.

Jacobsen: There are a number of “cases of concern” people can view: Atheists in Kenya Society, Leena Manimekalai, Panayote Dimitras, Raif Badawi, Gáspár Békés, Rishvin Ismath, Ahmadreza Djalali, Leo Igwe, Ashraf Fayadh, Narendra Nayak, Asaduzzaman Noor, Mubarak Bala, Mohamed Rusthum Mujuthaba, Mommad, Andrea Gilbert, Mohammed Ould Shaikh Ould Mkhaitir, M.M. Kalburgi, Gulalai Ismail, Soheil Arabi, Mohamed Hisham, Narendra Dabholkar, Saïd Djabelkhir, Indika Rathnayaka, George Gavriel, Shakthika Sathkumara, and Mahmoud Jama Ahmed. Regardless, what is the purpose of the report?

Copson: The purpose of the report is to influence international expert opinion. Fortunately, the sophisticated international architecture around freedom of thought, conscience, religion, or belief exists. There’s a UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Religion or Belief. So, the marshalling of evidence, particularly in our case, evidence on the treatment of non-religious people, has an audience. Our report has been cited by UN Special Rapporteurs successively. It’s increasingly cited academically as well as in UN institutions. So, influencing international expert opinion is a very important aim.

Another aim is to influence public and state criticism against countries for their failure to observe human rights standards. The original report was very much targeted at the US State Department, which takes much interest in freedom of religion or belief violations and, more positively, in promoting that freedom internationally. Again, international institutions and governments have cited the report and used it to call out countries criticized in the report for their actions. Indonesia, the Maldives, and Mauritania are all examples of countries where our report has been used to prompt consideration within international institutions of the role of those countries and what they are doing.

Then there’s the evidence it provides, the tool it provides for civil society, for humanist organizations in different countries, and generally for human rights NGOs. Every country has a separate page on the Freedom of Thought Report website. However, only some countries are updated on an annual basis. So human rights NGOs, whether international, regional, or local, can use that report. Gathering evidence within countries is sometimes very difficult. So, it equips civil society and expert opinion, which I’ve talked about, and governments in the UN and other international forums.

It also has a personal value. It’s always valuable, isn’t it? That people’s stories ought not to be forgotten. They shouldn’t be obscured but should be brought out and highlighted. On an individual level, it’s much easier to understand a general systemic issue if it has a human face. If you can see, “This is the person who is in prison—Mubarak Bala is in prison. He can’t see his wife, he can’t see his baby, he has never met his child.”

Making the situation vivid in a way more than if I just said, “There is Sharia law in Northern Nigeria, and people are persecuted.” It’s not the same. The fact that we use individual stories is an important part of the report. Just building the evidence base about the persecution of non-religious people—until this report was first compiled, I don’t think there was any real systematic evidence of persecution against any belief group globally, apart from Christians. They were the only group with much better-funded organizations than Humanists International, agitating on their behalf. We’ve opened that up, which is useful for journalism and global opinion to the extent that there is such a thing as global public opinion. The report can hopefully speak to that, too. It has several purposes for several different audiences.

We learn every year of new uses to which the report can be put. It has turned into the most significant product of Humanists International. In the 12 years that it’s been published—12 years is a long time—it has the long-term aspect where you can chart change over time, which is very important. So it’s an important tool for that as well. Mostly, things are getting worse rather than better, but there are some improvements over time and, hopefully, more to come.

Jacobsen: What are some things in the report that you can note that pretty much every country could do better on?

Copson: That’s a good question. It’s a very good question, indeed. We have a map of all the world’s countries; it’s online and normally in the printed edition. Every country could be better. One of the things that no country does is treat all religious and belief organizations, individuals, and perspectives equally in every aspect of the state. Everywhere, even in countries like the UK or Belgium—let’s take the UK and Belgium, for example—we have two countries representing different religions and beliefs in their school education systems.

Both those countries have religious schools, so that could be better. However, the state curricula for non-religious state schools have different classes for different religions and beliefs, as in the case of Belgium. In the case of the UK, different religions and beliefs are taught in the same curriculum for all children simultaneously.

You look at those and think, “Oh, this is good. Here is equal treatment.” But of course, it’s not really. Because in neither of those places are there any official objective guidelines about which religions and beliefs are covered. In neither of those places, in Belgium, it can be hard for a group to achieve the recognition required to receive the state subsidy, which is what it is being taught about in general schools. Even countries like New Zealand or Belgium could be better, nowhere is perfect.

Of course, there’s a massive gap between those states and states where it is illegal for a non-religious person to hold public office or states where the head of state frequently marginalizes, harasses, and incites violence against the non-religious, like in Pakistan, Malaysia, the Maldives, Egypt, or Iran. Those countries are in a different league from countries with just some systemic discrimination. But what we are finding in countries that have traditionally, perhaps, been doing quite well on some of these issues is that although they might still be generally good, there are some places where they’re allowing, as it were, legal ghettos to develop, where–let’s say–there are different systems of family law running within democratic countries.

Those family law systems permit the differential treatment of people seen within particular religious communities compared to people in the general population. There’s been some concern in some European countries where religious law has been adopted by permitting its application in certain cases like divorce, for example. In those situations, the freedom of conscience that not just non-religious people but all people should expect in democratic states has been reduced as a result. So, everywhere has its challenges, and nowhere is perfect. But that’s not to say that some places aren’t in a different league and better than others.

All right then, thank you! We’ll send you a mental postcard from Singapore.

Jacobsen: All right then. Have a lovely day. Bye.

License & Copyright

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ©Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use or duplication of material without express permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen strictly prohibited, excerpts and links must use full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with direction to the original content.