Ms Pamela Coulter:

I thank the committee for listening. We are not coming to the committee with problems without presenting some solutions and recommendations. I will now put forward our recommendations, of which there are three parts. The first relates to the Government of India. We recommend that Prime Minister Modi speak clearly and consistently in support of full religious freedom for all in India. He made a major speech in February 2015 but did not follow up on it and consequently it had little effect. We recommend that the national leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, would abandon its call for a national anti-conversion law. This law is demonstrably at variance with the promotion of national harmony and is against international norms of human rights and religious freedom. We recommend that state governors make clear that religiously motivated violence will not be tolerated and instruct police under their jurisdiction to bring the perpetrators of such violence to justice and to refrain from the current widespread practice of arresting the victims of the violence rather than the perpetrators. The police represent a major issue. We recommend that the police at all levels should impartially uphold the law at all times to protect religious minorities in daily life, to prosecute the perpetrators of religiously motivated violence rather than the victims and to treat seriously threats against religious minorities.

The recommendations to our own Government are as follows. We recommend that the Minster for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, would publicly express concern at the dramatic upsurge of violence against Christians in India and to encourage the Government of India to combat the attackers, protect the victims and promote religious freedom. We also ask the Minister to raise the matter with the Indian Ambassador to Ireland. We ask that the Government ensure that the Irish Embassy in India is fully briefed on the situation of freedom of religion or belief in India. This is outlined in the 2013 EU guidelines on the promotion and protection of freedom of religion or belief. More immediately, we ask that this matter is raised as a priority issue in the next session of EU-India human rights dialogue.

We ask that the joint committee arrange a meeting to discuss the dramatic upsurge of violence against Christians in India either as a single issue or as part of a wider issue of the ongoing persecution of Christians worldwide. This was last discussed by the committee in 2015. Lastly, we ask that the Indian Ambassador to Ireland, Mrs. Vijay Thakur Singh, be invited to attend a meeting of the joint committee to respond to the serious situation that is outlined in this briefing document.