Pope Benedict XVI has arrived in his native Germany for a four-day state visit and is scheduled to speak to the Bundestag, the German parliament. Around 100 parliamentarians said they would boycott the pope’s speech, claiming it is inappropriate for a religious leader to address the German parliament.
Read more here.
Organizers expect some 20,000 demonstrators to gather in the overwhelmingly secular capital to protest the pontiff’s visit.
On 28 June 2011 the EPPSP organized a meeting on the Implemenation of Art 17 in the European Parliament. Contributions were made by President Jerzy Buzek and Vice-President Tökès in charge of the Art 17 Dialogue.
President Buzek, who makes no secret of his strong Christian beliefs, spoke emolliently of “a community of shared values, whatever their source” and, noting the variety of arrangements in Europe for relations between church and state, said that this was a matter for member states, not for the EU authorities. He preferred to talk of the “autonomy” rather than the “separation” of church and state: religions (and non-religious philosophies) and governments should maintain a mutual respect coupled with full freedom to manage their own affairs. As to the Parliament’s implementation of the “Article 17″ dialogue mandated under the Lisbon treaty he had delegated this to his vice-president László Tokés to organise. Meantime a meeting of the three EU presidents – Parliament, Commission and Council – had been held recently with religious representatives and arrangements would be made for a similar meeting with non-religious groups later in the year.
On the 15th of June, the European Parliament Platform for Secularism in Politics heard the case of the Italian Judge Luigi Tosti.
Mr Tosti refused to work in an Italian courtroom where a crucifix was hanging. After several lawsuits, Mr Tosti was removed from the judiciary by the state’s Supreme Court in March 2011.
Mr Tosti is preparing to lodge an appeal under Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights, on the basis of violation of his right of religious freedom (both negative and positive) and the violation of the right of equality and non-discrimination on the basis of religion.
During the Brussels meeting, Judge Tosti stated that freedom of religion is a fundamental right. Everyone is free to adhere to any religion, and free not to choose a religion. A state based on the rule of law needs to have an unbiased judiciary, therefore any biased appearance (such as a crucifix being a religious symbol) needs to be avoided.
As is laid down in Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, every member state has the duty to be neutral and impartial. The compulsory presence of a crucifix in every Italian courtroom is obviously in conflict with this fundamental requirement. Mr Tosti proposed the Italian Minister of Justice to allow him to place other religious and non-religious symbols alongside the crucifix, in order to restore neutrality. This however was not allowed by the Italian state. Hereafter, Mr Tosti refused to do sittings and was eventually removed from the Italian Magistracy in March 2011.
During the meeting, it was pointed out by Mr Tosti and his lawyer that within the European Union, there is increasing cooperation on police and legal matters. This increasing mutual confidence in each other’s legal systems implies an important mainstreaming of certain standards, particularly with regards to neutrality.
A national legal system needs to be neutral and not dominated by one specific religion.
The European Parliament Platform for Secularism in Politics will follow Mr Tosti’s lawsuit at the European Court of Human Rights closely and will give him all the support he needs.
Press: RNW (in English / in Spanish)
Read also (in French): “Le « décrocheur de crucifix » retrouve un poste dans l’école publique : Le libre-penseur Valentin Abgottspon, licencié en raison de son combat pour la laïcité, a été engagé dans une école publique. » more
by Evelyne Leopold, The Huffington Post, 13 June 2011
World leaders gathered at the United Nations to mark the 30th anniversary of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and put out a 102-paragraph declaration. Adrienne Germain, the president of the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), has been working on women’s issues all her adult life and was active in the 1994 Cairo conference on women, also known as the CPD (International Conference on Population and Development). In an interview with the Huffington Post, Germain and Alexandra Garita, an international policy program officer at IWHC, discuss the declaration and the controversies that arise whenever sex is on the agenda. The declaration, produced every five years, gives U.N. agencies a mandate for their programs and advises governments where best to spend monies.
Q: What about access to family planning, to birth control?
AG: We lost reproductive rights and reproductive health language from the 1994 Cairo document and from early drafts here. Reproductive rights, for example, also includes the right to freely and responsibly decide on the number and spacing of one’s children. If you lose that and you have no reference to family planning services in the document, then you basically have no reference to contraception for women. You also don’t have protection for women living with HIV who are sterilized without their consent and who are forced to have abortion. It is not a rare occurrence in southern Africa (including South Africa).
Q: Who opposed rights for adolescents or women?
AG: Some people have referred to this as a perfect storm created by a combination of the Holy See and Egypt (less so Iran). Read more…
Adrienne Germain
Location: Arlington, United States
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