Article

Comment

Freedom of Belief

Middle East

Politics

19 January 2025

6 min read

Bring on the noise: what Trump can do to help the persecuted in Iran and China

Dealing with the dictators in Iran and China needs noisy advocates.

Steve Dew-Jones

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

A fisheye view of a large debating chamber in the round.

The Human Rights Council meets in Geneva.

Pope Francis hosted a delegation from the Islamic Republic of Iran late last year for an event purportedly related to “interfaith dialogue”.

It wasn’t the first meeting of its kind, and on the face of it at least, there isn’t a lot wrong with the idea. While Iran’s relationship with most Western nations could be described as “strained” at best, the Holy See has taken a different approach, maintaining diplomatic relations with Iran for the past 70 years, including the 45 years since the establishment of the Islamic Republic.

And it has borne some fruit, helping to secure the release of a few prisoners of conscience, such as Rev Mehdi Dibaj, a Christian convert who once faced the death sentence for his “apostasy”.

But it has also opened up the Church to accusations of kowtowing to dictators and enabling regimes such as the ayatollahs’ to present themselves in a more favourable light through the high-profile photo opportunities presented by events such as the recent “dialogue” in Rome.

And it is an opportunity you can be sure the Islamic Republic was not going to pass up, with its state media unsurprisingly happy to misquote the Pope by claiming he had “stressed how Christian minorities in Iran are allowed to freely meet together and worship in churches across the country, without restriction”.

In actual fact, what the Pope really said was that “freedom of religion [is not] limited to the expression of worship; it also entails complete freedom in the matter of one’s own beliefs and religious practice”.

So, slightly different. But, no matter, you can be sure that the vast majority of the over 90,000 viewers of Press TV’s account of the event won’t have been bothered to check the accuracy of the claim, and therefore may reasonably have gone away believing that Christians truly are entirely free to worship in Iran.

Another organisation representing Christians, The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), faced similar criticism last year when it accepted the invitation to take part in a Human Rights Council event organised by the Islamic Republic of Iran, under the deliberately misleading title, “The Role of Religions in Promoting Human Rights”.

The WEA was accused of “legitimising” Iran and even “seeming to support its propaganda as a purported defender of human rights”.

Iran will send another delegation to the Human Rights Council next week for its Universal Periodic Review (UPR), an occasion that has the potential, at least, to be quite significant, being the only UN mechanism with which the regime truly engages.

Unlike the mandates of fact-finding mission and Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, which Iran and its allies regularly decry as “politicised” and “selective”, the UPR is lauded even by Iran as the true and proper place for constructive criticism, as every single country undergoes the review - not only pariahs.

Several side events will be put on in conjunction with Iran’s UPR, on various themes including the situation of Iran’s Christian minority. But while the WEA last year hosted a similar event on the margins of the Human Rights Council, on this occasion it has declined the opportunity, preferring the path of “quiet diplomacy” and “dialogue” over public criticism.

Which, again, at least on the face of it, seems reasonable enough. As has been seen with the Vatican, such an approach can undoubtedly bear fruit. But it is not guaranteed.

On the other side of the debate, you have the human rights organisations who publicly call out Iran for each violation, highlighting individual cases with the hope of embarrassing Iran into change. For as much as Iran is a pariah, it still attaches some importance to its reputation on the world stage.

And again, such an approach has at times proved successful, as was seen in September with the early release from prison of two Iranian Christians who had been serving 10-year sentences due to their participation in house-churches, and whose cases had been included in a joint submission ahead of Iran's UPR.

But even this approach is not without its pitfalls. While there may be relief from accusations of kowtowing to dictators, there is also the distinct possibility that the pariah state in question may just stick its fingers in its ears and do what it wants anyway, such as in October when the Islamic Republic executed a German-Iranian political prisoner, Jamshid Sharmahd, despite years of vocal advocacy.

Advocacy certainly isn’t an exact science, at least when the experiment in question involves an unpredictable regime like the one in Tehran. Both quiet diplomacy and noisy advocacy can clearly work, but in neither case can it be guaranteed when the individual tasked with selecting their response to the advocacy is the Supreme Leader of Iran.

Surely the only way to ensure real change would be to make it too costly for the dictators to deal with their persecuted minorities in such a brutal fashion.

Western nations have a similar quandary to religious or human rights organisations. To what degree, if any, should Western governments prioritise human rights concerns over economic or political gains?

It has been suggested many times that Western nations are more concerned with oil or gas supplies, or other economic incentives, than truly seeking justice for victims of rights abuses.

When, for example, Keir Starmer speaks of wanting to have a “respectful” relationship with China, while engaging “honestly and frankly” on human rights concerns, what does that actually mean in practice?

The reality is that a behind-closed-doors discussion about a human rights infringement is unlikely to hold much sway if the violator does not share the belief that any violation has been committed, or even believes the victim to have been deserving of the treatment they received.

Whether it’s China’s targeting of the Uyghurs, or Iran’s crackdown on the Baha’is or Christian converts, one can be fairly certain that neither the Chinese nor Iranian regime feels the slightest remorse about its chosen approach.

Perhaps little could demonstrate this more than the mistreatment that continued to be handed out to Rev Mehdi Dibaj after the advocacy win of his release from prison. Just five months later, he was murdered anyway, one of three church leaders killed extrajudicially in the months after his release had been secured, including Rev Dibaj’s friend and chief advocate, Haik Hovsepian.

So is it really realistic to expect that just because we say we are concerned about the Uyghurs, the Baha’is, or the Christians, there will be any change in approach?

Surely the only way to ensure real change would be to make it too costly for the dictators to deal with their persecuted minorities in such a brutal fashion.

As ever, actions really do speak louder than words. And this is why many Iranians are hopeful that with the return of the much-maligned Donald Trump, the “maximum pressure” policy towards the Islamic Republic will also return and, through it, real change may actually be achieved.

There are many reasons, of course, to find fault with the incoming president, but when it comes to dealing with the dictators, at least, it could be argued that Trump has shown himself to have more common sense than most. The hope, as with the other approaches, is that it actually makes a tangible difference.

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Article

Assisted dying

Comment

Politics

25 November 2024

7 min read

Assisted dying hasn’t resolved Swiss end of life debates

Despite attempts to normalise it, new challenges still arise.

Markus Zimmerman

Markus is Professor of Moral Theology and Ethics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.

A single bed, wiith an unmade colourful duvet stands in the corner of a room. A hoist reaches over it from the corner.

The dying room, Dignitas Clinic, Zurich.

Dignitas.

While countries such as Germany, France or the UK are currently struggling to find a suitable regulation for assisted suicide, their peers in the Netherlands, Canada and Switzerland have years of experience with the controversial medical practice. Even if each state must explore its own ways of dealing with these ethically controversial issues, it is obvious that international experience should not be ignored as they try to find a way forward.

In Switzerland the discussions and challenges surrounding assisted suicide are increasing rather than decreasing. Contrary to the idea that a liberalisation of assisted suicide would lead to fewer debate, tensions and difficulties are increasing. My observation, and thesis, indicates that practices such as assisted suicide cannot be “normalised”, even in the medium and long term.

Developments

In recent years, one to two per cent of all deaths in Switzerland were due to assisted suicide. From an overall perspective, this practice is therefore still a marginal phenomenon. However, a look at the total number of assisted suicides per year gives a different impression, as this has increased more than fivefold in the years between 2008 and 2020, from an initial 253 to 1,251 deaths per year, a rising trend. The cause of death statistics for Switzerland only include those cases of assisted suicide in which persons resident in Switzerland were involved and the death was reported to the authorities. According to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, in 2020, it was mainly people over the age of 64 who made use of assisted suicide. Detailed information on the underlying illnesses of the people affected in 2018 shows that about 40 per cent were affected by cancer, just under 12 per cent by diseases of the nervous system, a further 12 per cent by cardiovascular diseases and just over a third by other illnesses, including dementia and depression. There are currently seven right-to-die organisations in Switzerland which play a leading role in a typical assisted suicide procedure. They work closely with doctors who are prepared to prescribe a lethal drug, generally Pentobarbital. The data reflects an ambivalent picture: on the one hand, the proportion of assisted suicide cases is relatively low in relation to all deaths and, for example, in comparison to the large number of people who die in Switzerland in a state of deep sedation until death; on the other hand, the number of assisted suicides in Switzerland has risen sharply in recent years.

Perceptions and assessments

Since the 1990s, the public perception and assessment of assisted suicide in Swiss society has changed from an initially cautious and sceptical attitude towards broad acceptance. While the debates in other countries are characterised by relatively sharp controversies between those in favour and those against, public discourse in Switzerland has been less polarised. There are indications of a certain normalisation of the situation, the strongest sign is that Switzerland has so far refrained from regulating assisted suicide in a separate law. The results of a recently-published study on the opinions of Swiss people over the age of 55 regarding assisted suicide confirm these impressions.: The survey showed that over four-fifths of respondents support legal assisted suicide, almost two-thirds can imagine asking for assisted suicide themselves at some point, and that almost one-third are considering becoming members of an right-to-die organisation in the near future, with one-twentieth of respondents already being members at the time of the survey in 2015. Among people with a higher level of education and older people aged between 65 and 74, approval of assisted suicide and corresponding practices was higher than among less educated, younger and very old people; approval was also significantly lower among religious practitioners.

Sensitive topics

The fact that assisted suicide enjoys broad support in Swiss society as a whole does not mean that there are not difficult and controversial aspects relating to its practice. Relevant topics include, in particular, places of death, authorisation criteria and procedures.

Places of death: Assisted suicide is permitted also for mentally ill persons in psychiatric clinics, but the federal court recommends great caution here and requires two psychiatric expert opinions to ensure that the person willing to die is capable of judgement with regard to the desire to commit suicide. Although assisted suicide for children and adolescents has hardly been an issue in Switzerland to date, the corresponding debates are currently being held in Canada and elsewhere. The question of whether people in prison also have a right to make use of assisted suicide, has been the subject of intense debate in Switzerland for years, with a generally positive response. The question of whether right-to-die organisations should be given access to acute hospitals and nursing homes is still the subject of controversial debate, with regulations varying from hospital to hospital, nursing home to nursing home

Authorisation criteria: With regard to the admission criteria for persons willing to die, the capacity for judgement is at the centre of attention: while the importance of the criterion is undisputed in itself, there is a struggle for reliable standards and procedures to reliably test this criterion. Since the publication of the SAMS ethical guidelines Management of Dying and Death in 2018, the criterion for end of life and, depending on this, that of unbearable suffering have received new attention due to an objection by the Swiss Medical AssociationFMH. While the guidelines are based on the criterion of unbearable suffering, the FMH wants to stick to the near end of life. It is certainly difficult to diagnose the existence of unbearable suffering, as the international debate on the significance and assessment of existential (neither physical nor psychological) suffering shows. This difficulty is illustrated by the debate that has been going on for several years in Switzerland about so-called old-age suicide and the inherent criterion of tiredness of life. At the centre of the dispute is the legally difficult question of whether a doctor is also allowed to prescribe a lethal drug to a healthy person.

Procedures: Here the role of the medical profession and right to die organisations is by far the most important issue. In contrast to the physician-centred models in Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands, the Swiss model of assisted suicide is based on the idea that every person has the right to end their life and may call on the help of any other person to do so. Although the medical profession is usually involved in the process, the management of the procedure is normally the responsibility of a right-to-die organisation. This division of responsibilities is always up for debate when legal regulations are being considered, in which doctors should tend to take the lead in the process due to their professional background. There is also a debate about how and by whom compliance with the authorisation criteria should or could be monitored, whereby it remains to be decided whether this should be carried out before or after the death. At present, a certain amount of monitoring takes place following a suicide, insofar as the authorities investigate the cases afterwards. There is also debate as to whether Pentobarbital is a suitable means of suicide, especially if this barbiturate is not administered intravenously but taken orally; there is no knowledge of how many cases are currently administered intravenously and by whom an infusion is then set up. Last but not least, consideration has already been given to the use of lethal drugs, such as helium gas, which can be obtained over the counter.

Attempts at regulation

Political efforts to regulate assisted suicide in Switzerland in a more nuanced way than today have been made since the 1990s but have remain largely without consequences to date. In relevant judgements by the Federal Supreme Court or in statements by the Federal Department of Justice and Police, reference is regularly made to the ethical guidelines of the SAMS. These are classified as soft law and are therefore not legally binding, even though their content has become the subject of dispute. The National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics (NCE) had already recommended more far-reaching legal regulation in 2005 as part of a detailed opinion on the subject; in the opinion of the NCE at the time, the review of authorisation criteria, a justifiable regulation of assisted suicide for the mentally ill, children and adolescents and state supervision of right-to-die organisations, should be ensured by law. The question is what form a legal regulation can take that grants the medical profession far-reaching powers but at the same time prevents medical paternalism (in favour of or against assisted suicide). From the perspective of Swiss experience, this is “a square circle”: either the doctors retain the final decision on who receives the barbiturate, or official access rules are established, the review of which does not generally require medical expertise.

The outlook

In the short and medium term, it can be assumed that the number of assisted suicides in Switzerland will continue to rise. The coronavirus pandemic and the particular difficulties faced by nursing homes during this time are likely to exacerbate this increase. In view of these expectations and the legislative processes in other European countries, pressure is likely to increase in Switzerland to create a legal regulation. Overall, I think politically it will be important to create a legal regulation, in order to ensure legal equality and legal certainty on the one hand and prevention of abuse and expansion on the other. At the centre of social-ethical reflection is the challenge of learning to deal with the pluralism of different ideas of a good death and to develop and establish alternative models to medically assisted dying. The thesis I mentioned at the beginning is confirmed today: assisted suicide in Switzerland can hardly be normalised; new problems, challenges and demands are constantly arising. Suicide, whether with or without the help of another person, always means an existential transgression that defies normalisation.