Key Countries Edition 1 2 THE FREEDOM OF THOUGHT REPORT 2015 Key Countries Edition 3 Freedom of Thought 2015: A Global Report on Discrimination Against Humanists, Atheists, and the Non-religious; Their Human Rights and Legal Status, was created by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). The International Humanist and Ethical Union is the worldwide democratic body for Humanist, atheist, rationalist, secular, ethical culture, and freethought organizations. Its mission is to represent and support the global Humanist movement, and to build a world in which human rights are respected and all can live a life of dignity. If you have updates, additions or corrections for the report please email [email protected] or visit the website at freethoughtreport.com. To receive updates and news from IHEU, or join as a supporter, visit iheu.org. The cover image features a detail from a map produced using the data from this report. 4 5 This map shows countries by to their “Freedom of Thought” status, as determined in the Freedom of Thought Report 2015. Ratings applied according to the most severe boundary condition met by a given country. For example if a person can go to prison under the penal code of a given country for a religiously-defined crime such as “blasphemy”, then this country would receive a “Serious Discrimination” rating (even if the country otherwise was relatively free and non-discriminatory). The full list of boundary conditions and country-by-country assessments are included in this Report. Iheu.org freethoughtreport.com 6 “My late husband, Avijit Roy, was a science author, a blogger, a writer on topics including the origins of the whole Universe, homosexuality, the evolution of love and everything including literary criticism in between. Above all he was a humanist. He always wanted to explore the biggest questions in life. His interests were wide, but it was his books on liberal views, faith and disbelief for which he began receiving death threats. I was also a fellow blogger and writer with a published book on Evolution of Life. At the International Book Fair in Dhaka in February 2015 we were attacked by a group of men with machetes. Avijit was killed and I sustained 4 head stabs and a sliced off thumb. A young blogger, Washiqur Raham Babu, was the next machete victim, in March. In one of his last posts he had decried the breadth of topics on which Islamists demanded silence, from women’s and minority rights to religion and free expression itself. Our good friend and a published author Ananta Bijoy Das, having spent the intervening months writing and protesting about the failures of justice on the part of the Bangladeshi authorities in the earlier cases, was himself cut down in May. In August, blogger Niladri Chatterjee was hacked to death in his own home, his partner forced to watch as the attackers invaded their apartment. And at the end of October, two publishers of Avijit’s books were hit on the same day; the publisher Faysal Arefin Dipon, who published the two of Avijit’s infamous books on Faith and Disbelief, was killed, the publisher Ahmed Rashid Tutul was shot and hacked and left in critical condition. Two other bloggers and writers were gravely injured. These things we know: That all these men were brave, both intellectually, and because they knew that for some extremists even asking the wrong questions would be enough to rationalise their murder; That dozens more writers who dare to write critically about fundamentalism and advocate for a humanist worldview, are receiving death threats, and given the range of those killed so far any of them could be next; That instead of convicting even one suspect in these killings, the police and the government have been threatening to arrest bloggers themselves if they “hurt religious sentiments” by professing their own secular views. These killings are one part of the problem of extremism in one part of the world, and our freedoms of thought and expression are under attack in many other ways and in many other places around the globe. If there are lessons the world must draw from Bangladesh in recent years, they are these: Allowing bigotry and extremism to fester unchallenged will have generational consequences; Demands for prison or death sentences or vigilantism against humanists as such must be met not with appeasement nor by arresting the very bloggers under threat, but with condemnation as the gross violations of freedom of thought and expression that such demands represent; And that once a country silences and intimidates its intellectuals and freethinkers , a vicious cycle of terror and extremism becomes inevitable, just as we saw in the earlier mass-killings of the Bengali intellectuals in the 1971 Liberation war, again at the hands of religious extremists, it creates an intellectual vacuum, from which it could take many, many years to revert.” — Rafida Bonya Ahmed 7 Contents This “Key Countries Edition” of the report contains entries on countries that are mentioned in the introductory material, or which have other significant updates, or regional impact, or which provide a variation in the application of the ratings schema. Countries included in this slimmed down edition are not exclusively the worst rated (it includes some of the best rated countries for example) and nor does exclusion of a country from this edition mean that there have not been significant developments or violations in that country. The full report is available via freethoughtreport.com. THE FREEDOM OF AMERICAS Turkey ............................ 136 THOUGHT REPORT 2015 ... 3 Guatemala ....................... 64 United Arab Emirates ..... 141 Contents ............................ 8 Argentina ......................... 66 EUROPE Foreword ........................... 9 ASIA Poland ............................ 145 General Introduction ....... 10 Taiwan ............................. 69 Romania ......................... 152 Editorial Introduction ...... 15 Brunei Darussalam ........... 70 Iceland ........................... 156 How to Use this Report ... 18 Indonesia ......................... 73 Norway .......................... 159 Credits ............................. 22 Malaysia ........................... 78 United Kingdom ............. 163 AFRICA Myanmar (Burma) ........... 83 Macedonia ..................... 168 Malawi ............................. 23 Afghanistan ...................... 86 Malta .............................. 171 Algeria ............................. 26 Bangladesh ...................... 91 Belgium .......................... 174 Egypt ............................... 30 India ................................. 99 France ............................ 176 Libya ................................ 38 Iran ................................ 103 Germany ........................ 178 Morocco .......................... 41 Maldives ........................ 109 Netherlands ................... 185 Sudan............................... 48 Nepal ............................. 114 OCEANIA Tunisia ............................. 50 Pakistan ......................... 116 Australia ......................... 187 Uganda ............................ 55 Bahrain .......................... 122 Mauritania ....................... 58 Iraq ................................ 126 Nigeria ............................. 61 Saudi Arabia ................... 130 8 Foreword Welcome to the Freedom of Thought Report 2015, compiled and produced by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) with the active support of our member organisations and humanist volunteers from across the world. In the past twelve months, the world has witnessed numerous horrific attacks and legal penalties specifically aimed at people accused of “insulting religion”. From Charlie Hebdo in Paris and the shooting at a free speech seminar in Copenhagen that followed, to the humanist bloggers murdered in Bangladesh; from alleged “blasphemers” crucified under ISIS or jailed by sovereign states, to alleged “apostates” sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia and Mauritania. There has too often been a disappointing response, questioning the motives of the victims or blaming the messages for which they were killed. (“I believe in free speech, but…” “Everyone has a right to their beliefs, but religion is a sensitive area…”). It is vital that the world resists the assumption that these targeted victims have in some sense provoked or deserved these grave violations of their rights to freedom of thought and expression. Despite the overall trend toward more severe violence and legal penalties, we do record a few improvements this year. In May and July 2015 respectively, Norway and Iceland abolished their extant “blasphemy” laws (although in Norway there are fresh concerns about regressive education reforms, a reminder that countries can make progress in some areas while slipping in others). This Freedom of Thought Report provides background, context, and some specific details on highlighted cases, and looks at the current situation facing the non-religious throughout the world. It is of vital importance and relevance to everyone concerned with human rights, and is an indispensable part of the broader topic of freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, and freedom of expression. IHEU will continue to use its accreditation and presence at the United Nations and other international bodies to highlight and campaign for the rights of the non-religious, as well as other persecuted groups. I hope that you will join us in that campaign. Andrew Copson President