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The Rights Stuff
Two versions of a run-in with the European Convention of Human Rights made the headlines in Britain earlier this week.
In one, a Hindu group successfully sued to prevent the slaughter of Shambo, a six year old cow infected with bovine tuberculosis. It is British veterinary practice to kill animals carrying this disease because of the threat it can pose to public and animal health; the organisation argued that because the animal was sacred to them, killing it would interfere with their right to manifest their religious beliefs.
The second story involved 16 year old Lydia Playfoot, who belongs to an organisation related to the "silver ring thing" group in the United States. Ms Playfoot - whose father is one of the British organisers of the "silver ring thing" - wore a simple silver ring to proclaim her dedication to "chastity" and her refusal to have sex before getting married. The jewellery was judged to be against school rules; Ms Playfoot refused to remove the ring.
She lost the case and her family was ordered to pay £12,000 costs. Her right to appeal the decision was denied.
Her lawyers argued that her school - which allows Sikh and Muslim children to wear headscarves and sacred bracelets - was denying Ms Playfoot the right to "manifest" her religious belief under Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights:
"1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.
2. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."
The Hindu Skanda Vale Community also pleaded Article 9, though successfully. Killing a cow clearly goes against their beliefs - but one would have imagined that the Human Rights Convention is perfectly clear in paragraph 2 that this freedom can be subject to limitation where public safety and health are at risk.
Other farming groups were quick to condemn the court's decision: A spokesman for the National Farmers Union said, "This is a decision which flies in the face of natural justice and means that British justice is now content to put public health at grave risk."
The Telegraph reports the reaction of Evan Thomas, who represents the Farmers' Union of Wales on the Welsh Assembly's TB action group:
"This ludicrous ruling contradicts the principles upon which successful TB eradication programmes throughout the world have been based for generations.
"It seems that the British justice system is now content to put human health and animal welfare at grave risk.
"What will happen if in six months' time this animal is coughing up blood and is so emaciated that it cannot hold its own weight? Will the judge make a similar decision?"
"This area has suffered the ravages of TB for years and this ruling has infuriated all those farmers who have lost thousands of animals to this disease. The fact that the judgment will now place their farms at greater risk will further dishearten an already depressed community."
Mr Thomas added that other animals in the organisation's herd showed signs of TB infection.
So, does the court's decision overturn decades of agricultural and veterinary practice, putting the rights of a minority religious group ahead of Britain's farmers (and indeed the people of the region - bovine TB can spread to humans, though it does so only very rarely)? This seems to be the case. The temple's case was partly based on the fact that testing for TB has been "subjective" and thus unreliable.
Hindu leaders are said to claim that the Shambo verdict "could be the death of the UK’s test-and-slaughter TB policy."
Mr Justice Hickinbottom, who heard the Temple's appeal against an earlier ruling that Shambo be slaughtered, said,
"(The Welsh Assembly) will be obliged to reconsider the public health objectives that underlie behind the surveillance and slaughter policy, and come to a view as to whether, in the reasonable pursuit of those objectives, the slaughter of this animal (or some less intrusive measure) would be proportional given the serious infringement of the community’s rights under Article 9 that slaughter would involve.”
So it seems that a demand by a religious group has, indeed, overturned or at least thrown into disorder the British government's strict line on the control of Bovine TB.
Lydia Playfoot's plea that her right to her religious beliefs were being denied was less successful. The Silver Ring Thing is a religiously inspired abstinence group which sees the wearing of an engraved ring as a "symbol of (the wearer's) belief in personal purity." Mainstream Christian faith does not demand the expression of belief in abstinence through clothing or jewellery, and it is unlikely that the Silver Ring Thing's organisers would count Ms Playfoot as one of the damned were she to remove her ring for the purpose of attending lessons.
However, just because it is not mainstream doesn't mean it can't be part of the wearer's faith. We are repeatedly told that wearing veils, headscarves and various Muslim headgear are not demanded by the Koran but are rather symbols of various regional expressions of Islam.
There are an estimated 1.6 billion Christians in the world today. Such a large body of belief is sure to have hundreds of thousands of different expressions of faith. Just because the mainstream church in Britain doesn't call for ring-wearing, that doesn't mean that some sects don't or can't see stricter clothing rules as being part of their beliefs. There are Mennonite groups in Britain, for example, which demand that female believers wear headscarves and avoid short skirts (your correspondent remembers one girl at his school who dressed this way without any interference from school authorities; she sat beside an Indian girl who was allowed to wear trousers instead of a skirt. Again, no-one raised an eyebrow. Simpler days).
As we noted above, Ms Playfoot's school allows Sikhs and Muslims to wear clothes which proclaim their religious beliefs. For Muslims at least, it is not always necessary that these rules be followed, though harder-line sects insist on a strict interpretation of the Koran's call for modest clothing for women.
It seems that the ruling is saying, "because most Christians do not wear rings to express their beliefs, you can't; but because some Muslims demand that women cover their hair with a headscarf, you can."
Unlike the Shambo case, it is next-to-impossible to see how the limitations in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights could be invoked against Lydia Playfoot:
"Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."
Most sensible people, and it could be argued most judges, are aware of when a religious minority is pushing the limits of what is suitable for school uniform: A burqa or niqab, for example, would raise eyebrows; a small crucifix or a headscarf would not. Surely a ring would fall into the latter category. Decisions like the ruling against Ms Playfoot would appear to hasten the day when all and every expression of religious faith be prohibited from schools, and certainly gives some justification for the increasing number of Britons who call for this.
