Tutu calls for Blair and Bush to be tried ; Human rights ‘agenda’ is new totalitarianism, bishop warns judges
Tutu calls for Blair and Bush to be tried
BBC – Tony Blair and George W Bush should be taken to the International Criminal Court in The Hague over the Iraq war, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said.
Writing in the UK’s Observer newspaper, he accused the former leaders of lying about weapons of mass destruction.
The Iraq military campaign had made the world more unstable “than any other conflict in history”, he said.
Mr Blair responded by saying “this is the same argument we have had many times with nothing new to say”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19454562
Human rights ‘agenda’ is new totalitarianism, bishop warns judges
Daily Telegraph – Human rights are becoming a new form of totalitarianism, being used to drive Christians out of public life and even their jobs, European judges will be warned next week.
Laws originally designed to protect basic freedoms are instead being used to strip British society of its Christian foundations while upholding the rights of minorities, they will hear.
The warning, from a prominent Church of England bishop, comes as part of a landmark case on religious freedom in Britain to be heard at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg next week.
In a powerful submission to the judges, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, warns of a distorted “human rights agenda” which he likens to the atheist communist regimes in Eastern Europe which also suppressed Christianity by preventing public manifestations of faith.
Unless basic Christian values are upheld, human rights will become “another inhuman ideology”, like the totalitarian regimes of the past, suppressing individuals, he says.
The case is being brought by four workers including Shirley Chaplin, a former nurse, and Nadia Eweida, a British Airways check-in clerk who were denied the right to wear a cross as a visible manifestation of their faith.
They are joining with Gary McFarlane, a relationship counsellor, and Lillian Ladele, a registrar, who were refused the right to opt out of tasks which went against their beliefs on homosexuality.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9511836/Human-rights-agenda-is-new-totalitarianism-bishop-warns-judges.html