I. Dialogue with delegations, governments and experts

Let me start by thanking delegations with whom I have had fruitful exchanges in recent weeks. Several governments and experts have supported me in developing my mandate.

By invitation of the Polish Foreign Minister Rau I was honoured to participate in the international Ministerial to Advance Freedom of Religion or Belief in November. It followed two previous editions organised by the US State Department. I underlined the Council of Europe’s commitment to protecting freedom of thought, conscience and religion. No-one should be targeted for what they believe or do not believe.

I was equally honoured to receive a letter from the Hungarian State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Peter Sztaray, offering his full support for my mandate which, in his words, “sends out a positive and strong signal for the Council of Europe’s engagement in promoting tolerance and non-discrimination”. Freedom of belief will be a topic of the forthcoming Hungarian Presidency and I look forward to our cooperation on that subject.

I discussed the issue of anti-Christian hatred with Monsignore Marco Ganci, our Representative of the Holy See. I am grateful for the detailed information he provided. Globally, many hate crimes against Christians are committed outside Europe, but they also occur within our region and Christians are victims of terrorist attacks. Moreover, the pandemic has given rise to anti-religious incidents. Monsignore Ganci recalled Pope Francis’ Encyclica “Fratelli Tutti” which calls for mutual respect and inter-religious dialogue as a pillar of our modern societies.

I had a very productive exchange with Frédéric Potier, head of the French antidiscrimination body DILCRAH, France’s antisemitism representative. He reported that his team was preparing a new action plan on racism and antisemitism for the Spring. We agreed on the need to make internet companies more responsible in the fight against hate speech online. I mentioned the work of the Council of Europe in this context and we concurred on the importance of binding rules to remove illegal content, including the Digital Services Act. DILCRAH plans to visit us next month, and I hope to meet M. Potier’s successor in the near future.

I should also mention the pioneering work of l’Union des Etudiants Juifs de France (Jewish Students Union) who, in 2013 (together with other organisations), brought about a landmark judgment of international significance from a Paris court requiring Twitter to take action against racist posts. The union continues to work with the French authorities on online content moderation and I have invited them to share their experience at the Council of Europe.

I was very pleased to have an online meeting with Italy’s Special Representative on Antisemitism, renowned scholar and former PACE member Milena Santerini. She has recently completed a report on antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate, which she said were two sides of the same coin. Ms Santerini is currently drafting a report for the Italian Government on how to implement the non-binding working definition on antisemitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, IHRA. I hope Ms Santerini can visit the Council of Europe again soon.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Katarina von Schnurbein, the EU’s antisemitism co-ordinator, who has provided me with invaluable support and introduced me to SECCA, the group of Special Envoys and Coordinators on Combating Antisemitism, which I addressed at their last meeting on 19 November. More and more European states are appointing antisemitism coordinators. It is important the Council of Europe is now represented in this body. I also had a good exchange with the EU’s coordinator on combating anti-Muslim hatred, Tomaso Chiamparino.

Finally, I would like to thank Turkey and Germany for their strong support. I had productive exchanges at the Turkish Representation, as well as with Felix Klein, the German antisemitism representative who met the Secretary General in November 2019 following the attack on the synagogue in Halle.

Courtesy calls and messages from organisations

I should mention just some of the courtesy calls and invitations I have received from external bodies including the World Jewish Congress and the Ambassador of Israel to international organisations in France, Haim Assaraf, who offered me his full support and invited me to Yad Vashem. I also received strong support from the Presidents of various Muslim organisations - I will return to this in a moment.  Following my meeting with the Consul General of Morocco, Driss El Kaissi, the Consul General is considering an event at the Council of Europe to highlight the culture of Morocco’s Jewish minority.

II. Combating antisemitism

In line with my mandate, I have raised awareness of the Council of Europe’s expertise, for example at the IHRA plenary. I have promoted three areas in particular: The work of ECRI, our education programmes and the European Observatory on History Teaching, and the proposed Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers on passing on remembrance of the Holocaust and preventing crimes against humanity. The latter would be highly significant step and I believe we should use this milestone to re-confirm the Council of Europe’s role and reassert its position in the fight against antisemitism.

For example, both the UK’s antisemitism coordinator, Lord Mann, and the UK representative in IHRA, Lord Pickles, told me they thought the Council of Europe would be well-placed to help shape the future of Holocaust education when the last direct witnesses will no longer be with us. I also suggest we implement the proposal of the Ambassador of San Marino to create a web page with an overview of national initiatives on Holocaust Remembrance Day.  

Promoting ECRI is a priority of our communications strategy. My interlocutors expressed particular interest in ECRI’s forthcoming general policy recommendations. The last general policy recommendation on antisemitism dates back to 2004, 17 years ago, and the last one on anti-Muslim hatred was published 21 years ago in 2000.

Clearly much has happened since then, not all events are covered by our working cycles, and unfortunately the situation has not improved. To quote our Secretary General “Europe is facing a shocking reality: antisemitic, anti-Muslim and other racist hate crimes are increasing at an alarming rate” … “heinous acts are often precipitated by poisonous words and conspiracy theories spread on social media...”

My preliminary conclusion in is that there is no need to reinvent the wheel in terms of our approach to antisemitism, but our position and presence needed to be amplified; our membership in SECCA is a good example. The Council of Europe should help shape the dialogue on this issue. My mandate can improve cooperation with our partners and may facilitate innovative projects.

III. Anti-Muslim hate crimes

Many governments and international organisations are concerned with anti-Muslim hatred, yet international cooperation is not well developed. According to the German Interior Ministry, 950 anti-Muslim crimes were committed in 2019, up from 910 in 2018. For example, a report in Der Spiegel magazine last month featured the account of a 17-year-old Muslim girl who was badly beaten and hospitalised in a blatantly anti-Muslim attack in Berlin. Shaimaa was walking with a friend when she was attacked from behind by a man screaming “dirty foreigners go away from our country”. He hit the girl on the head with a bottle, leaving her unconscious, and then kicked her in the stomach. Shaimaa, an A-student who speaks German like a native, wants to become a doctor but says she has lost a year due to her injuries. She is determined to remain true to her religion and her identity, even if faced with hatred and violence.

On 10 December, following the Secretary General’s mission to Berlin, I had a meeting with the President of the Central Committee of Muslims in Germany (Aiman Mazyek), who had previously met former Secretary General Jagland. He said that racists were constantly “testing the barriers” with seemingly minor attacks, such as throwing small stones at Mosques or using racist slurs. However, without resolute counterreaction, perpetrators were likely to feel encouraged to commit more severe hate crimes. He also said that the underreporting of crimes was a major problem. Many Muslims are either afraid of reporting racist incidents or, I quote: “don’t want to cause problems”. The same point was made by the Imam and by the President of the local Muslim community when I visited the Grand Mosque in Strasbourg.

Also in Berlin, I received a briefing in the Federal Interior Ministry by the Secretariat of a new independent expert committee on anti-Muslim hatred, initiated personally by Minister Horst Seehofer only last September. Interestingly, Minister Seehofer has, after several months of hesitation, in the meantime agreed to commission a study on police racism, as recommended by ECRI. The study will also look into intolerance faced by the police themselves.

In the week following the terrorist attack in Vienna in November I called the President of the Community of the Islamic Faith in Austria (Ümit Vural) who had been outspoken in his condemnation of the attack. I asked whether he feared a backlash with increased anti-Muslim attacks. He said that this was not the case and that Austrian society had shown great cohesion. This would seem to reflect the expectation stipulated in a recent statement by EU home affairs ministers that the fight against extremism must not lead to the exclusion and stigmatisation of religious groups.

At the international level I reached out to Ahmed Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who will shortly publish a report on anti-Muslim hatred. Shaheed confirmed the problem of underreporting and the phenomenon of “scapegoating” during the pandemic. We agreed to stay in contact.

My conclusion in this field is that a more regular exchange between governments on anti-Muslim hate would be useful to compare and identify effective counter measures. I believe the Council of Europe could be the focal point of such an exchange.

Allow me to close with the words of our Secretary General, together with State Minister Michael Roth responsible for the German Presidency in their joint article on International Human Rights Day: “How robust a democracy is and how well it functions can be measured not least by its ability to safeguard the rights of minorities. Protecting minorities is not special interest politics, but part of our shared identity. Diversity has made Europe what it is today.” I would add that freedom of religion is an essential part of European diversity.

And, as the young Jewish Student Union leader said, we should not regard the Internet as a separate space. Some apparently think different laws apply on the Internet, but for today’s generation it is part of everyday reality where citizens need to be protected from hatred and harm.