As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, Benedict Rogers, our East Asia Team Leader, offers some reflections on his experience of lockdown in the UK.
As someone who has spent all of my adult life advocating for freedom for others, I have found myself over the past few months willingly accepting restrictions on my own. And as someone who has spent my adult life travelling the world, for the first time I am unable – and unwilling – to go much further than the grocery shops five minutes around the corner, as infrequently as possible, or a short distance for some brief exercise.
No one in Britain in any generation since the Second World War has ever experienced such restrictions on their basic freedoms. The liberties we take for granted – to pop to the shops whenever we want, to hop on a train to visit a friend, to drive a few hours to see relatives, to go to a bar or restaurant, to shop for clothes, furniture, garden equipment, books, or to go to church – are now taken from us.
Maybe – just maybe – the experience of lockdown makes the stories we hear in our work in CSW of those imprisoned, detained or otherwise restricted for their faith and conscience, just a little less abstract.
Just maybe it helps us to empathise in a new way with those under house arrest or in prison. Of course there is a vast gulf between our lockdown and the detention of prisoners of conscience. For a start, the restrictions we face are genuinely in the public interest, and are not in any way targeting our beliefs. We have a government that was genuinely reluctant to impose a lockdown, and while it may be criticised by some for acting too slowly, it is surely good that we do not have a government that is overly eager to curtail our freedoms.
These restrictions are approved by a democratically elected legislature, and are temporary. I have no doubt that when the government and its advisers believe it is safe to ease the restrictions they will do so. I don’t doubt that places of worship will re-open when it is possible. Don’t forget that the decision to close places of worship was taken with the agreement of religious leaders. And none of us is tortured for our beliefs.
Indeed, we have access to church online. No one is stopping us reading the Bible, praying, surfing the Internet, calling our friends and family, reading the newspapers or books, or watching television. We have access to high quality medical care. And, despite the economic hardships suddenly inflicted on us by the pandemic and the panic-buying in the early days of the crisis, most of us have good food.
Nevertheless, we know that if the police find us gathering with people with whom we do not live, they will disperse us. And if we fail to comply, we could face a fine, or even prison. So although the context, reasons and nature of the restrictions are very different from those in places of persecution and repression, we suddenly find that the government and the police have unprecedented powers over us.
How does this make us feel? It is my prayer that it will make us cherish the freedoms we have until now taken so much for granted. And I hope it may enhance our solidarity with those for whom such restrictions are far more serious, long-term and painful.
It is one thing to be confined to one’s home for one’s own safety and that of others, for a period of time, in the public interest. It is quite another to be under house arrest or in a prison cell for a lengthy sentence, enduring torture, being denied medical care, being beaten for praying, prohibited from reading the Bible, refused family contact.
So whenever the lockdown ends, whenever our freedoms are restored, let us not forget what it feels like –even for us, with all the comforts and liberties we enjoy – to have some freedoms suspended. Let that motivate us to pray and protest and campaign with greater empathy and passion for those around the world who suffer far graver deprivations, at the hands of authorities who wield power not for the public good but to repress ideas and beliefs.