The Premier of Bermuda inaugurated the International Religious Liberty Association’s Bermuda Conference March 15, commending the Association for its contributions to religious freedom around the world.

“Your conference addresses an issue that is close to the heart of the government of Bermuda,” said Premier Jennifer Smith to the 120-strong delegation. “That issue is discrimination and how to overcome it.” She added that “religious liberty is threatened when small minds close themselves off to the variety of beliefs, traditions and races that make up many modern multi-cultural societies.”

“The experts you have brought together have come from different religious, ethnic and social backgrounds,” said Smith, “but they are united to defend the principle of religious freedom.”

United Nations Ambassador Joseph Verner Reed also addressed the conference, saying that the conference “touched on a burning issue.”

“As you take up, at this conference, the important issue of ‘Religious Freedom: An Answer to Discrimination and Intolerance,’ you touch upon a burning issue in today’s interdependent world, an issue that increasingly defines the framework in which global civilization interacts,” said Reed, who is U.N. Under-Secretary General.

The international line-up of speakers at the conference included: Dr. Rosa Guerreiro, UNESCO Director of Inter-religious Dialogue; Dr. Rosa Maria Martinez de Codes, Department of Religious Affairs, Spain; Dr. Tad Stahnke, United States Commission on International Religious Freedom; Dr. Arthur Fletcher, former chair, United States Commission on Civil Rights; Anatoly Krasikov, Russian Academy of Sciences; and Professor Cole Durham, J. Reuben Clark Law School, United States.