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Ethical Record the Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 107 No. 5 £1.50 June 2002 EDITORIAL - WHAT IS TERRORISM? Since NATO has declared war on terrorism, it is appropriate to examine how the term may be defined. The problem common to the articles in this issue of the Record is how to respond ethically to situations of injustice. The situations range from the politically peaceful and stable to the far more desperate situations in India and Palestine. Living in north London, citizen Tom Rubens perceives failures and defects in the borough which he would like to address; he therefore puts himself forward for election to thc council. This is surely the democratic ideal. Peter Tatchell describes his attempts to use the rule of law to limit the injustice being perpetrated in Zimbabwe by a dictator wielding nearly absolute power. Vidya Anand's passionate account of the terrible plight of the Dalits in India raises the question of whether violence against civilians (albeit members of an 'oppressing' class) can ever be justified. Mohammad Ibrahim presents a series of aphorisms from the Qur'an dealing with conflict, the provenance of which is left to the Pilo()Ian Devi - the Bandit Queen reader to ponder. Deliberate suicide would appear to be condemned. Finally, Les Levidow's quote from the EU definition of terrorism suggests that a criminal act ( eg bombing a bus-load of arbitrary civilians) constitutes terrorism if its aim is to induce terror in the populace which in turn may influence political change in a direction desired by the bomber. MY BIDS TO ARREST MUGABE Peter Tatchell 3 PHOOLAN DEVI, BANDIT OR LIBERATOR? Vidya Anand 8 IS ISLAM A THREAT TO WORLD PEACE? Mohammad Ibrahhn 14 TERRORISING DISSENT Les Levidow 17 STANDING FOR THE.. COUNCIL IN 2002 Tom Rubens 23 ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 24 SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC IR 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8034 Fax: 020 7242 8036 website: www.ethicalsoe.org.uk email: library@ ethicalsoc.org.uk Officers Chairman of the GC: Terry Mullins Hon. Representative: Don Liversedge Vice Chairman: Malcolm Rees Registrar: Edmund McArthur Editor, Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac SPES Staff Administrative Secretary to the Society: Marina Ingham Tel: 020 7242 8034 Librarian/Programme Coordinator: Jennifer Jeynes M.Sc. Tel: 020 7242 8037 Lettings Manager: Peter Vlachos MA. For Hall bookings: Tel: 020 7242 8032 Caretakers Office: Tel: 020 7242 8033 NOTICE OF SPES ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING Sunday 29 September 2002 at 1430. Registration from 1400. Nomination forms for Trustees and Holding Trustees are available from the Admin. Sec. TIIE HUMANIST REFERENCE LIBRARY The Library at Conway Hall is open for members and researchers from Tuesday to Friday from 1400 to 1800 BERTRAND RUSSELL BLOOMSBURY PLAQUE UNVEILED On the 6 June 2002, an English Heritage blue plaque commemorating the five-year residence of Bertrand Russell was unveiled. In 1911, Russell took a flat at 34 Russell Chambers, Bury Place, Bloomsbury, so as to be near Ottoline Morrell. The speakers included Professor The Earl Russell on Recollections of my Father; Alan Spence (Chairman, Bury Place Residents Ass., SPES member) on Bertrand Russell in Bloomsbury; Dr. Cristina Chimisso (Open University) on Bertrand Russell the Philosopher; Barbara Smoker (NSS, SPES etc) on Bertrand Russell the Rationalist and Frank Dobson MP on Bertrand Russell in Politics. A video of the event will be shown in Conway Hall Library at 1500 on 14 July 2002. SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Reg. Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are: the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in relevant fields. We invite to membership those who reject supernatural creeds and are in sympathy with our aims. At Conway Hall the programme includes Sunday lectures, discussions, evening courses and the renowned South Place Sunday Concerts of chamber music. The Society maintains a Humanist Reference Library. The Society's journal, Ethical Record, is issued ten times a year. Funerals and Memorial meetings may be arranged. The annual subscription is £18 (£12 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65). Ethical Record, June, 2002 MY BIDS TO ARREST MUGABE Peter Tatchell Lecture to the Ethical Society, 12 April 2002 Peter Tatchell reveals the inside story of his two attempts to arrest President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe on charges of torture and other human rights abuses. I was born in 1952, just seven years after the end of WW2. My childhood was dominated by books, comics and films about the war. I always wondered why people had allowed Hitler to come to power. Why had they done so little to stop him as he rearmed Germany, suppressed democracy, and unleashed terror against Jews, gays, gypsies and communists? I vowed "Never Again". If I were ever faced with similar tyrannies. I would not ignore them, as the older generation had ignored the Nazis. That is the background and context of my human rights campaigns, including the recent attempts to have President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe arrested on charges of torture and other human rights abuses. - In 1999, the British government squandered an opportunity to end Mugabe's abuses. It could have arrested him in October that year, when he came to London on a private shopping spree. There was ample evidence to prosecute the Zimbabwean leader on charges of torture. Instead of putting him on trial, the then Foreign Office Minister, Peter Hain, invited him to tea. Their talks solved nothing.Mugabe returned to Zimbabwe to plot further assaults on an already tenuous democracy. Appalled by the government's inaction, I decided to enforce the law myself. "Worse Than Dogs And Pigs" My motives and justifications were many. President Mugabe has denounced lesbians and gays as "sexual perverts", "beasts" and "worse than dogs and pigs". Rejecting calls for homosexual human rights, he has said: "we don't believe they have any rights at all". Since his comments, lesbians and gays in Zimbabwe have been beaten, arrested, framed on trumped-up charges and threatened with death. In 1995, the human rights group Gays And Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) was banned from exhibiting at the Zimbabwe' International Book Fair. The following year,' GALZ members were attacked and threatened by government stooges, forcing them to flee. But Mugabe's attacks on the lesbian and gay community are just one aspect of his much wider human rights abuses. These include the massacres in Matabeleland, bans on strikes and demonstrations, the censorship of the press, restrictions on trade union rights, and police brutality against non-violent protesters. Mugabe has got away with these human rights abuses for years. I thought the time had come to show him that he cannot murder, torture and abuse people with impunity. On Thursday.28 October 1999 I received an anonymous midnight phone call: Ethical Record, June. 2002 3 "President Mugabe is in London on his annual pre-Christmas shopping trip to Harrods... He is staying at the St James's Court Hotel in Victoria...and flies back to Zimbabwe at 6pm on Saturday". Before I could say a word, the caller hung up. My first thought was: trick or treat? It was, after all, only three nights before Halloween. Taking a gamble that it was a genuine tip-off, I had 30 hours to come up with a plan of action. I didn't sleep much that night. The next morning it hit me. I would put Mugabe under citizen's arrest on charges of torture. Section 24(5) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 gives a private citizen the power of arrest where there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that a person has committed a crime. There was plenty of evidence implicating Mugabe in the use of torture, and torture is a crime under international and UK statutes. The UN Convention Against Torture 1984 has been incorporated into UK domestic law. Section 134 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 stipulates that anyone who commits or authorises torture anywhere in the world can be arrested and tried in Britain. There is no immunity for Heads of State. My idea was to do to President Mugabe what the government had done to General Pinochet. Journalists Tortured Friday was frantic. I biked over to Amnesty International to get copies of the relevant legislation and a dossier on two well-known Zimbabwean torture victims, the journalists Ray Choto and Mark Chavunduka. According to Amnesty International: "Military interrogators beat both men all over their bodies with fists, wooden planks and rubber sticks, particularly on the soles of their feet, and gave them electric shocks all over the body, including the genitals. The men were also subjected to 'the submarine' - having their heads wrapped in plastic bags and submerged in a water tank until they suffocated". In legal affidavits, corroborated by the Zimbabwe High Court, Choto and Chavunduka say their interrogators told them they were being tortured on Mugabe's orders. The President has since refused to condemn their torture, and appears to endorse it by suggesting that they got what they deserved. These affidavits provided the legal basis for a citizen's arrest of Mugabe, and for him to be charged by the police and put on trial in a British court. At lunchtime, I did a recce of the St James's Court Hotel and the street outside; sizing up security, identifying suitable points for an ambush, and discreetly sketching plans of the area. Later, phoning from call boxes- not my own phone - I contacted colleagues in the gay rights group OutRagel Even though it was unlikely their phones were bugged, I dared not give full details.
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