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 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. Perhaps because of this vagueness, only three people volunteered. We agreed to meet at St James's Park tube station the next morning.

Huddled in the booking hall, at 8.30am on Saturday 30 October 1999, we fine- tuned my plan to ambush Mugabe's limousine as he left the hotel. We guessed he would go shopping at Harrods in the morning. Sure enough, shortly after I lam, the

4 Ethical Record, June, 2002 President's car pulled out of the hotel courtyard into Buckingham Gale.

Exactly according to plan, my three OutRage! co-conspirators - Alistair Williams. Chris Morris and John Hunt - walked into the road, directly into the path of Mugabe's limo, forcing it to screech to a halt.

I ran from behind, opened the rear door, grabbed Mugabe by the arm, and read him the charge: "President Mugabe, you are under arrest for torture. Torture is a crime under international law".

We feared Mugabe's bodyguards were armed and might threaten to shoot us. But their initial reaction was stunned disbelief and paralysis.They looked confused. shocked and uncertain what to do next.

Mugabe's jaw dropped. His face turned ashen. As he shrank back in his seat, the President's eyes betrayed real fear. Perhaps he thought we were going to kill him. lb reassure the bodyguards of our peaceful intention, and hopefully pre-empt any shooting, I shouted at the top of my voice: "Call the police. The President is under arrest on charges of torture".

A Lawful Citizen's Arrest Made When the police arrived, I offered my evidence for Mugabe's arrest. They were not interested. The dossier from Amnesty International was knocked aside.

While other officers aided Mugabe's escape, we were arrested and later charged with public disorder under Sections 4 and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. I leaked our defence to the Crown Prosecution Service: we had made a lawful citizen's arrest of a person suspected of the crime of torture. When the trial opened, the CPS declined to offer any evidence. All charges were dropped.

We did not succeed in getting Mugabe bought to justice, but we helped highlight the barbarism of his regime, and gave hope and confidence to millions of Zimbabweans that he could be challenged.

The legal case against Mugabe remains. Britain and most other EU and Commonwealth countries have ratified the UN Convention Against Torture. When will they start enforcing it?

If only the government had listened to us and ordered Mugabe's arrest in 1999, he would have been unable to return to Zimbabwe to continue his despotic rule. Many lives might have been saved.

The Attorney General and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner let him get away. They have yet to answer why they failed to enforce the law, and they must bear some responsibility for the subsequent reign of terror Mugabe has unleashed on his own people.

I had to wait another 18 months before another opportunity presented itself. Again, responding to a telephone tip off, I sought to arrest Mugabe, this time on 5 March 2001 when he was on a state visit to Belgium.

Like Britain, Belgium has incorporated the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture into its domestic legislation. According to Belgian law, the authorities are Ethical Record. June, 2002 5 under a legal obligation to arrest any person, present in Belgian territory, who has committed or authorised acts of torture anywhere in the world. I tried to get the Belgian Justice Minister to enforce his country's own anti-torture law, but he refused. I had no alternative but to try to enforce the law myself, by means of a citizen's arrest.

Carrying the testimonies of torture victims. I lay in wait for Mugabe in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in Brussels. As he walked through the lobby after meeting the EU Commissioner, Poul Nielson, I slipped between his bodyguards to effect a citizen's arrest. Approaching the President, with open hands to show that I had no weapon. I said:

"President Mugabe, I am putting you under arrest on charges of torture under the United Nations Convention Against Torture 1984. It is said that you authorised the torture of Ray Choto and Mark Chavunduka".

My words were quickly muffled, as I was punched and shoved by the President's bodyguards. Four of them - assisted by a Belgian secret service agent who tried to cover my mouth to stop me speaking - pushed me into a corner of the hotel lobby, punching and kicking me all over the body.

Most of this first assault - and both of the two subsequent assaults - took place after the President had already passed. He was no longer near me. At no stage did 1 pose any threat to Mugabe, or offer any resistance to the assaults on me. I remained totally non-violent.

Then came a moment of pure farce. President Mugabe and his bodyguards got stuck in the hotel's revolving door. Seeing another opportunity to arrest him. I ran through the emergency exit to confront Mugabe on the pavement outside.

Belgian Police Complicit In Assault On Me At this point. I was grabbed around the neck by two Belgian secret service agents, and pushed backwards. My head was slammed against the hotel's plate glass window. The agents then forced their hands across my mouth in an attempt to muzzle my cries of: "Mugabe is a torturer. Arrest the torturer".

While the Belgian agents were holding me, two members of the President's entourage came over and threatened : "You are dead.... We will find you and kill you". The Belgian agents took no action against these death threats.

One of Mugabe's minders then started to punch me in the face, but seeing the Belgian agents, desisted. The Belgians then let go of me and walked away, giving the two Zimbabweans a free hand to punch me in the head. I was knocked to the ground.

The Belgian authorities were complicit in this violence. By standing back and doing nothing, they gave Mugabe's henchmen an open invitation to assault me.

In the middle of this melee, while the President's bodyguards sought to spirit him away from the scene, I picked myself up and ran into the hotel driveway, blocking Mugabe's limousine as it attempted to leave. One of his bodyguards got out of the vehicle and punched me ferociously in the side of the head. I fell down into the gutter unconscious. 6 Ethical Record, June, 2002 The Presidential motorcade then sped off for Mugabe's meeting with the Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt.

Undeterred, after spending a few minutes recovering I went over to the Prime Minister's office in Rue Lambermont, determined to confront Mugabe again. While waiting outside. I was filmed by members of the Zimbabwean Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). "For our records", they told me, adding sinisterly: "Now we have got you on film, we can find you". Other threats followed.

The Belgian uniformed police and secret service agents who were on duty confirmed that the President's security men were "armed and very dangerous". But they made no attempt to stop the Zimbabweans menacing me.

Saved By A Belgian Policeman As Mugabe was about to leave the Prime Minister's office, his bodyguards came out into the street. The Zimbabwean minder who had punched me in the head outside the Hilton Hotel and had earlier threatened to kill me, then started to walk briskly in my direction, reaching under his jacket, as if he were going to pull out a gun.

At that moment, I was in fear of my life. I thought he probably had a gun and might try to shoot me. Luckily, a Belgian police officer intervened to restrain him, giving me time to back off down the street. As Mugabe drove off, from a distance I shouted: "Mugabe, murderer! Mugabe, torturer!"

Later that evening, I returned to London with severe bruising and lacerations over most of my body, damaged ligaments and tendons, impaired vision in my left eye, severe headache, and periodic memory loss and split-second blackouts.

The pro-Mugabe newspaper in Zimbabwe, The Herald, wrote on 7 March 2001: "(Tatchell) should be thankful the President's security men did not shoot him down like a dog.... The severe beating meted out to Tatchell is a good signal that restores national pride".

The rest of the world saw it differently. My protest, and the beating I suffered, reminded people everywhere of the extreme brutality of the Mugabe regime. It also reminded the Zimbabwean leader that he is being watched and pursued. One day, he will be arrested and put on trial on charges of murder, torture and other human rights abuses. If Slobodan Milosevic can stand trial in The Hague, why not Robert Mugabe?

* For more information about Peter TatchelPs human rights campaigns, check out his website: wwwpetertatchelLnet

Donations to help fund his campaigns can be made payable to: 'Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund', and sent to PTHRF, PO Box 35253, London El 4YF fl

You cannot reason person out of something he did not reason himself into. Jonathan Swift

Ethical Record, June, 2002 7 PHOOIAN DEVI, BANDIT OR LIBERATOR?

Vidya Anand Lecture to the Ethical Society 24 March 2002

Phoolan Devi was one of the greatest leaders of the movement for the liberation of the Dalit people of India, a people whose oppression is surely the oldest, most tenacious and cruellest known in any part of the world and which to this day still holds hundreds of millions of people in its bondage.

Your august organisation, for over a century now, has given platform support and a much needed voice to the oppressed, the suppressed and the exploited, whether that oppression, suppression or exploitation is manifested on the basis of creed, caste, class, race or gender. Or, as in Phoolan's case, all five!

It was the late Frank Ridley who first brought me to one of your meetings some three and one half decades ago to listen to a talk on Giordano Bruno. I was touched to hear a moving account of a martyrdom by fire of a free spirit of yesteryears. As I stand here this afternoon, therefore, my thoughts go to my guide, philosopher and mentor, Frank Ridley and to David Tribe who came from Australia to do his bit in the noble and universal cause of the secular and humanist movement.

Phoolan Devi, also known as the Bandit Queen, was one of the greatest revolutionaries in the Spartacus mould. She takes her place in the pantheon without regard to the transitory barriers of centuries and continents, languages and religions. Spartacus, as you well know, led the mighty slave revolt, which came close to destroying Imperial Rome. Phoolan Devi was a contemporary Spartacus, who fought against oppression, every bit as cruel, iniquitous and invidious, if not more so, as the slave system of the ancient world. l'hoolan Devi Assassinated 1 knew the Bandit Queen and met her at residence at Ashoka Road, New Delhi, only months before her murder, where she was so brutally gunned down on 25 July 2001.

The BBC phoned to inform me of the tragedy. The producer from the BBC wanted to interview me straight away, but I asked for a little more time, so that I could check the veracity of the report and try to regain my composure. First, I called Delhi, and was surprised to hear that the friends there, though not far from the scene of the tragedy, were unaware of it. They were as shocked as I was. They asked me to ring back in ten minutes, and when I did so they emotionally confirmed the report.

Her murder had all the hallmarks of a vindictive and organised political assassination by the cowards and brutes who have subjugated countless millions of Dalits under their iron heel for many centuries and, in so doing, have held back the entire development of India, a great nation, with so much to offer to the world.

Phoolan Devi hailed from the Dalit people. Dalits have been the proverbial and actual hewers of wood and drawers from water for the Brahmins and upper caste oppressors for centuries and indeed for millennia. From conception to the grave they toil to maintain and sustain an iniquitous society. Even from beyond the grave their humiliation and degradation continues and knows no bounds. Every construction on the land, from the grandest Taj Mahal to the most humble dwelling, is cemented with

8 Ethical Record, June, 2002 the blood, sweat, tears and toil of generations of the Dalit oppressed. Yet, on pain of death, their shadow may not even fall across a Brahminical latrine.

flas the human mind ever devised a more vile form of oppression? Does this not put the late and very unlamented apartheid system in South Africa practically on the side of the angels? The Dalits have to suffer indignities and cruelties far worse than the lot of slaves. While slaves can attain freedom by manumission, no such relief is possible for the Dalits, generation after generation.

A contemporary report from India states:

'Two Dalits are assaulted every hour; Three Dalit women are raped every day; Two Dalits are murdered every day; Two Dalit houses are burnt every day"

Into such an unjust society, Phoolan Devi was born thirty eight years ago, in a village called Gorha Ka Purwa in the state of .

A poet from a far off land takes up her story in the following words:

'Born in a hamlet by the Yamuna river, in a region called Uttar Pradesh Phoolan's family were Mallahs, a lowly fisherman's caste, so she would always be poor and repressed. When barely eleven, she was sold into marriage. The price, just a bike and a cow. Three-fold her age, he was brutal and he beat her, but she never succumbed to his power. She finally broke free and trod a hard road through the mountains to be with her kin. But her family felt shame, could not welcome her back, seemed that being at home was a sin, on the fringe of society, outcaste and lonely. What a life for an innocent girl.'

A Gigantic, Cold-blooded Repression Indian society is sadly such that it looked down upon a repudiated wife and hence her hardships increased manifold. The upper caste thugs saw her as a fair game for their lust and bestial oppression. When she complained to the authorities, they too, in the persons of police officers, raped and reviled her.

In the words of the Nobel Prize winning poet, Rabrindranath Tagore, the caste system constitutes a 'gigantic, cold-blooded repression'.

In India today. 78% of Dalit households have no electricity and about 70 per cent no sanitation. Nearly half of 160 million Dalits live below the poverty line. Sixty per cent of Dalit children, under four years of age, suffer from malnutrition. The infant mortality rate exceeds 90 per 1,000 births? According to Naoko Yuzwa, leader of the inspirational Dalit women's delegation to the UN World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa. last year: 'Dant women suffer triple oppression. They are oppressed by being members of the lower caste, for being women and for being workers."

This brave Dalit sister added: 'We do not have rights from foetus to after-life. The government has initiated forced sterilisation which only targets Dalit women. As toddlers we cannot play with other children. As teens, we are segregated to the backs of classes in schools and have no rights to higher education. We cannot drink from the same wells as the upper caste. Even in death, they rob us of dignity. We cannot be buried or cremated in the same graveyards as the upper castes?'

Ethical Record, June, 2002 9 For centuries, the Dalits were even prevented from protesting about their inhuman condition. All that a Dant woman could be was to lament:

'Hush, my baby, Don't cry, my treasure, weeping is in vain, For the enemy will never understand our pain. For the ocean has its limits, Prisons have their walls around, But our suffering and our torment, Have no limit and no bound.''

I quote the judgement of a learned judge in Rajasthan, on 15 November 1995, in the case of a rape of a Dalit woman by the upper caste thugs:-

'The accused come from good upper caste families, including Brahmins, while the accuser hails from a low caste community. The court cannot believe the allegation of rape from a low caste woman against the upper caste boys.'

• l'hoolam Devi's Dilemma In such a society there was surely no course open for a free spirit but to take up arms against the oppressors. As a Chinese leader put it, we are advocates of abolishing the gun. But sometimes, in order to abolish the gun, it is necessary to take up the gun. Such was the dilemma faced by Phoolam Devi, and the manner of its resolution, at this fateful time in her too short but highly eventful and abidingly significant life.

The world of violence and brigandry is not a pleasant one. For everyone has come to it from their own personal or social reason and trauma. But to knit them into a viable and strong whole is an uphill task fraught with dangers. Brave souls everywhere in the world, throughout the ages, have had this recourse. Nearer home, in Ireland, for instance, there was a Bandit Queen, Grace O'Malley, who, in Elizabethan times, also lived and died for the cause of the oppressed, men and women from the Emerald Isle.

Phoolan Devi, although completely without formal education, was a brilliant strategist, tactician and fighter. This young woman, illiterate and innumerate, quickly mastered the various elements of guerrilla warfare. She was an accurate marksperson, as her enemies soon discovered to their cost. She struck by stealth. She was leader of her own regiment of men, who unquestioningly obeyed her orders. On the battlefield she was better than most men. She knew her inhospitable terrain well and long eluded the vastly superior, numerically and technically, security forces. For it was her terrain and her people. It was a world and an environment inimical and hostile to caste oppressors, precisely because the oppressed had known it for centuries.

Colossal rewards were offered for her capture, dead or alive. But there were no traitors or quislings in her community. They saw her not as a Bandit, but for what she was, a liberator, and, truly, a saviour. Her cause was their cause. Often at great risk to themselves, many concealed her from the spying eyes of the security forces and their high caste stooges.

Ancient and modern guerrilla strategists have all stressed the importance of popular participation in such revolts. Without the protection and loyalty of the people, the sea in which the fighters swim, a guerrilla war can be effortlessly crushed. Phoolan Devi was the people and the people were Phoolan Devi. This is a remarkable achievement, one which will no doubt to taken on board by future leaders of the Dalit people. No one wants to see a violent insurrection in India. But

10 Dhical Record, June. 2002 if the oppressors continue to deny the Dalits their basic human rights, many will be persuaded as to the need for armed struggle.

What is nauseating about these oppressors is that many of them actually believe that the caste system has been divinely ordained. This sounds quite comic, and indeed would be, were it not for the ugly and brutal reality of caste injustice.

It is only when the evil Brahminical order is finally crushed, by whatever means necessary, that India will truly be able to claim the moral high ground and become an exemplary secular and popular democracy. Democracy only exists where all people arc genuinely free - when many are in chains, democracy becomes a laughing stock.

When she finally came out of the ravines, with her head held high, and her fighting units intact, she brokered a deal with the Chief Minister of . Phoolan Devi called a halt to her armed struggle after she had achieved some of her objectives.

First, she created the unique Phoolan Devi doctrine, that when justice is denied and the oppressor is hacked by the armed might of the state and is immune from prosecution, justice is best served by teaching the tyrants in the only language they understand - constructive violence.

Phoolares Mentor: Dr. Bit Ambedkar (Babasaheb) In creating this Phoolan Devi Doctrine, she inherited and developed the work of her most influential and formative mentor, Babasaheb Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the socialist and philosopher, the framer of independent India's enlightened constitution, that is sadly honoured largely in its breach, and the founder of the modern Dalit liberation movement.

It was Babasaheb who taught that the Dalit People would have to be their own liberators, that no saviour or superman from on high would deliver. There was none so fit to break the chains as those who wore them. Babasaheb said:

'You must abolish your oppression yourselves. Do not depend for its abolifion upon God or superman. Your salvation lies in political power and not in making pilgrimages and observance of fasts."

As far back as 1942, Babasaheb perceptively warned:

'For the ills which the untouchables are suffering, if they are not as much advertised as those of the Jews, are not less real... The antisemitism of the Nazis is in no way different in ideology and in effect from the Sanatanism of Hindus against the untouchables,

Phoolan took these teachings to heart. In so doing, she developed herself as an original thinker and actor. But she always modestly acknowledged her debt to Babasaheb and the inspiration and courage she derived from him, as well as the teachings of Lord Buddha to which both Babasaheb and the Bandit Queen deferred. Politically, she was a follower of Babasaheb. Spiritually, her inspiration was the casteless teachings and practice of the Buddha. When I saw Phoolan in her home, a few short months before her cowardly murder, we sat beneath the portrait of Babasaheb and in the presence of Lord Buddha's statue.

Ethical Record, June, 2002 I I Phoolan embraced the ballot box, as appropriate, in the belief that one must give the last chance to constitutional means and methods. When the time and the opportunity came, her people, who for centuries had not dared to lift their eyes from the dust on the floor, so that they might gaze toward heaven, defiantly voted, overcoming a myriad of obstacles, and sent their Queen to New Dehli as an elected member of the .

Her political platform was potent. It has been expressed in verse, thus:

Why is it my destiny to always be poor? They're no different, the same blood in their veins So lend your support, help me complete this triumph, over gender, caste and poverty.

• Once the votes were counted, aghast stood the Thakurs, as Didi was elected MP

The authorities predictably reneged on the deal which they made with Phoolan Devi. She was kept in prison for eleven long years without a trial. On her release she joined forces with conscious socialists, joining the , making no secret of her belief that the alternative to socialism is barbarism, a concept first articulated by that other heroic woman, revolutionary and martyr, Rosa Luxemburg.

She was elected twice to the Lok Sabha, each time with thumping majorities. But the upper caste Brahminical order never truly accepted the people's verdict. For them, democracy is good only so long as it fills parliament with their own odious ilk. For instance, the former president of India, Venkatraman, a Brahmin by caste, went so far as to declare Phoolan's election to parliament a black mark for democracy. One is reminded of I3ertolt Brecht's wry observation: 'The government must elect a new people.'

Phoolan Devi was as good in the debating chamber of the world's largest parliamentary democracy as she was in the ravines of valley. She gave the oppressors as good as she got from them, becoming a role model for millions of voiceless, oppressed of the world, especially women, and consequently was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by that courageous parliamentarian, Mildred Gordon, who felt that Phoolan's odyssey was remarkable and accomplished.

The Failure of Secularism in India The murder of Phoolan Devi occurred, of course, in the context of crucial developments in the Indian polity. Indian governments since 1947 had singularly failed to practice the secular democratic ideals on which the country is supposedly based. But they had at least felt constrained to pay lip service to them. The present government, led by the communal BJP, itself in turn dominated by the fascist RSS, the assassins of , is a different matter. It is avowedly and unashamedly communalist, anti-Dalit, anti-low caste, anti-poor, anti-tribal, anti- Muslim and anti-Christian, pro-high caste, pro-Brahmin, pro-rich and pro- imperialist.

In recent weeks we have seen the terrible cycle of revenge killings of Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat, redolent of the worst excesses at the time of partition in 1947. Such atrocities and tragedies stem directly from the communal divide-and-rule policy of the reactionary government. But such atrocities will continue to recur until such time as the oppression of the Dalits, and the fascist ideology on which it rests, 12 Ethical Record, June, 2002 remains. Karl Marx said that 'English reaction has its roots in Ireland.' Likewise, everything that is corrupt, backward and rotten in the state of India has its roots in. and is sustained by, the pervasive nature of Dalit oppression.

Let me introduce another poetical tribute to Phoolan Devi:

The world Has lost a Heroine, One of the bravest and strongest women of this century. Yet, like those who are immolated in the fire of their beliefs, Silenced for their truth being too loud Like John of Arc, Giordano Bruno, Savonarola - she will be remembered. The fire and rage of her striving for for justice is alive and burning in our memory of her.

Required: A Modest Memorial This is the image that the oppressed keep of Phoolan Devi. In my capacity as the Chair of the Phoolan Devi MP International Memorial Committee, I have advanced the proposal that her former home, and the scene of her foul murder, in New Delhi, be declared a National Monument, with a view to cherishing and perpetuating her memory, remembering her sacrifice and, above all, serving as a national and global resource in the struggle against caste, class and gender oppression, and for the education of future generations.

However, the Brahminical government has predictably sought to perpetuate their oppression even in death. Whilst hangers-on of the ruling circles continue to enjoy all kinds of dubious privileges long after they have been ejected from office, the bereaved family and staff of Phoolan Devi have been evicted from her home.

In their day, the masters of Imperial Rome branded • England's Queen Bodaecia, our original 'Essex Girl', as the Bandit Queen. On capture, she was cruelly tortured and executed. This grateful nation, thousands of years later, erected her statue on the banks of the River Thames she loved. In the world's oldest democracy, she keeps her eye on the Palace of Westminster to safeguard our ancient and modern liberties. The world's largest democracy also needs its Bandit Queen to keep a watchful eye. A fitting memorial would be a modest but necessary beginning.

However, the real and abiding monument to Phoolan is that she lives in the peoples' hearts in their struggle for liberation. The political party to which she gave her allegiance, and for which she sat in the Lok Sabha, the Samajwadi Party, recorded its best ever results in the recent state elections. This is but the mildest portent of the mighty storm of liberation that, in the spirit of Phoolan Devi, will surely sweep across Mother India, to complete the cause of Dalit liberation and, in so doing, help usher in a new and better world for all mankind.

Hail the Bandit Queen; Hail the Goddess of Flowers; Hail Phoolan Devi!

References 1 Development Council of the Church of India, Leaflet at Durban Conference. 2 Fullilove, The Ballad of the Bandit Queen, 30 Sept, 2001. 3 Mwandi Jubase: The Plight of the Untouchables, Sunday Times, Durban, 2 Sept, 2001, Page 3. 4. Ibid. 5 Power, Megan, Casting Out Caste, Tribune, Durban. 2 Sept 2001. 6 Anand, VS.: Fullfilling the Vision of Babasahed, London 2001,pages 20-21. 7 Mane, S.: Public Opinion Law Judiciary & Reservation Policy. Mandar Enterprises, Bombay, 2000, Page 24. 8 Anand. VS.: Op. Cit. Page 22. 9. Ibid p.21: 10 Fullilove, R.W.: OP. Cit. Ethical Record, June, 2002 13 IS ISLAM A THREAT TO WORLD PEACE?

Mohammad Ibrahim, Muslim Education Trust Notes from a Lecture lo the Ethical Society, 14 April 200

How is Islam perceived by non-Muslims?

Isra'iliyyat There are many close parallels between the Qur'an and the Bible. The Jewish traditions that appear in the Qur'an are known as the • Isra'iliyyat'.

Non-Muslim European scholars have nearly always regarded the Isra'iliyyat as borrowings from Judaism and therefore the Qur'an is seen to offer a distortion or adaptation of the original sources.

This view has had a long history within European scholarship and often its interpretations have been and still are anti-Islamic.

A classic example would be the work of George Sale, an le Century English scholar who spent 25 years in the Middle East. He provided one of the first translations of the Qur'an (1734). This translation was praised by Voltaire.

It develops the notion that Islam is a lie and that all Muslims, lie or are ignorant or stupid. This would of course have been supported by many areas opposed to Islam and had a significant impact on academic study and interpretation of Islam in the West which in many areas continues through to today (SOAS).

When dividing lines are drawn ...... So too is immorality strengthened.

Conflict is the result of immorality: ignorance, anger, hatred, revenge, suspicion...

What Does The Qur'an Say About War? 0 You who believe! Enter absolutely into peace (Islam). Do not follow in the footsteps of Satan. He is an outright enemy to you. 2:208

... if someone kills another person - unless it is in retaliation for someone else or for causing corruption in the earth - it is as if he had murdered all mankind. And if anyone gives life to another person, it is as if he had given life to all mankind ... 5 :32

There are only grounds against those who wrong people and act as tyrants in the earth without any right to do so. Such people will have a painful punishment. 42:42

God does not uphold the works of those who cause mischief. 10:81

...And do good as God has been good to you. And do not seek to cause corruption in the earth. God does not love corrupters. 28:77

We did not create the heavens and earth and everything between them, except with truth. The Hour is certainly coming, so forgive with fair forbearance. 15:85

14 Ethical Record, June, 2002 Be good to your parents and relatives and to orphans and the very poor, and to neighbours who are related to you and neighbours who are not related to you, and to companions and travellers and your slaves. God does not love anyone vain or boastful. 4:36

Help one another in benevolence and piety. Do not help each other to wrongdoing and enmity. And fear God. God is severe in retribution. 5:2

Anyone who comes with a fine deed will have ten more like it. But those who produce a bad action will only be repaid with its equivalent and they will not be wronged. Anam: 160

0 you who believe! Show integrity for the sake of God, bearing witness with justice. Do not let hatred for a people incite you into not being just. Be just. That is closer to faith. Heed God (alone). God is aware of what you do. 5:8

II) There is no compulsion in religion. True guidance has become clearly distinct form error. 2:256

A good action and a bad action are not the same. Repel the bad with something better and, if there is enmity between you and someone else, he will be like a bosom friend 4 I :34

The repayment of bad action is one equivalent to it. But if someone pardons and puts things right, his reward is with God. Certainly He does not love wrongdoers. 42:40

God describes believers as: 'those who give in times of both ease and hardship, those who control their rage and pardon other people' - God loves the good-doers. 3:134

You will never cease to come upon some act of treachery on their part, except for a few of them. Yet pardon them, and overlook. God loves good-doers. 5: 13

Each time they kindle the fire of war, God extinguishes it. They rush about the earth corrupting it. God does not love corrupters. 5 :64

Permission to fight is given to those who are fought against because they have been wronged - truly God has the power to come to their support - those who were expelled from their homes without any right, merely for saying, "Our Lord is God" 22:39-40

Fight in the Way of God against those who fight you, but do not go beyond the limits. God does not love those who go beyond the limits. 2: 190

Go to war in adherence to the religion of God. Never touch the elderly, women or children. Always improve their situation and be kind to them. God loves those who are sincere. 3

God does not forbid you from being good to those who have not fought you over religion or driven you from your homes, or from being just towards them. God loves those who are just. God merely forbids you from taking as friends those who have Ethical Record. June, 2002 15 fought you over religion and driven you frOm your homes and who supported your expulsion. 60:8-9

Is The Qur'an Against Suicide Bombers? Do not kill yourselves 4:29

Indeed, whoever (intentionally) kills himself, then certainly he will be punished in the Fire of Hell, wherein he shall dwell forever. 5

Other sources:

When Muhammad (SAWS) sent Zaid against the Christians at the head of the Muslim army, he told them to fight in the cause of God bravely but humanely. They must not molest priests, monks and nuns nor the weak and helpless who were unable to fight. There must be no massacre of civilians nor should they cut down a single tree nor pull down any building. 6

The first Caliph, Abu Bakr gave the following instructions:

Stop, 0 people, that I may give you ten rules to keep by heart:

Do not commit treachery, nor depart from the right path.

You must not mutilate, neither kill a child or aged man or woman.

Do not destroy a palm tree, nor burn it with fire and do not cut any fruit tree.

You must not slay any of the flock or the camels, save for your subsistence.

You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services;

leave them to that which they have devoted their lives.

You are likely, likewise, to find people who will present to you meals of many kinds.

You may eat; but do not forget to mention the name of Allah. 7

Islam Akin To The BHA? Islam is often misunderstood - it is not dogmatic but based on reason and compassion - based on morality. It is one where you are judged by intention as actions have to be based on rationality.

Of course there are a laws, but this does not make it dogmatic as faith is based on trust in the unseen, but this has to be challenged to be real, challenged with truth and righteousness. Blind faith and dogma lead to division, discord and ultimately death.

Communities can't survive without laws, but laws have to work efficiently to strive for the greater good. True freedom:is fashioned by those laws that fashion it. The Prophet Muhammad said: "None of you truly believe, until he wishes for his brothers what he wishes for himself."

This is akin to the BEIA's golden rule: "Do as you would be done by" or "Treat other people in a way you would like to be treated yourself". :

16 Ethical Record, June, 2002 TERRORISING DISSENT: THE NEOLIBERAL 'ANTI- TERRORIST' STRATEGY

Les Levidow CAMPAIGN AGAINST CRIMINALISING COMMUNMD; Lecture to the Ethical Society, 28 April 2002

How does political protest become terrorism? Following the debacle of the 1999 Seattle summit of the World Trade Organisation, our rulers feared that the autumn 2001 Doha summit would likewise fail to agree on a New Round of negotiations. If so, then such a setback 'would be acclaimed by all enemies of freer world trade and investment, including those behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon', declared Maria Livanos Cattaui, Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce.

Clearly he was linking the anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist movement with terrorism. How should we interpret his statement- as opportunistic? as an aberration? In retrospect, we can see that it was preparing a global political strategy.

Here I will argue the following: The agenda of neoliberal globalisation has been encountering greater resistance, yet our rulers have no alternative strategy for disciplining and exploiting us. So they have resorted to more desperate measures to enforce that agenda. In addition to physical repression, 'counter-terrorist' measures are intended to terrorize dissent. Just as the 'War on Terrorism' has no limit in time or space, so the criminal law is being extended to broaden the definition of 'terrorism'. This is a war against dissent -- against our capacity to resist injustice and oppression. Basic democratic rights are becoming incompatible with the neoliheral agenda, which therefore becomes even more illegitimate.

A Class View of Rights The definition of rights has been contested throughout the history of capitalism. The term has had divergent meanings, bound up with class struggle.

On one side, rights have meant a statutory basis for the private appropriation of resources, thus legalizing theft. For example, in the original enclosures of the commons here in the 17th and ISth centuries, land was reconceptualized as capital whose productivity must be enhanced through exclusive access. Later, private- property rights were extended by criminalising various customs by which workers had gained access to resources at their workplaces (as described by E.P. Thompson). In general, classical liberalism idealized market relations as individual liberation, yet its marketization project has always depended upon violence in order to 'liberate' resources from collective claims, to liberate employers from their responsibilities to workers, etc. (as described by Karl Polanyi).

On the other side, rights have meant collective access to common resources, as well as protection from state attacks upon those who demand and implement such access. These struggles gave a new importance to the earlier right of habeas corpus, whereby any detention must be justified in a law court. The rights to free speech, public assembly, 'combinations' of workers and so on have been crucial for the class organisation of the exploited. By definition, rights are unconditional, yet their practical meaning has always been dependent upon unstable victories against state power.

Ethical Record, June, 2002 17 By analogy to earlier phases of class struggle, neoliberal globalisation now extends enclosures. As in the past, this means yet more land privatization, a logical consequence of NAFTA which provoked the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. Moreover, it also means enclosing current forms of commons -- public services, utilities, workers collective skills, employment protection, genetic knowledge, academic curricula, etc. In the name of 'free trade', this agenda further commoditizes and privatizes resources; such unfree trade increases only the capitalists' freedom to appropriate and exploit resources for their profits. In the name of 'labour flexibility', the neoliberal agenda maximizes the extraction of surplus value from living labour.

Key measures are institutionalized through new laws, are implemented by national governments, and are potentially enforced through WTO treaties. Again we see an antagonism between two forms of rights; for example, 'Intellectual Property Rights' are denounced as biopiracy by those who defend the genetic commons, while national governments are pressed to criminalise farmers who infringe private- property rights.

The new enclosures have provoked new resistance. As Structural Adjustment Policies were imposed on Third World countries in the 1980s and 1990s, 'IMF riots' erupted and resistance circulated across countries. Protestors have been savagely repressed, often by shooting them.

The neoliberal project initially disoriented its critics in Northern countries, but recently the 'anti-globalisation' movement has generated global solidarity networks. Sometimes protest has blocked neoliberal theft and disrupted our rulers' international meetings. Southern migrants in the North have highlighted the damage to their homelands by Structural Adjustment Policies and the accompanying state terrorism, often backed by governments of the North.

As protests mounted against the neoliberal agenda, some critics expected that it would eventually be moderated. Yet there have been no such moves, because our rulers truly have no alternative agenda for sustaining capitalism. For similar reasons, the EU is moving further down the path of labour flexploitation and privatization. Consequently, neoliberal militants have needed extra weapons to suppress us.

UK Extends 'Counter-terrorism' By the late 1990s the Northern Ireland war was in terminal decline, yet the UK 'anti- terrorist' legislation was extended as means to deter dissent. The Terrorism Act 2000 created new crimes of association, suspicion and anticipation. The definition of terrorism was broadened to encompass simply 'the threat' of 'serious damage to property', in ways 'designed to influence the government' for a 'political cause'. These terms could encompass any preparation for mass protest. The law potentially stigmatizes a wide range of legitimate political activity as 'terrorism', which then becomes subject to attacks on civil liberties, such as detention without adequate legal representation; anyone can be held without charge for up to 7 days.

Moreover, the Home Office was authorized to ban any organisation which engaged in 'terrorist' activities abroad, as broadly defined by the Act; it also criminalises any overt links with such organisations in the UK. Thus the Act classified Third World solidarity here as a terrorist crime. Such legislation is politically useful for terrorising solidarity, because the relevant organisations here 18 Ethical Record, June, 2002 could not be easily prosecuted under the ordinary criminal law. When the Home Office eventually issued a list of 21 organisations to be banned, this included the Kurdish Workers' Party, the PKK. In response, thousands of (mainly Kurdish) demonstrators marched through Whitehall wearing T-shirts proclaiming, l am PKK' and asked the police why they weren't being arrested. Apparently there were no orders to do so - perhaps because the protest had successfully ridiculed the law.

After 11 September, the Twin Towers attacks were used as a pretext to fabricate a state of emergency in many countries. Beforehand, the anti-globalisation movement was mobilizing large numbers of people worldwide against rulers who attempt to impose privatization, trade liberalization, poverty and war. Those rulers moved quickly to exploit the 11 September attacks, in order to fragment and marginalize us. They have sought to polarize the population into 'us' supporting them against 'the terrorists'.

The UK's Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 In the UK, the Terrorism Act 2000 was supplemented by even more severe powers in the Anti-Terrorism. Crime and Security Act (ATCSA 2001). It authorises greater police powers and even imposes duties on us. The Act includes the following measures: Non-UK citizens can be interned for an indefinite period without trial or adequate judicial scrutiny. Communications providers must store users' data (e.g. webpages visited), so that it can be retrospectively handed over to the police anytime in the future. Confidential information (e.g. tax and health details) held by government departments may be pooled and given to the police, even to other authorities anywhere in the world. Protestors may be required to remove masks in any area where a crime may be committed. Everyone has the duty to inform the police about anyone 'suspected' of committing or planning `terrorist' activity (as broadly defined by the 2000 Act); it could be a crime not to report such information.

Whv were these powers needed? Before this law was enacted, the authorities already had adequate legal powers to protect the public from organised violence. Indeed, they have used 'conspiracy' laws to frame political activists on vague charges, though often the jury has acquitted the defendents because the prosecution had no credible evidence about specific actions. 'Anti-terrorist' laws go further, by circumventing the judicial process. The extra police powers of harassment could deter protest, regardless of how few people are prosecuted in the courts.

Fabricating and maintaining a state of emergency involves a circular logic. For example, the Metropolitan Police set quotas for Westminster street patrols to stop people on the street under their 'anti-terrorist' powers. By submitting the statistics to Parliament, the government could better justify why the powers are needed and therefore must be extended. Police have been stopping buses in Whitehall under the pretext of 'looking for terrorists'. Is there a non-racist way to identify `terrorist suspects"? Such police activities encourage us to fear foreigners as mortally dangerous. (For the racist effects, see the booklet by Liz Fekete.)

Going beyond police powers, moreover, the Terrorism Acts could lead us to internalize our own handcuffs, muzzles, earplugs and blindfolds. We are meant to fear any involvement in political protest, lest the police later challenge us for not Ethical Record, June. 2002 19 having given them information - or lest others give the police information on us. We may be pressed to become compulsory informers, even to inform on activities which haven't happened.

The ATCSA 2001 also included further powers to terrorize solidarity. Any non-UK citizen can be detained for an indefinite period. Under those powers, several Muslims have been interned in Be[marsh prison, with no right of habeas corpus. little publicity about their cases and physical conditions potentially harmful to their health. Their internment threatens entire communities, left wondering who else will be interned.

We are meant to respond with fear and fatalism, along the lines of the famous quotation from Pastor Niemoller during the Nazi period. It could be paraphrased: 'First they came for the Muslims, hut I wasn't a Muslim...' Rather than be fatalistic, we can respond that the law is illegitimate because it substitutes internment for any judicial process. and that the internees must be released immediately.

The EU's Definition Of Thrrorism The European Union has moved along similar lines as the UK. Before I I September, the main response to mass protests had been systematic physical repression and even murder, e.g. at the Gothenburg and Genoa summits. But this attack backfired. provoking even greater support for the protestors.

Last September, the Twin Towers attacks provided a pretext for more subtle weapons against us. New EU legislation defines terrorism as criminal activity which is undertaken for 'unduly compelling a government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing any act'. So, otherwise trivial crimes readily become redefined as terrorism.*

Moreover, an EU Council report posed the problem of protest as follows: ...criminal damage orchestrated by radical extremist groups, clearly terrorising society... These acts are the work of a loose network, hiding behind various social fronts, by which we mean organisations taking advantage of their lawful status to aid and abet the achievement of terrorist groups' aims. Such clear manipulation poses a serious present threat, liable to increase substantially in the very near future.

Information exchange among member states and Europol would 'provide a very helpful tool in preventing and, where appropriate, prosecuting violent urban youthful radicalism', according to the report. Under its 'anti-terrorist roadmap', the EU is planning to set up databases on protestors and foreigners. It will criminalise protest by creating two new 'terrorist' categories: 'eco-terrorism' and 'anarchist terrorism'. Following precedents set by the UK and USA, moreover, in May 2002 the EU announced a ban on 23 organisations, including the PKK. In response, the Turkish government immediately intensified its terrorism against Kurdish communities.

These forms of European integration and complicity become even more ominous with plans for an EU arrest warrant. If this proposal is approved, then the police would promptly extradite anyone by request of another EU member state. This procedure would circumvent any judicial process of evaluating evidence, legislation, treatment of prisoners, etc.

* See Editorial, pl.[Ed.]

2 0 Ethical Record, June, 2002 The Test-case of Palestine Palestine has become central to the overall strategy of 'counter-terrorism'. Just as all colonial occupations have represented their own barbarism as self-defence, Israel claims to defend its own population by removing the 'terrorist infrastructure' in Palestinian communities. All effective resistance to Israeli occupation is portrayed as terrorism; this story-line justifies Israeli actions which are destroying the basic infrastructure of daily life as well as numerous Palestinian lives.

The UK and US (among other imperialist governments) have consistently rewarded these actions over the years. Britain has exported military equipment, while pretending that Israel wouldn't use it in the Occupied Territories. The USA has given Israel the largest proportion of its foreign aid budget - $70bn over the last thirty years - despite extension of its illegal settlements.

Under the terms of the 1993 Oslo Accord, Palestinian resistance to occupation was delegitimized as terrorism. Accepting these terms. Arafat undertook to end the intifada. The PNA did so with assistance from the CIA and the new Palestinian security force, which terrorized critics of the Oslo Accord and protected the illegal settlements in the Occupied Terroritories. When that colonial strategy collapsed under the weight of the second intifada, the PNA had outlived its usefulness to Israel and could itself be removed.

Further disaster for all the Palestinian people now follows from their having been rnanoeuvred into an imperialist definition of terrorism. Although this is an extreme case, it should make us beware of any attempt to define resistance against injustice as terrorism.* Palestine has become an important test case for our capacity to oppose the global 'counter-terrorist' strategy. ,

Conclusion: Stop the War on Dissent As I have argued, the 'War on Terrorism' is also a.war against dissent -- against our capacity to resist injustice and oppression. It serves to terrorize dissent and to promote paranoia. It establishes a permanent state of emergency -- in our minds, as well as in law. 'Counter-terrorism' does this in several ways, especially through new laws which:

broaden the definition of terrorism, according to the political aims of actions;

create new crimes of association, suspicion and anticipation about future actions; and

circumvent the judicial system by increasing police powers and non-judicial tribunals.

This 'anti-terrorism' is a political strategy to fragment and infantilize us, so that we distrust other people, while treating the state as a benign protector. Unsurprisingly, the law exempts UK officials from prosecution regarding chemical and biological weapons. It also exempts the UK government from its complicity in bombing Afghanistan and Iraq.

* But see Editorial, pl.[Ed.] Ethical Record, June, 2002 In these ways, 'counter-terrorism' is redefining or even replacing politics. Basic democratic rights are becoming incompatible with the neoliberal agenda, which thereby becomes even more illegitimate. Just as colonialists had portrayed any effective resistance as terrorism, now their successors in the most industrialized countries are portraying domestic resistance in similar terms, e.g. through a criminalisation of communities. (For more details see the Statewatch webpage).

'Anti-terrorise legislation provides the basis for a police state, at least on paper. Its practical meaning will depend upon how well we organise an imaginative, collective resistance which ridicules and subverts the facade of emergency. There are many actions we can take to defend democratic rights -- firstly, by defending those who are harassed or interned. The Campaign Against Criminalising Communities has listed five demands in a petition:

We reject the definition of terrorism in the Terrorism Act 2000. We demand the repeal of the Terrorism Act 2000 and the ATCSA 2001. Everyone must be treated as innocent until proved guilty. No detention without charge. Restore the right of habeas corpus. We defend the democratic freedom to dissent and to organize ourselves against injustice without being criminalised. We oppose crimes against humanity, regardless of who (or what government) commits them.

Effective resistance becomes inseparable from a struggle against new enclosures and for new commons. A central task is to define collectively what are the commons. The struggle against 'counter-terrorism' is necessarily the struggle to extend the social space of resistance, communication and creation of a different world.

References Campaign Against Criminalising Communities, http://www.cacc.org.uk, email [email protected]

EU Council, Working party on Terrorism, 'Presentation of a Presidency initiative for the introduction of a standard form for exchanging information on terrorist incidents', December 2001, http://www. he ise.de/tp/engl ish/inhalt/te/11793/11793- .pdf

Cattaui, M.L., 'What business should do to thwart the terrorists', 18 Sept. 2001, http ://www . iccwbo. org/home/news.archives/200 I/business. asp

Fekete, L., Racism: the Hidden Cost of September 11, London: Institute of Race Relations, www.irr.org.uk

Polanyi, K., The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1944.

Statewatch, http://www . statewatch.org, http://www . statewatch.org/news/2002/feb/Oanarch.htm

Thompson, Edward R, Customs in Common. Penguin, 1993.

22 Ethical Record, Jane. 2002 STANDING FOR THE COUNCIL IN 2002

Tom Rubens

I stood in the local elections on 2 May this year as a Socialist Alliancecandidate. My ward was a small one in north Hackney.

Running for political election was an entirely new experience for me, as it was for several other Socialist Alliance candidates in Hackney. Also, to my extreme surprise, I polled 8.4% of the votes, having done only one leafletting* and no canvassing (due to lack of time and resources). While the fact that I was known in the locality as a community activist probably influenced the vote, I think the main thing the outcome showed was that people are interested in alternatives to the usual political options. This point was made even more clearly in several of the other wards, with one candidate polling 22%, another 19%, and a number in the 10-18% range. Overall, considering the Alliance has only existed for about two years, it did very well in Hackney, and well in several other London boroughs.

I and my two helpers had to do a lot of foot-slogging in distributing our campaign leaflet (in which the Alliance outlined its general policy and I indicated what my local policies would be, if elected). Also, I was invited to appear at a local hustings meeting at which all ward candidates would answer a range of prepared questions. (Unfortunately, time-pressure prevented my attending, but I phoned my answers through beforehand, to be read out at the meeting.) The climax of the whole process came on election night, when all the borough candidates gathered at a big public venue to hear the count. Due to delays, this did not materialise till near the stroke of midnight--which was, perhaps, dramatically appropriate!

* An Extract From My Leaflet I teach English at the College of North West London, and I have spent most of my working life as a teacher.

I moved into Brownswood ward in 1983 and since then have been active in various environment improvement projects through my membership of the Finsbury Park Action Group.

My special.concern has been to reduce traffic congestion, pollution and danger to pedestrians, to which end I convene regular meetings with the traffic engineers of Hackney, Islington and Haringey. Some years ago I conducted air pollution tests in the locality.

Another area of my activity has been with homeless people. In 1993 I helped establish a drop-in centre for the single homeless in Amhurst Park. I have also been active in anti-racist and anti-fascist work.

As a councillor, I would extend my work on environment improvement and anti- racism, and also oppose the sale of public services and facilities. I would pressurise the council's housing department to improve conditions and services for council tenants, especially on the estates. I would also oppose council corruption, particularly in connection with its links to big business.

The views expressed in this Joumal are not necessarily those of the Society.

Ethical Record, June, 2002 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC I R 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8037/8034 Registered Charity No. 251396 Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected] No charge unless stated

JULY 2002 Saturday 6 ARTISTIC OUTING TO BEDFORD by train. Guided tour of Cecil Higgins Art Gallery plus SPES member Irene Cockcroft shows us round the Enamelling for Equality exhibition featuring 1920s SPES member Ernestine Mills. 0930h at Kings Cross ret. I900h. Tel 0207 242 8037 or see Jennifer Jeynes for details.

Sunday 7 1100 POPPER's THE OPEN SOCIETY & ITS ENEMIES: Reflections Half a Century On. Tom Rubens discusses the continuing relevance of Popper's views on Karl Marx, Social Reform, Democracy and 'The Strain of Civilisation'.

1500 TOPICAL TOPICS - OPEN DISCUSSION

Friday 12 1930 GALHA SPECIAL EVENT TO COMMEMORATE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE GAY NEWS TRIAL. "Blasphemy" a play by Fire and Brimstone Productions at 1930h on Friday 12 July 2002

Featuring the following highligbis: *the trial of C.B.Reynolds on the charge of Blasphemy in New Jersey in 1887 *the prosecution of GW Foote in 1883 for blasphemous cartoons which appeared in the Christmas 1882 edition of "The Freethinker' *The trial of the Lord God,Blessed be lie, for abuse of human rights

Sunday 14 1100 ANTI -SLAVERY IN THE WORLD TODAY . Mike Key, from Anti-Slavery. .

1500 BERTRAND RUSSELL BLOOMSBURY PLAQUE UNVEILED (Video).

Sunday 21 1100 THOMAS NAGEL: THE PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS. Christopher Bratcher's Ethical Thinkers series.

Sunday 28 SKENE MEMORIAL LECTURE 1100 MADNESS FROM THE INSIDE : The Science & Art of Mental Illness. Dr Peter Chadwick. Ph.D Ph.D C. Psychol. Birkbeck College.

ANNUAL REUNION OF KINDRED SOCIETIES 1430 Sunday 22 September 2002

Published by the South Place Ethical Society, Conway Ithll, 25 Red Lion Square, WC IR 4RL Printed by J.G. Bryson (Printer) Ltd. 156-162 High Road, London N2 9A5 ISSN 0014 - 1690