Today, leading human rights
group Liberty celebrates its 80th birthday. It has invited over a hundred Writers at Liberty to each contribute a piece of new writing reflecting on the
aims, values and actions of the organisation. This was mine. Visit the Liberty80 site to learn more.
"Renaissance Florence was
an excellent place for collecting documents. Mainly because they didn’t trust
each other.”
I am writing this essay
while watching a documentary on Machiavelli. A historian’s walking us through
the Florentine state archives, showing the presenter a Medici’s Most Wanted persecution
list and pointing out that the individuals on it need not have done anything in
particular to have attracted suspicion. The presenter visits the police station
where Machiavelli was tortured despite there being no evidence of him being
involved in the conspiracy he was accused of.
How wonderful that five
hundred years on we live in such different times. These days it would be
unthinkable that suspicious and secretive governments might follow, seize and
physically brutalise innocent civilians based on little more than mere
suspicion. What a relief that we now enjoy enlightened and mutually trustful
societies in which authorities have integrity; leaders are honest and
accountable; judges provide justice with moral consistency and without cultural
bias; the heads of the media, police, politics and big business are not all
friends with each other; public bodies are representative of the populace they
serve; institutions of power have been washed clean of vested interests; and,
as humble but proud citizens, we can truly say that what we see is what we get.
How comforting to know that the written and spoken word are enjoined in the furtherance
of freedom, truth, justice and progressive harmony instead of being deployed in
subterfuge, falsified to justify abuse, misappropriated to bend meaning, exaggerated
to support a warlike and crusading atmosphere, worked up to derail arguments or
simply logged and aggregated to create a secret archive that can be trawled for
incriminating details and useful trivia at any time without our knowledge or
consent.
Oh. Aha. I see. And I
hear the distant, mocking laughter of Machiavelli as he swigs spectral wine and
schmoozes his fellow deceased in the afterlife.
To be fair if not
approving, the exercise of power and the methods of that exercise have been employed
by those at all points on the political scale for centuries. The Vatican ,
the Elizabethan court, trafficking rings, the CIA, drugs cartels, the current US
Senate, the ancient Roman senate, Interpol, Hollywood
studios, the music industry and the mafia all behave in exactly the same way.
Their actions are justified by research, which is gained by
information-gathering, which includes surveillance, spycraft, infiltration,
entrapment, the truth obtained by deceitful means. Those who have power,
whether it is legitimate or not, elected or not, formal or not, have always
justified their deceitfulness by pointing to the ends, the consequences. Look,
they say, we have prevented attacks you never knew about; we have stopped
individuals before they committed crimes; we can pre-empt the future because of
what we know. They argue that when it comes to the subtlety of government,
equivocal definitions of what is right or wrong break down. They argue that it
is naïve to talk about what is good and what is bad, which are academic
concepts that would disintegrate when the strong light of reality hits them.
They would laugh in my
face if I tried to assert that certain actions are simply wrong. Perhaps I
should couch the argument in language that wrongdoers would understand: some actions
result in no tangible gain, no increase in meaningful intelligence, no advance
in strategic position and no overall improvement to justify massive costs in
terms of logistics, economics, international standing and public trust. Torture
is wrong and does not yield reliable or useful information. Detention without
justification, without giving detainees any reason, without charge, without
trial, without legal representation, without set duration, is wrong and creates
trauma, instability and resentment. Following someone and keeping a record of
everything they do, say, write or read is wrong and creates paranoia,
alienation and hatred of government.
It is not naive to fight
for human rights and civil liberties, it is imperative. Otherwise the future
will be one of absolute and mutual mistrust in all directions, between and
amongst citizens, countries and world communities. It is obscene that anyone
who is a grassroots activist or a
cultural advocate in defence of human rights should be monitored, as many of us
are, as though we are perpetrators, abusers or lawbreakers. It is contemptible
that petty laws should be invented in order to deter us, vilify us or
criminalise us. When accused of flouting human rights, powerful organisations
behave in a way that demonstrates that they do indeed routinely and
systematically flout the human rights of others while aggressively defending
their own interests. Having authority does not mean that you can do anything
you want, then close ranks when caught.
The authorities will say that
life’s complicated and that we should simply go about our daily business being
watched and followed and not bother our little heads about it. If we haven’t
done anything wrong, like Google something, go on holiday, go on a march or
demonstration, speak at a panel event, sign a petition or have a chat with someone,
we won’t have anything to worry about.
Everyone knows that
governing is complex and involves subtle negotiation between multiple parties
with widely differing views. But when it comes to the fundamentals, some principles
are inviolable. I would even go one further and say that there is no difference
between the rights and freedoms I expect personally and within personal
relationships and those I expect politically and within a public, cultural,
legal and social context. They are one and the same. Every human being has the
right to live free of physical violation, mental torture, domination, abuse, stalking,
surveillance and control. Every human being has the right to live free of fear,
acting from their own will and physical and mental self-determination, not
because they have been threatened, coerced or blackmailed. Every human being’s
sense of dignity is intimately connected with their sense of privacy and their
positive assumption of freedom of thought, freedom of movement, freedom of
association and freedom of expression. These are not political values, subject
to change according to who is in power. They are human values.
It is tempting to be
blasé and say that the ruled have always been spied on by rulers, that it was
ever thus and will always be thus. But it is not true that the present is
exactly like the past only with different clothes, or that history is cyclical,
or that you can’t stop Them and shouldn’t try to stand up to Them because They
always get Their way in the end.
We have arrived at a
unique time culturally and technologically. The authorities’ combination of
deceit, control, watchfulness, duplicity and cruelty, masked with outward
civility and outright lies, is now played out on a global scale, abetted by
ever more efficient means of gathering, storing and sorting information. Many
international governments’ covert political alliances and commercial deals for
information sharing, the transportation and torture of suspected individuals,
the sale of armaments, the levying of wars and exploitation of natural
resources and emerging markets run counter to their publicly stated interests,
values and allegiances.
This goes far beyond
language, although I like a good political euphemism as much as anyone. Rendition
means torture and extraordinary rendition means a lot of torture. Waterboarding
– which sounds like a delightful low-impact sport that one might enjoy on Brighton ’s
seafront – is a euphemism for drowning someone. A resistance safe-zone is a
rebel stronghold. A defence of privacy for privacy’s sake can be an admission
of guilt inviting further investigation. The axis of evil is a mythical land
where the US
sacrificed soldiers for oil. Security means control. Arming in self defence is
incitement to attack. A demonstration can be disorder, resistance can be
rebellion, organising resistance means planning insurgency. Companies axing
thousands of jobs say they are rationalising, harmonising or recalibrating. Swingeing
cuts which put families below the poverty line are rebranded as thrifty, vintage-chic
austerity measures. In the Big Society you do everything as before only for
free and without state assistance. A ‘terrorist’ can be anything from a civil
disrupter to a threat to national security and being accused of being one, even
without a shred of proof, can justify any mistreatment whatsoever.
As the world becomes smaller,
it is becoming more divided. Just when communication becomes more convenient,
it is polluted by wariness and suspicion. Just when we have an opportunity to
globalise in thought and intention as well as business, we take up a defensive
stance and cling to divisive rhetoric, ignorant stereotypes and mistrustful
attitudes.
What I seek is not just
liberty but liberation. Liberation from
a mindset of mistrust and demonisation, the vilification of otherness and the
paternalistic condoning of all surveillance, detention and physical abuse on
the grounds of security. Liberation from the fear that someone is always
following us or watching us. Liberation from our entrenchment in a cruel,
self-justifying system of control which can be brought down on us at any
moment, for any reason. And liberation from the aggressive, combative,
violating machismo which argues disingenuously that violence is sometimes okay.
The only weapons ordinary
citizens have against these trends are our actions and our words, although journalists
are in a trickier position than ever. We are either violating the human rights
of celebrities and relatives of murder victims or campaigning for truth and
justice or accidentally leaving state secrets on the bus and being hauled up in
front of political investigations committees or ethics boards or national
security tribunals or international courts, depending on how our actions are
interpreted and by whom. We are either peddling damaging lies or damaging
truths. We are influential and dangerous, mistrusted because our behaviour is
risky and independent. When we try to whistleblow we are accused of jeopardising
structures that we could never possibly understand. When we try to investigate those
structures and hit upon sensitive material we are scapegoated publicly as
troublemakers.
Either way, the ferocity
of the reaction to journalists’ endeavours indicates something about the impact
of the word. UK
and US governments are just as frightened of journalists as governments in Iran ,
Afghanistan , Russia
and Mexico are.
They fear the word because it’s powerful. Indeed they use that wordpower
themselves, negatively, to stir up tactically useful prejudices, plant
slanderous lies, maintain myths which work in their favour and gloss their own violence.
Those of us on the other side use our position to create space for a truth
denied, a suffering voiced, a protest lodged, a testimony revealed, a campaign
launched. This is why I am a part of Writers at Liberty .
NOTES:
- Read more about the genesis of the project in this brief write-up in Five Dials magazine.
- If you would like to join Liberty and speak up for civil liberties and in defence of human rights, click here now.
- To find out more about the many events and initiatives surrounding Liberty's 80th anniversary, please click here.
- Some of the other writers involved in Writers at Liberty include Naomi Alderman, Yasmin Alhibai-Brown, Tariq Ali, Anthony Anaxagorou, Hephzibah Anderson, Lisa Appighanesi, Chloe Aridjis, Tash Aw, Damian Barr, Alex Bellos, John Berger, Eleanor Birne, Terence Blacker, Malorie Blackman, Rosie Boycott, William Boyd, Margaret Busby, Antonia Byatt, Georgia Byng, Shami Chakrabarti, Tracy Chevalier, Ian Cobain, Edmund De Waal, Jenny Diski, Anne Donovan, Tishani Doshi, Stella Duffy, Ian Dunt, Joe Dunthorne, Geoff Dyer, Fernanda Eberstadt, Lauren Elkin, Bernadine Evaristo, Michel Faber, Jenni Fagan, William Fiennes, Judith Flanders, Ken Follett, Hadley Freeman, Patrick French, Esther Freud, Janice Galloway, Misha Glenny, Niven Govinden, Lavinia Greenlaw, Jay Griffiths, Niall Griffiths, Mark Haddon, Sarah Hall, Mohsin Hamid, Peter Hobbs, Tom Hodgkinson, Marina Hyde, M. J Hyland, Rhian Jones, Sadie Jones, Jackie Kay, Emily King, Nick Laird, Nikita Lalwani, Darian Leader, Ann Leslie, Kathy Lette, Deborah Levy, Richard Mabey, AlisonMacLeod, Sabrina Mahfouz, Hisham Matar, Lise Mayer, Sophie Mayer, Hollie McNish, Michael Morpurgo, Blake Morrison, Tiffany Murray, Daljit Nagra, Patrick Ness, Lawrence Norfolk, Rachel North, Richard Norton-Taylor, Maggie O’Farrell, Catherine O’Flynn, Ben Okri, Don Paterson, Shyama Perera, Adam Phillips, Hannah Pool, Philip Pullman, Ross Raisin, Alice Rawsthorn, Philip Ridley, James Robertson, Michael Rosen, Hannah Rothschild, Elif Şafak, Taiye Selasi, Kamila Shamsie, Jo Shapcott, Nikesh Shukla, Ali Smith, Daniel Soar, Ahdaf Soueif, Craig Taylor, Barbara Taylor, Kate Tempest, Colin Thubron, Salley Vickers, Erica Wagner, Helen Walsh, Marina Warner and Sarah Waters.
