|
It
was with an acrid taste in my mouth that I found former
British prime minister, Ted Heath being paraded in
front of the Saville Inquiry in London to be questioned
about his part in the Bloody Sunday killings of 31
years ago. It was a bitterness accentuated by awareness
that this is as far as it goes; that we will not see
this massacre denier on trial in the Hague alongside
Milosevic. There seems no eminently good reason why
Biljana Plavsic, the former Bosnian Serb president,
can face trial - and conviction, she pleaded guilty
- at the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal in The
Hague and Ted Heath can come, chauffer-driven, and
handcuff-free to a venue in London - ultimately to
walk away. One thing is certain: no matter what verdict
Saville arrives at Heath will not spend one night
in the cells. As the Daily Telegraph joyously
observed ‘it is almost inconceivable that any
criminal charges will arise.’
And
yet we are left to stomach the nauseating hypocrisy
of those who wish to lecture the rest of the world
on human rights proclaiming their determination -
Madeline Albright's lamentable attempt at mitigation
notwithstanding - to ensure that many a year will
have passed before Biljana Plavsic, once the ‘Iron
Lady of the Balkans’ and Bosnian Serb president
between 1996 and 1998, leaves the greyness of her
confinement to emerge blinking into the sun of society.
The complaint here is not that Plasvic does not belong
where she is, merely that she should have a lot more
so called political leaders to keep her company throughout
the long prison evenings, whiling away the time exchanging
tales of machete or napalm attacks, dropping tranquilised
and powerless victims into the sea from helicopters,
castrations, executions, rape and torture; along with
a nightcap - that old favourite of the war criminal
- disappearances. With enough of them confined and
with ample time on their hands they could maybe even
devise and patent a new board game, Secret Grave
Hunt.
In
the case of the head of a British Government which
murdered people whom it claimed were its own citizens
and subjects of its queen, the Incredible Sulk, as
Tom Utley claims to have once labelled Heath, will
most likely view the matter at worst as a minor irritant,
one of these laborious procedures that have to be
grudgingly undergone to placate the discourse of human
rights. If sufficiently shrewd he will view it as
an opportunity to perform considerably better than
he ever did at the despatch box during prime minister’s
parliamentary question time. The Inquiry affords him
an opportunity for more publicity than he has had
for quite some time. Not a bad return for one more
akin to Galtieri than Mandela. And, ironical as ever,
human rights abusers find sufficient numbers of humans
to bail them out.
In
a recent commentary piece the same Tom Utley of the
Daily Telegraph complained that 'for the first
time in British history, a former prime minister is
to be hauled before an official tribunal and made
to account for his actions when he was in office 30
years ago.' Utley's piece was replete with language
and inflexions strategically devised to mobilise bias
in favour of Heath. The readers were treated to a
sympathy symphony, the chords of which undulate to
the rhythmic beat: 'poor health ... suffered a fall
... frailty ... old man'. Having said all that, Utley
rapidly dispensed with the sentiment and cut to the
chase. 'It is absolutely monstrous that any former
prime minister, old and frail or not, should be subjected
to the interrogation awaiting Sir Edward in the weeks
ahead.' In other words the elite and powerful in society
are to be granted eternal immunity for anything they
might have got up to while in office. In a bid to
shield the logic of this Utley declares that ‘there
has already been one official inquiry, conducted by
Lord Widgery in 1972, when the evidence was much fresher
in everybody's minds. That inquiry was not the whitewash
that so many have said it was.’ One suspects
that had Widgery found that all the victims committed
suicide under the direction of some republican Jim
Jones of the People's Temple infamy, Tom Utley would
have found reason to concur.
After
that nonsense, it probably seems self-indulgent to
probe Utley’s reactionary musings any further.
But one further comment, at least, is worthy of attention
because it underscores just how Utley's own logic
brings him right up to the wire only to see him at
the moment of truth recoil like a vampire, having
had a cross thrust into its face: ‘Mr Blair may
live to rue the day when he set up the Saville Inquiry,
and treated his predecessor at Number 10 in the way
that he treated General Pinochet.’ This, for
those seeking justice for the victims of Bloody Sunday,
is the unpalatable crux because it is exactly the
manner in which Blair, fortunately for Tom Utley,
is going to treat Heath. And is it not a travesty
that Pinochet was ever allowed to walk away rather
than face justice in Spain for the crimes against
humanity that he was indisputably guilty of while
smashing Chilean democracy? Utley should rejoice rather
than recoil at the prospect.
The
difficulty for him lies in an unwillingness to understand
the obvious. Just as Julius Streicher stepped into
nothingness from a Nuremburg gallows cursing and blaming
in equal measure the people he had murdered, Utley
too finds it incomprehensible that the victims of
the authoritarian coterie for whom he slavishly wielded
his pen should ever be allowed to question it about
its abuses. Writing in March 2001 of Margaret Thatcher’s
stroke induced illness being met with glee in some
British circles he claimed that he ‘could just
about understand it if she had been a homicidal maniac
or a woman who rejoiced in the suffering of others.’
What, we may wonder is so difficult to understand
about that?
The
nemesis now haunting the generals, dictators, state
murderers, torturers, presidents and prime ministers
who massacred civilians, wears the clothes of human
rights, democracy and transparency. But for those
whom it stalks, that very attire - even in the anodyne
form of Saville - makes it appear like the grim reaper.
Small wonder that Tom Utley could write ‘all
Tories worthy of the description should be strongly
against human rights.’ All the more reason for
the rest of us to support such rights and to be strongly
against Tories.
Index: Current Articles + Latest News and Views + Book Reviews +
Letters + Archives
|
