Musharraf | ukwatch.net

London's OutRage! Leader Blocks Pakistani Strongman's Limo

Ellie Keen — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 23:47:03 +0000

Britain's best-known gay activist, Peter Tatchell, confronted Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf this past weekend when the dictator arrived in London on the last leg of his European tour, blocking the general's car with his body repeatedly to protest "the suppression of democracy and human rights" by the military strongman.

Tatchell, who this year marks the 40th anniversary of his start as an activist, undertook the protest against Musharraf even though he is still suffering the physical after-effects of the severe beating he received last year in Moscow when a crowd of fascist thugs, egged on by the police, violently broke up an attempted Gay Pride demonstration in front of Moscow's City Hall that Tatchell had gone to Russia to support (see this reporter's May 31-Jun. 5, 2007 article, "The Agony of Moscow Pride").

"I've still got cognition and physical cordination problems, loss of vision, and memory holes" as a result of the Moscow beating, Tatchell, head of the militant UK queer rights group OutRage!, told Gay City News by telephone from London. He added, "First my doctors told me I'd be alright in a month, then they said three months, and now they're telling me these problems may never go away."

The ambush of Musharraf happened outside London's Hilton Hotel Park Lane on January 25, as the Pakistani president's motorcade drew close to the hotel, where he was scheduled to speak.

"To avert police attention, I stood inconspicuously at a bus stop reading a newspaper, waiting for Musharraf's motorcade to arrive," said Tatchell. "When the police motorcycle escorts drew level, I ran out into Park Lane and straight in front of the president's car. It screeched to a halt. I unfurled a placard protesting against Musharraf's massacre of civilians in occupied Baluchistan. The placard read: 'Stop Pakistan Massacre of Baluch people.'"

Tatchell got his message across to the Pakistani dictator.

"Musharraf could clearly see the placard, and he did not look pleased," he said. "His driver tried to back up and drive around me, but I ran in front of the limousine again, forcing it to halt once more. I could see Musharraf shouting something at his driver. Perhaps he feared that I was an assassin or a suicide bomber."

Then, said Tatchell, "The limo reversed again and tried to swerve past me. I blocked it for the third time. Musharraf and his colleagues looked very agitated. Eventually, police motorcycle escorts ran over and dragged me away from the bonnet of Musharraf's vehicle."

Pulled across the road by police, Tatchell was pinned against a railing. He was soon released by police, allowing him to join the main anti-Musharraf demonstration outside the Hilton, organized by lawyers protesting the arrest of their colleagues and of Supreme Court judges in Pakistan.

This is not the first time Tatchell has personally confronted a dictator. He became a national hero in Britain when, on October 30, 1999, he and three other OutRage! activists ambushed Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe's car in a London street and attempted to perform a citizen's arrest of him on charges of crimes in violation of United Nations human rights conventions. Tatchell opened the car door, seized Mugabe, and then summoned police. Mugabe was not taken into custody; instead all four OutRage! activists were arrested and Tatchell was charged with assault.

Mugabe is a ruthless tyrant who has used violence and imprisonment against political opponents. He is also a notorious anti-gay demagogue -- he has said that gays and lesbians "are worse than pigs and dogs" -- who criminalized homosexuality and authorized his political gangs to engage in street lynchings of gay Zimbabweans.

Tatchell tried again twice to perform a citizen's arrest on Mugabe -- first in Belgium in 2001, when he was beaten unconscious by the dictator's bodyguards, causing him serious permanent damage to one eye; and then again in Paris in 2003, when Tatchell was arrested by the French police.

As The Independent, a British daily, noted in a recent profile of Tatchell, he "was once perhaps the most execrated man in British politics. He was -- to restrict ourselves to quotations from just one newspaper, the Daily Mail -- 'loony,' 'scabrous,' 'repellent,' 'repulsive,' 'sour,' 'humourless,' 'obnoxious,' and a 'homosexual terrorist.'"

These epithets came after Tatchell led protests that disrupted church services led by the homophobic archbishop of Canterbury and threatened to out both Church of England bishops and conservative homosexual members of Parliament who voted against gay rights legislation.

But since his attempts to arrest Mugabe, "Tatchell has variously been called 'a national hero' (the Sunday Times), 'a civil rights campaigner we can all applaud' (Sunday Telegraph), and 'Heroic... an example to us all' (Daily Mail)," The Independent noted.

As Tatchell marked his fourth decade of militant human rights activism with the Musharraf protest, Gay City News asked prominent British gays to assess his contribution.

"Sometimes infuriating, often imbued with a great theatrically, Peter's work has helped keep moving forward the cause of gay emancipation enormously," according to Joe Galliano, editor of Gay Times, the glossy monthly magazine that is the largest British gay publication. Galliano added, "Peter is one of the very few campaigners to make the intellectual leap that gay rights can only properly come through better respect of human rights for all."

Brian Whitaker, author of "Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East" and a senior editor at The Guardian, a British daily that regularly publishes Tatchell's commentaries on gay and human rights, told Gay City News, "Peter is a sort of one-man Great British Institution, even though he came from Australia -- if he didn't exist he'd have to be invented."

Whitaker went on to say, "I don't always agree with him and sometimes he goes a bit over the top, but he's courageous and absolutely sincere in what he does and many people admire him for that. One thing troubles me a bit -- he's such an effective campaigner that other gay people tend to let him get on with it and don't become involved in activism themselves. They can send ten quid to OutRage!, then carry on partying with a clear conscience."

The son of a lathe worker, Tatchell began his political activity when, as a Melbourne, Australia high school student in 1967, he organized a campaign on behalf of the indigenous Aboriginal population, who faced severe discrimination at the time. Although his fellow students recognized that he was gay, he proved popular with them. Tatchell was elected student body president, or "head boy."

The next year, Tatchell joined the movement against Australia's involvement as a US ally in Viet Nam, and led campaigns urging other young men to refuse to be drafted. In August 1971 he emigrated to Britain to escape conscription. Five days after arriving in London, he attended a meeting of the recently organized Gay Liberation Front, and within a month he began organizing its campaigns.

In 1987, he was a founder of the UK AIDS Vigil pressure group and two years later started the London chapter of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, or ACT UP. In May 1990, he attended the founding meeting of OutRage!, formed in response to police inaction after the queer-bashing murder of actor Michael Boothe. Gay journalists and writers Simon Watney, Keith Alcorn, and Chris Woods initiated the group to wage a provocative campaign of direct action and civil disobedience for gay rights. Tatchell in time became OutRage!'s leader.

"Peter Tatchell has been a huge and towering figure in British gay politics for the last quarter of a century," Neil McKenna, an openly gay journalist and historian, told Gay City News from London.

McKenna, who authored the groundbreaking, critically acclaimed 2005 revisionist biography, "The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde," which detailed the gay playwright's little-known work as a pioneer activist for homosexual emancipation, said, "Peter has worked selflessly to bring about change, making many memorable protests. He has lived on the poverty line for three decades and has to rely on a network of support to feed himself and clothe himself. He is unique, extraordinary, principled, dedicated, and should be classified as a living national treasure, warts and all.

"My first encounter with him was when I was a cub reporter attending a Church of England General Synod which was debating the rights and wrongs of homosexuality," McKenna recalled. "Peter stood up in the public gallery circling the Synod and proceeded to denounce them. I wrote at the time that he stood up 'like an Old Testament prophet' and that image has stayed with me over the years. Peter Tatchell says things and does things which lots of people don't always want to hear."

Tatchell has also been a pioneer in catalyzing international solidarity for oppressed LGBT people outside the West. In 1973, Tatchell was arrested in East Germany when he went there to help local activists stage what he says was the first public gay protest in a Communist country. In the 1980s, he traveled to Thailand to support the first wave of gay and AIDS activists in that country, and to El Salvador to highlight the violent attacks on that country's gays and lesbians amidst a bloody civil war, during which the US gave aid to the right-wing patrons of the authoritarian regime's death squads. He's traveled to Malawi to protest the semi-slave labor of children on British-owned tea estates; to New Guinea to protest the Indonesian massacre of indigenous peoples in West Papua; to Latvia for banned 2006 Gay Pride observances that were violently attacked by religious extremists (see this reporter's Jul. 27-Aug. 1, 2006 article "The Siege of Riga," a link to which appears in the web version of this article); and to Memphis to confront boxer Mike Tyson after the pugilist gay-baited heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis.

"I am often asked a question on who is my hero, whom I want to be like and I can answer for sure that Peter Tatchell is my hero, he is my ideal in fighting for LGBT rights in the world," said Nicolai Alexeyev, the courageous young Russian lawyer who has been the principal organizer of Moscow Pride. And Alexeyev went on to say, "When I just started my activist work in Russia in 2005, it was Peter who was an inspiration to me. I tried to build our work here in Russia on the principles of his work in the UK. I think he is one of the most outstanding human rights and LGBT activits in the contemporary world, who is courageous and smart at the same time. I am extremely thankful to destiny that I got acquainted with Peter. He is a person of very high standing who is totally devoted to human rights and equality for everyone."

One of Tatchell's most attention-getting protests came at the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles, where he held up a sign that read, "Charles Can Marry Twice, Gays Can't Marry Once!"

Tatchell's flair for attracting media attention to his causes, which draws charges he's a publicity hound, includes writing a constant stream of articles for both the mainstream and gay press.

In 2002 he launched the Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund to support his campaigning work around the world.

"Peter is a world leader when it comes to LGBT human rights activism," UK Gay News editor Andy Harley told Gay City News, adding that "last year when he was seriously assaulted during Moscow Gay Pride, the first group who condemned the attack, and expressed support and good wishes for a speedy recovery, were exiled Ahwazi Arabs, a persecuted ethnic minority in Iran. They described Peter Tatchell as 'an icon in human rights.' This speaks volumes, coming from a Muslim group that has been supported by Peter."

French black civil rights leader, scholar, and author Louis-Georges Tin, who is also the founder of the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) -- celebrated in over 50 countries last year -- told Gay City News from Paris, "Peter Tatchell invented a new mode for gay activism, flamboyant and pragmatic at the same time, offensive and full of humor. As the apostle of this new genre of protests, he has sacrificed nearly everything -- his private life, his material comfort, his physical security -- to defend human rights in England and the entire world. When will he be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize he deserves?"

Ex-pat British author Christopher Hitchens, a Vanity Fair columnist, told this reporter, "Peter Tatchell has made an exemplary effort, in his life and in his writing, to give expression to a consistent and international ethic of human rights and human dignity."

And Sir Elton John recently said of Tatchell, "He's incredibly brave... doing good work in a world where most people are too timid. He keeps sticking at it."

Peter, we salute you!

Welcoming a Tyrant

Ellie Keen — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:35:00 +0000

The Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf is in Britain to drum up support for his tyrannical regime. His visit is a desperate PR ploy, designed to repair the damage caused by his repressive policies. These include the imposition of emergency rule late last year, which led to media censorship, violent suppression of popular protests, mass arrests of opposition party leaders and activists, and the crushing of the independent judiciary, with the detention of over 60 supreme court judges and lawyers.

Musharraf misleadingly justified emergency rule in the name of a crackdown on terrorism. In truth, instead of arresting terrorists, he seized thousands of peaceful opposition party officials and members. Since Benazir Bhutto's assassination, tens of thousands more have been detained.

Gordon Brown refuses to meet the Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, but on Monday he will embrace Musharraf of Pakistan at 10 Downing Street. No surprise there. After all, Britain and the US are long-time allies and supporters of Musharraf's dictatorship. Despite occasional mild admonishments, our government, in our name, supports him politically, diplomatically, economically and militarily; selling Musharraf the weapons he uses to suppress his own people. Since 2001, the US has bankrolled Musharaf to the tune of $10bn. US fighter planes are used to bomb and strafe pro-nationalist towns and villages in annexed and colonised Baluchistan. Without western aid to support this state terrorism, Musharraf's regime would fall.

Musharraf will, as usual, claim that he is saving Pakistan from Islamic fundamentalism and holding the fort against the terror threat of al-Qaida and the Taliban. He will portray the "tribal regions" of Pakistan, like Waziristan and North West Frontier, as hotbeds of extremism and terrorism that only he can control; wilfully suppressing all knowledge of the gross human rights abuses perpetrated by his subjugating army in the these regions and the legitimate liberation struggles of the people there.

Our prime minister will fall for this hogwash and spin. He will parrot Islamabad's line that we need Musharraf as an ally in the so-called "war on terror" and that without him the country would be taken over by Islamist extremists.

Nonsense. The extremists are already in the Pakistani government, army, police and intelligence services. These state agencies are heavily infiltrated by fundamentalists and Musharraf has failed to remove them.

Moreover, if there were free and fair elections, the opposition parties would win and could start addressing some of the underlying injustices in Pakistani society that have allowed fundamentalist ideas to gain a foothold. Democracy is the best safeguard against dictatorship, whether of the Musharraf or Islamist variety.

The elephant in the room during Monday's Downing Street meeting with Gordon Brown will be Musharraf's complicity in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the subsequent attempted cover-up.

The Pakistani leader has form with regard to political assassinations. In 2006, his forces murdered the frail 79-year-old Baluchistan nationalist leader, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, a former provincial governor and chief minister of Baluchistan. Previously an independent nation, Baluchistan was invaded and occupied by Pakistan in 1948. Another Baluch leader, Balach Marri, was killed by Pakistani forces last November.

So far as Bhutto's murder is concerned, Musharraf was the main beneficiary. He has gained the most from her death. She was his main political rival and a likely election winner. With Bhutto dead, Musharraf's chances of election in next month's poll are much improved.

Musharraf is a guilty man. Three scenarios of guilt are possible. Either he personally ordered Bhutto's assassination or he failed to control the rogue elements in the military and intelligence services that killed her. Even if Islamist radicals murdered her, he neglected to provide Bhutto with adequate personal security and he refused her requests for greater protection. Either way, to varying degrees, Musharraf was complicit in Benazir's assassination. The buck stops with him.

Musharraf has, however, been busy trying to pin the blame on North West Frontier nationalist leader Baitullah Mehsud. This report by Mushtaq Yusufzai and Javed Afridi for the Pakistani newspaper, The News, casts doubt on these claims. I cannot vouch for the allegations made in this story, but they strike me as plausible and worthy of serious consideration. It is worth reading the story in full here:

PESHAWAR: Militant commander Baitullah Mehsud, accused of masterminding the suicide attack that killed former prime minister and PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi, has rejected the allegations as baseless.

"We are equally grieved by the tragic death of Benazir Bhutto and extend our sympathies to her family and party workers in this hour of grief," said Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for Baitullah Mehsud.

"Why on earth would we kill her? We had no enmity with her and more importantly she had done no wrong to us," Maulvi Omar said.

"By blaming us for the murder of an important political leader like Benazir Bhutto, the government is in fact misguiding the world. Planning such actions is simply beyond our imagination," he claimed.

He alleged that the government was attempting to portray the tribal areas as centres of terrorists so as to earn dollars from, what he termed as, Western masters.

While there is good reason to be sceptical of such denials, in the past Mehsud has never been shy of claiming responsibility for his military operations. Moreover, he stood to gain from Bhutto's election. She had, after all, promised greater autonomy for the provinces and an end to Musharraf's brutal suppression of minority tribes and nationalities. Although Mehsud may have ordered the assassination, it seems doubtful.

Gordon Brown's willingness to fete a despot like Musharraf is an insult to the millions of Pakistani people who oppose tyranny and yearn for democracy and human rights. New Labour is yet again colluding with oppression. It is siding with a dictator against his victims.

When the prime minister embraces Musharraf on Monday, I will be joining the Pakistani protests outside Downing Street at 11am. We will be there in solidarity with the people of Pakistan who want an end to Musharraf's dictatorship. I hope some of you will join us.

Turn Off the Aid Tap

Ellie Keen — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 02:35:02 +0000

So far the UK government has responded to General Musharraf's crackdown in Pakistan with words but no action. In formulaic statements Gordon Brown and his ministers have called for the lifting of the state of emergency, the release of those arrested, an end to restrictions on the media and the holding of elections next January. But there is little sign of any willingness to put serious pressure on Musharraf to do any of this.

Annual UK economic aid to Pakistan has increased from £12.8m in 2001 to more than £100m this year. It is set to double over the next four years. On top of that, there's military and counter-terrorism assistance. Much of this aid package is conditioned on good performance on human rights and governance. Yet the aid tap remains firmly on.

Furthermore, the UK has signally avoided calling for the reinstatement of Iftikhar Chaudhry, the sacked chief justice who, along with his colleagues on the supreme court, has fought with persistence against Musharraf's one-man rule and sought to expose the abuses of his government. Apparently the UK is relaxed about the appointment of pliant supreme court judges who will rubberstamp an unconstitutional political process, which keeps Musharraf in power indefinitely.

The threat this week to suspend Pakistan from the Commonwealth unless it lifts the state of emergency by the time of the Commonwealth summit in Uganda on November 23 is little more than a symbolic gesture. Under Musharraf, Pakistan has already been suspended from the Commonwealth and the sky did not fall on his head.

The British government's rationale for a softly-softly approach is the same as its rationale for supporting the military dictator in the first place. As the foreign secretary, David Miliband, puts it, the UK is "very much aware of the terrorist threat with which the government of Pakistan has to grapple" and has reiterated its "support and determination to work in partnership with the Pakistani authorities to counter this menace".

The problem with this argument is that the military government in Pakistan is as much part of the terrorist problem as its solution. The style and methods of Musharraf's unaccountable military dictatorship, including widespread torture and disappearances, and a war of attrition against the Pakistani judiciary, have done nothing to reduce the influence of those who advocate terrorist violence in Pakistan. On the contrary, with every day that Musharraf delays a return to civilian rule, he stokes the flames of violent extremism in Pakistan and beyond.

Under Musharraf, the Taliban and other extremist groups have grown stronger, while Pakistani moderates and progressives have been persecuted. While Musharraf cracks down on liberal civil society and the media, his army is relinquishing more and more territory to Islamist militants in north-western Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan.

Just this month, scores of paramilitary troops and police surrendered their weapons to militants and retreated from yet another town, Kalam, in the Swat Valley of Pakistan's strategically important North West Frontier Province. The pro-Taliban cleric, Mullah Fazlullah, announced "victory" over his pirate FM radio station as militants hoisted their flag on government buildings and installations in the area.

Meanwhile, thousands of police and intelligence officers have been diverted from fighting terrorism to implementing a state of emergency whose main victims are the lawyers, human rights activists and progressive politicians who have spearheaded the restoration of civilian rule.

A return to some semblance of democratic governance and respect for the rule of law and human rights is no panacea, but it is a necessary condition for an effective strategy to stabilise Pakistan and neutralise the threat of terrorism. Aid spent propping up an abusive dictator in Pakistan is worse than a waste of taxpayers' money. It should be switched off.

To keep pumping economic and military assistance to Musharraf's military government in the current crisis sends a dangerous message that London does not care about the plight of the beleaguered democrats and moderates in Pakistan. Such a signal gives succour to abusive and unaccountable governments around the world, and hands another victory to the violent extremists in the battle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world.

Turn Off the Aid Tap

Ellie Keen — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:30:39 +0000

The British government's rationale for a softly-softly approach is the same as its rationale for supporting the military dictator in the first place. As David Miliband puts it, the UK is "very much aware of the terrorist threat with which the government of Pakistan has to grapple" and has reiterated its "support and determination to work in partnership with the Pakistani authorities to counter this menace".