Seeing Is Believing

Let’s hear a “Hosanna!” for David Norris, the first Irish parliamentarian to seek a See Change at the United Nations.

See Change is the international campaign dedicated to exposing the role of the Catholic Church at the UN in depriving the women of the world of their rights. Last month, members of parliament from four European countries signed a declaration supporting the campaign. Norris was the only Irish name on the roll of honour.

As has been explained here before, there is no basis for the common assumption that the Vatican is represented at the UN by virtue of the fact that Vatican City is a State (sort of). The entity which maintains a delegation at UN headquarters in New York and participates in international bodies and UN conferences is the “Holy See”, the government of the Catholic Church worldwide, a “non-territorial religious entity”, not a State. No other religious group is represented at the UN in this way. The arrangement has never been agreed or endorsed by the UN General Assembly.

The parliamentarians’ letter calls for a “thorough review by the UN of the Holy See’s ‘state’ status. We are concerned that the Holy See misuses its position at the UN to prevent the adoption of language in UN documents that would enable governments to more easily provide reproductive health services to men and women throughout the world, but especially to poor women.

“The See Change campaign has provided a focus for the legitimate concern women and men feel about the outsized role that the Holy See has assigned itself at meetings held by the United Nations and the effect their policies – if adopted – would have on women’s lives and health. The Holy See speaks in these conferences as often as real countries with real populations and real problems...

“We believe that the Holy See should participate in the UN in the same way as the world’s other religions do – as a nongovernmental organization.”

The letter making this modest proposal has been signed by seven members of the Westminster parliament, 46 members of the Swedish Riksdag, an all-party group of the German Bundestag, and by Senator Norris. It follows last year’s initiative by three Dutch members of the European Parliament who urged all EU States to protest against the sleight-of-hand which enables the Catholic Church “to force the UN into policy concessions on women and youth...

“The consequences of these concessions are especially visible in poor countries where hundreds of millions of women die as a result of illegal abortions, and millions are contaminated by the AIDS virus,” declared Lousewies van der Laan, Elly Plooij van Goorsel and Joke Swiebel.

The influence of the Holy See is a major factor in the spread of AIDS

in the Third World, and particularly

in Africa. The Holy See lobbies relentlessly against programmes which include the provision of or education in the use of condoms as a means of reducing the risk of infection. It commonly forms alliances with Islamic countries in this enterprise. Its most regular partner in blocking health initiatives is Iran.

What’s needed now is for all who see the simple logic and evident justice of the See Change campaign to raise the issue when and where they can, and generally to make known their support for practical moves to end the preposterous situation whereby unaccountable representatives of an immaterial entity conspire to deny basic rights to the poor of the world.

And David Norris could do with a bit of back-up on this one. Where are you, Michael D., Shane Ross, Joe Higgins...?

Little success, I’m afraid, in my personal campaign to persuade Sinn Fein to leave the Northern Executive for the high moral ground.

If Sinn Fein were to pull its two Ministers out of the Executive, I have explained over the months, the decommissioning issue would be defused without the IRA conceding an inch, or an ounce.

The kudos accruing to the Republicans for this gesture would make it the PR coup of the century, I have suggested. Far more importantly, they would be following in a long and honourable tradition of eschewing the blandishments of office to keep faith with radical politics and common people.

Freed from the entanglement in compromise which comes with coalition, Sinn Fein could campaign unencumbered on all the issues arising from the Agreement which remain to be resolved, while also staking out a position to the Left of the other Assembly parties – something which it has signalled failed to do in the lifetime of the Agreement.

Three SF Assembly members served on a Stormont committee which delivered a unanimous report in the week before the Staffordshire Talks, endorsing the sell-off of chunks of the public service to companies operating for profit. The committee was chaired by Francie Molloy. The departments most affected are Health and Education, headed by Ministers de Brun and McGuinness.

Many in the SF rank and file have been concerned and confused that their party has become fully engaged in the rush to the market demanded by right-wing ideologues everywhere. It’s not the line the Shinners take when campaigning in the South. But it’s what they do in office. Because, North or South, it’s the cost of coalition.

Out of the Executive, mobilising its people and linking traditional Republican concerns to a new agenda for radical politics, Sinn Fein could play a decisive role in freeing up a situation frozen in sectarianism. Campaigning at grass-roots level against the sell-off of the health and education services, they would certainly find support on both sides of the divide. A great prize surely, and for the small price of giving up places in a devolved British administration.

Obviously, though, this is an argument which it’s difficult to fit into the perspective of conservative Nationalism.

There’s a neat little estate of brand new homes nearing completion at Drumahoe outside Derry on the main road to Belfast. The houses look like they’ll be finished in a few weeks. There’s still rubble strewn around the site, but the builders are beginning to install the window panes, and the lamp-posts are already in place.

I noticed the lamp-posts, driving to Belfast the other week to speak at a meeting about the stand-off on the Ardoyne Road which saw children barraged with sectarian abuse as they made their way to the Holy Cross primary school. My attention was caught because the posts already had flags flying. Big flags, billowing out in the breeze, alternately, atop every second post, signifying either the UDA or the UFF. Not a single family moved in yet, but the allegience of the area already loudly proclaimed.

The scenes in Ardoyne were widely taken as a sad sign of how hate-filled the North has become. And the issue hasn’t gone away. Come September, it’s distinctly possible the gargoyles of hate will assemble again to keep their side of the road free of Primary Four Fenians.

It’s not an explanation, but neither

is it an accident, that this particular

outbreak of aggro was triggered by

an incident involving an attack by,

or, depending on which version

you accept, an attack on, men

erecting UDA flags around the Glenbryn area.

Was the area being flagged as UDA territory as a result of an upsurge of popular support for the UDA in Glenbryn? Hardly. It’s characteristic of all paramilitary groups that they don’t seek people’s support but claim their allegience.

The incident was expressive of deep-seated feelings. But it was also deliberately contrived, by organisations which flag up hatred everywhere they go because their influence and role depends entirely on pumping up the level of sectarian feeling and maintaining the cretinous carve-up of our society into “our” areas and “theirs”, irrespective of what actual people actually want.

The main organisations involved

in this acrid enterprise, the UDA/UFF and the UVF, and their semi-plausible “political” front-men, are commonly projected as authentic representatives of the Protestant proletariat, to be patronised and indulged in order to placate them and in the hope that they’ll restrain even uglier elements in the background. All this does is encourage the evil fuckers.