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UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com,
U.N. / - Bianca Jagger is a
Columnist for MaximsNews.com, An Independent
Voice from the United Nations. She is available for Media Interviews: BiancaJagger@MaximsNews.com
Bianca Jagger's contributions
to MaximsNews.com include the
following:
BIANCA
JAGGER IN TURKEY TO HALT ILISU DAM PROJECT IN THREATENED CITY OF HASANKEYF
BIANCA
JAGGER: The UN CAN STOP THE KILLING
BIANCA
JAGGER: TONY BLAIR MUST GO!! LEBANON, U.N. & CEASEFIRE
A
Tribute to My Mother
The
Execution of Stanley Tookie Williams
Bianca
Jagger, The Life of a Human Rights Advocate
UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com, UN/
- For over 20 years, Bianca
Jagger, has campaigned for human rights, social and economic justice and
environmental protection throughout the world.
Born
in Nicaragua, Bianca Perez-Mora Macias, Ms Jagger’s involvement in human
rights issues and her commitment to justice was inspire by her personal
experience in her native country.
For
almost half a century Nicaraguans lived under the jug of the corrupt and
repressive Somoza family. Nicaraguans suffered what John F Kennedy defined as
the harshest “common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war”.
As
a teenager, Ms Jagger witnessed the terror Somoza’s National Guard inflicted
on its citizens. She felt powerless since all she could do was participate in
student demonstrations to protest against their massacres. She left her native
country armed with a French Government scholarship to study Political Science in
Paris.
In
1971, she married Mick Jagger. A year later she returned to Nicaragua to look
for her parents after a devastating earthquake, which destroyed Managua, the
capital, leaving a toll of more than 10,000 deaths and tens of thousands
homeless. Although the country received millions of dollars of relief aid from
the international community -- including 60 million dollars from the US
government -- thousands were left without medical assistance, food or shelter.
The
money was pouring into President Anastasio Somoza’s pockets. It was this
ruthless act of pillage that eventually fuelled the Sandinista Revolution.
1979
was the year of her divorce. It coincided with the fall of Somoza. A popular
uprising finally succeeded in ousting the tyrant. Ms Jagger joined forces with
the British Red Cross to raise funds for the victims of the conflict and flew
home to join the International Red Cross and help on the ground.
Two
years later, in 1981, Ms Jagger travelled to Central America, as part of a US
Congressional fact-finding mission to visit Colomoncagua, where the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugee, UNHCR had established a refugee camp in
Honduran territory, twenty kilometres from the border .
During
her visit an armed death squad marched across the border from El Salvador,
entered the camp and rounded up about 40 refugees. They tied their thumbs behind
their backs and proceeded to take them across the border to El Salvador, with
the Honduran army’s blessing.
Ms
Jagger and her delegation, as well as the relief workers and the captives’
families decided to chase after them, running along a dry river bed for about
half an hour, armed only with cameras. They
took photographs during the chase. They all feared that the death squads were
going to kill the refugees.
Finally,
they came within earshot of the death squad and the captives, members of the
death squad turned around, pointing their M-16's at them. They began to shout
“you will have to kill us all” and “we will denounce your crime to the
world".
There
was a long silence. Then, without explanation, the death squads turned
around leaving the refugees and the pursuers behind. The refugees were all
released, unharmed.
This
suspended moment in time was a turning point in Ms Jagger’s life. She realised
the importance of being present when innocent people’s lives are at stake. How
a small act of courage can save lives and make a difference.
In
1993, Ms. Jagger’s efforts brought her to the former Yugoslavia to document
the mass rape of Bosnian women by Serbian forces as part of a campaign of ethnic
cleansing. In July 1995, the United Nations “safe area” of Srebrenica in
Bosnia was overrun by Bosnian Serb troops. Some 8,000 civilians, virtually the
entire male population, were systematically massacred. Since then, Ms. Jagger
has been committed to speak on behalf of the survivors.
For
many years she campaigned to stop the genocide taking place in Bosnia and later
to make the perpetrators accountable before the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). She has testified on this issue before the
Helsinki Commission on Human Rights, the United States Congressional Human
Rights Caucus, the International Operations Subcommittee on Human Rights, and
the British and European Parliaments.
From
1993 to 1996, she evacuated 22 children out of Bosnia to receive medical care in
the United States. She personally evacuated two dying children, Sabina and
Mohamed. Sadly Sabina did not survive the evacuation trip and died in
Croatia. Mohamed underwent a successful heart operation at Colombia Presbyterian
Hospital in New York; he lived with Ms Jagger in the US for nearly a year and
three years later he went back to Bosnia with his parents.
She
wrote a decisive essay J’accuse: the Betrayal of Srebrenica, a detailed
account of the massacre of Srebrenica, which was published worldwide, in among
others: Panorama, in Italy, The European, in the United Kingdom, Courier
International and Juriste International in France.
In
July 1998, Ms Jagger travel to Kosovo with a BBC crew from the program
Newsnight. Their aim was to record war crimes perpetrated against the ethnic
Albanians, or ‘Kosovars’, who lived in the province and constituted 90% of
its population. Repression was the Kosovars daily reality at the time of Ms
Jagger’s visit.
Serbian
military and paramilitary troops had systematically uprooted them, destroying
over 300 towns and villages in their wake. Over 2,500 ethnic Albanians
were killed. Thousands had disappeared. Houses had been burned down
and buildings had been gutted by fire, crops destroyed, livestock slaughtered.
Serbs had systematically raped Kosovars women. Old people and children had
been massacred.
Ms
Jagger reported for Newsnight on a pattern of “apartheid” reminiscent of the
darkest days of the war she had witnessed in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Serbian and
Yugoslav security forces separating men from women and children throughout the
province, just as they had done in Srebrenica. Most international organizations
and foreign NGOs were withdrawing their staff for “security reasons”.
Ms
Jagger went on to decry the plight of the Kosovars through several articles and
lectures; she spoke at the House of Commons in the UK and the European
Parliament.
She
campaigned for the indictment and arrest of President Milosevic and continues to
urge for the arrest of General Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.
Her
work on behalf of the countless victims of conflicts throughout the world, and
her campaign to evacuate 22 terminally ill children from Bosnia, earned her
several awards, among them the Amnesty International/USA Media Spotlight Award
for leadership “in recognition for her work on behalf of human rights around
the world, exposing and focusing attention to injustice”.
In
the mid-nineties, Ms Jagger also began campaigning against the Death Penalty.
In
1996, she was contacted by Amnesty International and the National Coalition to
Abolish the Death Penalty to file a clemency petition on behalf of Guinevere
Garcia, who had been sentenced to death in the state of Illinois.
Ms
Jagger made a personal plea to Governor Jim Edgar to commute her death sentence
even though Guinevere had waived her right to further appeals after the Illinois
Supreme Court upheld their verdict.
She
fought for Guinevere’s life, because she believed the question was not whether
Guinevere’s wish should be granted, but whether the state of Illinois was
justified in carrying out her execution. Guinevere’s decision to accept her
execution was entirely consistent with a pathology born from mental disorder,
and from physical and sexual abuse.
Guinevere’s
execution would have constituted nothing less than an act of state sponsored
homicide. Ms Jagger’s petition called for an act of executive mercy. She gave
countless speeches and interviews on the case, using her voice to speak on
behalf of Guinevere Garcia. She filed a clemency petition before Governor Edgar
and testified before the Penitentiary Review Board.
A
few hours before the scheduled execution, Governor Edgar announced that he had
commuted Guinevere’s sentence to life imprisonment. Guinevere “thanked
God” and her attorney stated “you could tell that a weight had been lifted
from her shoulders”.
On
29 June, 1966, Bianca Jagger was made the recipient of the "Abolitionist of
the Year Award" by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty for
"her tireless efforts and heroic dedication in achieving clemency for
Guinevere Garcia".
Since
then, Ms Jagger has campaigned on behalf of many capital punishment cases and
has gotten to know several of the defendants on death row.
In
1998, she fought in vain for the clemency of Sean Sellers and Karla Faye Tucker.
Sean was the first person in forty years to be executed for a crime committed at
age 16. He was one of 10 juvenile offenders executed in the US in the 1990s, a
toll greater than in the rest of the world combined.
Ms
Jagger supported the efforts of Amnesty International and the National Coalition
to Abolish the Death Penalty campaign “Stop Killing Kids”. She tirelessly
campaigned to abolish capital punishment for young offenders under 18,
advocating shifting the focus away from execution to “the prevention and
treatment of sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children, in order to
prevent them from succumbing to a life of crime”.
Karla
Fay Tucker’s childhood had been one of abuse and forced prostitution. Karla
never denied the atrocity of her crime. When Ms Jagger met her she was 38 and
had spent 14 years behind bars. She was no longer the woman who had been
sentenced to death in 1984; during her time in prison she underwent a remarkable
transformation.
She
educated herself, became deeply religious and began ministering to others. Karla
Fay Tucker was fully rehabilitated. She worked assiduously on the Scare-straight
programme to help adolescent drug abusers. She no longer posed a threat to
society.
All
appeals failed: Governor George Bush refused to grant clemency to Karla and she
was executed on February 3, 1998.
In
light of these cases, Ms Jagger continues to this day to denounce the lack of
meaningful appellate review in commutation proceedings. She continues to
denounce the defandants' poor access to executive clemency and the State's lack
of recognition for the defendant's capacity for change, rehabilitation and
remorse.
In
June 2000, Ms Jagger travelled to Texas to meet with Gary Graham and plead on
his behalf with Governor George W Bush. Gary was 17, a minor when he was
sentenced to death. He spent 19 years on Death Row for a crime he time and again
denied to have committed. He had been sentenced to die based on a sole
eyewitness testimony.
Evidence,
subsequently uncovered, calls into serious question this witness identification.
Six other witnesses signed affidavits stating that the killer was not Gary
Graham. Gary could have been saved by The State Board of Pardons and Parole and
yet they denied clemency.
Governor
Bush could have granted a reprieve and yet he washed his hands and refused to
intervene. Gary was executed on June 22, 2000. In his final words he proclaimed
his innocence and the injustice of his sentence,
“I
am an innocent black man that is being murdered”, “It is lynching that is
taking place in America tonight”.
Ms
Jagger wrote extensively about his execution, decrying the,
“Texas
machinery of death at work, killing people because they are poor, minorities,
black or Hispanic, and cannot afford adequate legal counsel”.
Gary
Graham was executed in violation of international law which prohibits the
imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed while under the age of 18.
In
November of that same year, Ms Jagger received a Champion of Justice Award for
this very work, as a "steadfast and eloquent advocate for the elimination
of the death penalty in America." Her articles, lectures and press
conferences on the subject continue to challenge a penal system that is unfair,
arbitrary and capricious, and jurisprudence fraught with racial discrimination
and judicial bias.
Ms
Jagger has also been a strong advocate for Arms Control and Gun Control
campaigns.
She
is committed to supporting women’s rights in the face of prejudice and
domestic violence.
Ms
Jagger supported former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger in
establishing Iris House -- the East Harlem facility dedicated to providing
health and social services to women, which has been a critical component of New
York’s response to the AIDS crisis.
In
May 2001 Ms Jagger travelled to Zambia, under the auspices of Christian Aid to
document the devastating tragedy that has left more than 12 million children
orphaned by the AIDS epidemic in the Sub-Sahara region.
She
launched Christian Aid’s report on the effect of HIV-AIDS in Africa, urging
the industrialised nations to fulfil the pledge they had made 30 years ago to
donate 0.07% of their Gross National Product to the developing world. “Unless
the industrialized nations come to their rescue, HIV-AIDS will decimate the
African Continent”
In
June 2001, Ms Jagger joined forces with Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth in
their campaign to boycott Esso /ExxonMobil. Concerned by the irreversible
consequences of global warming, she publicly denounced President George W
Bush’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change.
She
urged leaders of the industrialised nations “to undertake every measure to
keep the Kyoto Protocol alive”, arguing that our lives would be threatened and
the future of our children compromised if President Bush’s energy policies
succeed.
These
policies, she argued, “will only accelerate global warming, damage public
health and scar the landscape without solving global energy problems”.
Bianca
Jagger was in New York on September 11, 2001. Three days after the terrorist
attacks, she visited Ground Zero and paid public tribute to the firemen,
policemen and rescue teams who had worked 24/7 to find life amid the rubble.
She
decried the attacks as crimes against humanity; however, she cautioned against
revenge rather than justice and urged President Bush to reply in accordance with
international law.
She
called for a justice fought not on the killing fields of Afghanistan, but in
front of an international court of justice. She is concerned by the erosion of
civil liberties and human rights in the US, the UK and countless other nations
where Anti-Terror legislation would allow for indefinite detentions without
trial and where judges would be excluded from the legal process.
She
has denounced Mr Bush’s administration’s development of a parallel justice
system, circumventing decree by decree the oversight of Congress and the Courts.
The Secret Military Tribunals allow the death penalty to be given without right
to appeal.
Such
proceedings, she has claimed, “violate the fundamental rights guaranteed under
US Constitution” and “Any curtailment, suspension or elimination of the
constitutional liberties weaken rather than strengthen the war on terror”.
Ms
Jagger is a staunch supporter of the International Criminal Court of Justice and
the upholding of the rules of the Geneva Convention with regards to the
treatment of prisoners.
She
has participated in numerous television and radio debates related to the war on
terrorism, its victims and its future: most notably on BBC’s Question Time,
Panorama and CNN’s Crossfire. The Bar Human Rights Committee for England and
Wales made her their 2001 keynote lecturer at St Paul’s Cathedral, where her
address on the subject of Justice vs. Revenge was widely acclaimed by the media
and public alike.
In
March 2002, Ms Jagger travelled to Afghanistan with a delegation of fourteen
women, organised by Global Exchange to support afghan women’s projects.
In
December 2002 Ms Jagger travelled to India on a Christian Aid mission to shed
some light on traffic of children and child prostitution and the HIV/AIDS
situation in India. She visited Delhi and Calcutta to see what grassroots
organisations are doing to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and care for those
infected.
In
Delhi, she met the voluntary Health Association of India, which works with the
Indian Government to develop policy on HIV/AIDS. At Sanlaap, based in Calcutta,
she met children who had been trafficked and force to become sex workers.
At
Sanlaap Ms Jagger heard first hand of the stigma faced by people-even
children-infected by HIV. She visited the Sneha” Affection” Shelter which
the organisation runs for children who have been rescued from trafficking. Here
48 girls live together, learning skills which will equip them to earn a living
away from the red light districts.
In
January 2003, Ms Jagger travelled on a fact finding mission to Iraq with a
delegation of 32 academics from 28 US Universities.
She
was one of the leaders of the movement against the war in Iraq and was a keynote
speaker at the anti-war demonstration February 15, 2003 in Hyde Park, it was the
largest political gathering in British history, it was attended by approximately
1,500,000 people.
On 16
December 2003 Bianca Jagger was appointed Council of Europe's Goodwill
Ambassador "For the Fight Against the Death Penalty".
On
9 December 2004 Bianca Jagger received the Right Livelihood Award, known as the
Alternative Nobel Prize for her:
"Long-standing
commitment and dedicated campaigning over a wide range of issues of human
rights, social justice and environmental protection, including the abolition of
the death penalty, the prevention of child abuse, the rights of indigenous
peoples to the environment that supports them and the prevention ahd healing of
armed conflicts".
Bianca
Jagger, is member of the Executive Director’s Leadership Council for Amnesty
International USA, member of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights
Watch-America.
Ms.
Jagger also serves on the Advisory Board of the Coalition for International
Justice. She is a member of the Twentieth Century Task Force to Apprehend War
Criminals; a Board member of People for the American Way and the Creative
Coalition
Ms
Jagger has written articles for the op-ed page of the New York Times, the
Washington Post, the Observer (UK), The Mail on Sunday (UK), The Guardian (UK),
The Sunday Express (UK) The New Statesman (UK), Liberation (FR), Le Journal du
Dimanche (FR), Le Juriste International (FR), Panorama (IT) and the European
(UK), The Dallas Morning news, the Columbus Dispatcher, to name a few.
Bianca
Jagger is a Contributor to MaximsNews
Network.
Available
for Media Interviews:
BiancaJagger@MaximsNews.com
~~~~~
MaximsNews.com, An Independent Voice from the
U.N., provides commentary and analysis from
leading world figures: King Abdullah II
(Jordan), HRH Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein
(Jordan), Sir Brian Urquhart, Hans Blix, Amb.
Richard Holbrooke, Anwar Ibrahim, Bianca Jagger,
Dr. Nafis Sadik, Shashi Tharoor, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Noeleen Heyzer, Kerry
Kennedy, Ian Williams, Stephen Schlesinger, Sen.
Timothy E. Wirth, Marc Morial, Amb. Jayantha
Dhanapala (Sri Lanka), Amb. Pierre Schori
(Sweden), Amb. William H. Luers, Susan Roosevelt
Weld, Rory Kennedy, Mehri
Madarshahi, J. Michael Adams, Gloria Feldt,
Jeffrey Laurenti, Rodney D. Smith, Ashley
Bommer, Rory
O'Connor, Genevieve Stamper, Max Stamper and
others.
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