Bianca Jagger

Life of a Human Rights Activist 

Photo: Rankin

         UNITED NATIONS - January 2006 / www.MaximsNews.com/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. 

Upon her return to the US, Ms Jagger testified before The Congressional Subcommittee on Inter American Affairs, to bring attention to the atrocities committed by the Salvadoran and Honduran governments and their respective paramilitary forces. She cautioned Congress about the danger of the regionalisation of the war in Central America.

During the eighties, Ms Jagger spoke against the Contra War and US-sponsored military interventions in Central America. She campaigned against the murder, torture, and disappearance of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. 

She was awarded an honorary Humanities Degree by Stone Hill College, Massachusetts, in 1983 for her work on behalf of human rights in Latin America.

She went on to join forces with several international human rights organisations, most notably with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Washington Office for Latin America.

In the nineties, as part of her continuing human rights and environmental efforts, Ms. Jagger committed herself to campaign on behalf of indigenous populations in Latin America, and to save the tropical rain forests of the Western Hemisphere. 

Her commitment to this cause brought her to Nicaragua, Honduras, and Brazil. In 1991 her efforts proved instrumental in stopping a logging concession which would have endangered the Miskito Indians’ habitat on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. 

A few years later Ms Jagger petitioned the Brazilian Federation Courts to demarcate and protect the lands of the Guarani peoples of Brazil, and in 1994, participated in a similar effort to protect the Yanomami people of Northern Brazil from invasions of their lands by gold miners who polluted the water, causing many deaths among this ancient tribe. 

The Yanomami are often threatened by rich and unscrupulous land-owners who covet their land. In recognition for her efforts, she was presented the 1994 United Nations Earth Day International Award.  And in 1997, she was the recipient of the Green Globe Award by the Rain Forest Alliance, "for her extraordinary conservation efforts and achievements over the past ten years".

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

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