Church and State blog: Letter to the European Court of Human Rights

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Letter to the European Court of Human Rights

This afternoon Declan wrote to the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights following his receipt of an email from The Big Issue Head Office - The Big Issue is a magazine sold by homeless people on registered street pitches - threatening that I will be debadged should I be forced into begging, a criminal offence in England. Of course, I have been forced to beg before (see, for example, blog of 20 January "Begging for over a week"), and it sure looks like that is where I am heading now: since Wednesday, as I have been attempting to sell Big Issues on my pitch, a rough sleeper has been harassing me and selling Big Issues close by (see previous blog for Declan’s formal complaint to The Big Issue). This guy seems so motivated that yesterday Declan went to the police, although he was informed that no crime had been committed.

On my part, I have kept busy emailing scientists and academics inviting them to sign Declan’s petition to the UN supporting therapeutic cloning and the use of stem cells for research and for the treatment of disease. On Wednesday some emails didn’t end up in spam: out of 57 emails, I received 11 out-of-office autoreplies (as I explained in the blog of 2 August "I am urinated on in the porch", the number of out-of-office autoreplies is my best indication as to whether Declan's emails are going to inboxes or spam: two or three autoreplies within a batch of 10 would be a good indicator of the former). Eight autoreplies came within 16 emails and clearly something got through because we got one signature. On Thursday I wasn’t so fortunate: 121 emails and only 11 autoreplies – of course, no one signed. All these emails went to scientists in Newcastle University: 46 to the School of Biology; 43 to the School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials; and 32 to the School of Chemistry – I was going to get names and email addresses in Biomedicine today but computers in our local council's Idea Store Whitechapel library are once again down for the day. Incidentally, we now have 11 signatories from Newcastle University; in total 522 signatories, including 23 Nobel laureates.

University of Oxford

On Friday, I tried my luck with the University of Oxford’s Medical Sciences Division – ranked by The Times third in the world for Biomedicine in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. I sent 87 emails and again only got 11 autoreplies; emails that I sent to the University’s Sir William Dunn School of Pathology yielded no autoreplies at all.

Everything indicates that things in the near future will be as austere as they are now - and we will just have to ride them out. The Guardian carried a report on 13 August on the conflict over South Ossetia titled "Plaything of the gods". Journalist Tim Judah, who covers the Balkans for the Economist and wrote "The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, and Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know", recounts that in 2002, on a trip to Iraqi Kurdistan, few Kurds he met made any secret of their desire not just to achieve independence from Iraq but also to act as a vanguard that would eventually rally Kurds from Iran, Syria, and Turkey into one large Kurdish state. Musa Ali Bakr, the man who was then in charge of refugees in the Kurdish region of Dahuk, explained that if the Iraqi Kurds moved too quickly their neighbours would strangle them by closing the borders. He then summed up with what for Judah then was the Kurdish dilemma, but he now realises is really the dictum of all successful separatists: "If you are sick, you visit the doctor. He prescribes the medicine. You take a spoonful three times a day and eventually you are better, you are free. However, if you drank the whole bottle all at once, it would kill you."

For the record, this is the email letter Declan sent this afternoon to Registrar Erik Fribergh of the European Court (Erik.Fribergh@echr.coe.int)

Subject: Heavey v. the United Kingdom (Application no. 22541/07)

Dear Mr Fribergh

I refer to my second request for priority of 4 July 2008 under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court, which, under "Necessity of Expedition", states as follows:

An urgent expedition is necessary in this instance because of the violations of the applicant's human rights already existing and are likely to be even greater. The right that has been violated is the right to private and family life as established under Article 8 by the applicant being assaulted in the porch he shares with his wife, having been robbed of all their money and documents, and his concern that his wife may be forced into begging.

In respect of my wife being forced into begging, please find enclosed copy of my email letter and attachment of 15 August to The Big Issue Outreach Manager for London, Mr Paul Joseph.

As explained in previous applications, my wife and I survive on the streets of London by selling The Big Issue, a magazine sold by homeless people on registered street pitches, and I have lodged numerous written complaints with The Big Issue Head Office in respect of my wife and myself being walked off our respective pitch by other street traders, including, inter alia, Big Issue vendors. The Court will note from the attached correspondence that not only may my wife be forced into begging (a criminal offence in England), but she has been threatened by The Big Issue with debadging for so doing.

I can confirm that on 15 August a copy of the attached correspondence was filed as part of a City of London Police intelligence report on Big Issue vendor 4012 (on 14 August, Mr Joseph wrote: "This vendor now has an out of date badge, and he will not be issued with another one, therefore technically he is debadged"), who has been consistently harassing my wife for the past three days as she has been attempting to sell The Big Issue on her pitch.

In the event of error in transmission, please note that the order of attachments is as follows:

Big Issue 15.8.doc 24kb
Big Issue 13.8 & 14.8.doc 31kb

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

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Saturday, August 16, 2008

Letter to the European Court of Human Rights

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