Church and State blog: European Court of Human Rights declines to expedite Declan’s case

Sunday, January 06, 2008

European Court of Human Rights declines to expedite Declan’s case

Declan has received a letter from the European Court of Human Rights in respect of his request of 8 September for priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of the Court. The Court is not going to consider the request, and will examine his application, also of 8 September, possibly before the end of the month. According to Philip Leach in Taking a Case to the European Court of Human Rights, cases "usually take at least four to five years to progress through the system (if they pass through the admissibility stage) and some cases take longer", so obviously we are not very happy about this.

In addition to providing the Court with full reasons for expedition, Declan also sent the Registrar his latest hospital discharge summary report of 4 October (this time from the Royal London Hospital, where he was hospitalised for two days with a viral infection), my police statement of 22 September (I was woken by a guy who repeatedly kicked me in the chest and shoulders), and two tickets police issued to me for begging on 13 and 14 November. Alas, we were not able to convince the Court of the merits of the case.

Anybody browsing through this blog cannot but note that it has been some achievement to survive on the streets for so long. I haven't written anything since 25 November, primarily because we have been too busy, but the entries in my diary since then – I have been keeping a diary in case I am arrested for begging and brought before a court – might have inspired Charles Dickens for one of his books. Among other things: we stand in our registered pitches to sell The Big Issue (a magazine sold by homeless people) in the bitter cold and rain and still the London Lite and The London Paper regularly take over Declan's pitch (oh, on three occasions a Big Issue vendor refused to leave Declan's pitch when asked); for two nights of the second weekend of December we were graced with the alarm of the porch we sleep in, all night; and on 15 December somebody defecated and urinated in the porch (a first). Things like walking everywhere carrying all our belongings (as result of all the problems while attempting to sell The Big Issue, we haven't been able to afford transport since July), being reduced to washing in public toilets (we were barred back in June from the Methodist Church-run Whitechapel Mission due to concerns about our safety), and wearing clothes barely fit for a scarecrow (the last time I asked the nun in charge of clothes in the Sisters of Mercy-run Dellow Centre, she didn't have a pair of jeans for me, and gave me a jumper so old you can't figure out its colour) don't even register in this diary.

All of that being said, we consider it a small price to pay in light of the success of Declan's petition to the UN in support of research cloning of embryos and stem cells: 151 signatories so far, including 20 Nobel Laureates. We are incredibly frustrated though, because despite that we get up at 4.50am every morning and go to sleep around 10.00pm, the time we get to spend on computers is only a fraction: everyday we walk two or three hours; have to queue outside the Dellow Centre for even a cup of tea; stand in our Big Issue pitches unless it is extremely cold or particularly rainy; one of us must stand over all our bags while the other washes in public toilets (more time ridiculously wasted); and Declan takes what it seems to me forever collecting cardboard and securing the bags for the night.

There really is not much work we can do in such a short space of time. I do the research and the emailing, while Declan has the difficult job of maintaining the spreadsheet, which contains all kinds of relevant information, including the date(s) scientists have been emailed. Research from a public library is particularly nightmarish, so I have a notebook and also use a couple of free on-line bookmarking services to store pages I find on the web – I have them in dozens of folders and subfolders for quick access. My ultimate objective is to build a campaign to accompany this petition, and our model is Oxfam International's website ‘Make Fair Trade’, which 20 million have signed to date. I also think wildly interesting the page that Greenpeace UK has created in relation to the current proposal to build a sixth terminal at Heathrow Airport – what a brilliant idea for people who support embryonic stem cell research to put their comments on a video. Still, I have hundreds of scientists that we want to email but haven't because I don't have the time.

A matter of particular worry to us is how many emails are actually getting through. Declan has already been informed by some signatories that they didn't receive the email he had referred to, despite me having a record of it having been sent. Last week, for example, I found two emails from scientists, asking Declan to add their name to the petition, in the spam box! We believe France in particular is targeted in this regard: our spreadsheet is broken up into batches of 10 and you can see that in some batches containing mainly French scientists nobody has signed. We are aware that the late Italian Luca Coscioni sent faxes to scientists when he was seeking their support and Declan would very much like to supplement the emailing with faxes and phone calls, at least to leading scientists and Nobel Laureates.

Even when I have more time at my disposal I encounter difficulties. Take last Friday. Because we only had two Big Issues to sell come evening time – due to the difficulties with Declan’s pitch and my pitch not being a very good one, we can only afford to buy 5 or 6 magazines a day – I stayed in the Idea Store Whitechapel library only to lose my computer to another person. This afternoon I also ran into problems. A member of staff refused to book me a computer for a fourth hour, despite that she can override the library’s 3-hour limit if there are computers available at the time, and if it wasn't because Declan confronted her with an email from her manager informing him of procedure, I would have found myself at 3.00pm with nothing to do. I had the same problem just prior to the holiday period: a member of staff more or less told me that if the library was deserted and all the computers were free, she still would refuse to book me. Of course when things like that happen we go to the internet café – if we have £3 we buy ourselves 7 hours. Anyway, this is the email that Declan sent to the manager of Idea Store Whitechapel on Friday night:

Subject: Internet access

Dear Mr Abidin,

I wish to confirm that this evening, in the middle of a 1-hour session on computer 15 on floor 1 in Idea Store Whitechapel, my wife (card no. D000350314) had to re-start the computer after an unexpected interference with her work and lost her booking to another customer. A member of your staff (name withheld) informed my wife that she had to give the computer up.

Please would you acknowledge receipt. Below is a copy of my email to you of 14 November, to which I did not receive a response.

Yours sincerely,
Declan Heavey

--------------------------

Subject: Internet access

Dear Mr Abidin,

My previous correspondence refers. I wish to confirm that this evening, in the middle of a one-hour session on computer 15 on floor 1 in Idea Store Whitechapel, and as verified by your floor supervisor Ms Nadine Lasmel at 6.30pm, my wife (card no. D000350314) was unable to open any page from the internet or send an email.

Yours sincerely,
Declan Heavey
Card no. D000355837

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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Sunday, January 06, 2008

European Court of Human Rights declines to expedite Declan’s case

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