Church and State blog: Are we criminals?

Friday, November 20, 2015

Are we criminals?

DECLAN HEAVEY V. THE UNITED KINGDOM

COMMUNICATION SUBMITTED FOR CONSIDERATION UNDER
THE FIRST OPTIONAL PROTOCOL TO THE
INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS

Paragraphs 1-2 of Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations

1. The Applicant in this Communication is Declan Heavey, a citizen of the Republic of Ireland who lives in London in the United Kingdom. He was born on 4 September 1960 and is a former teacher. His wife is a naturalized Irish citizen born on 26 March 1965 in Madrid in Spain. She is a former psychologist and lives with the Applicant in London. They have no children. After moving to the United Kingdom in August 2003, the Applicant founded the Network for Church Monitoring (N4CM), a non-profit he registered as a company limited by guarantee in January 2011. He is currently employed as the Managing Director of N4CM, and his wife as the Webmaster of N4CM's website called "Church and State". Edd Doerr, President of Americans for Religious Liberty: "Let me recommend an important website churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting website covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out."

2. The Applicant and his wife were forced to sleep rough on the streets of London for almost four years in total – from 4 November 2006 to 13 July 2009 (see paragraphs 20-22 below), and from 14 April 2013 to 15 May 2014 (see paragraphs 23-26 below) – and they are currently fighting the Mayor of London's Greater London Authority in the courts to stave off eviction from their home (see paragraphs 36-40 below). This notwithstanding that participants in Church and State include 40 Nobel Laureates (two are N4CM Honorary Associates), 13 US National Medal of Science winners, seven prominent members of the UK's House of Lords, and hundreds of other distinguished scholars from around the world. Prior to being made street homeless for the second time in April 2013, having been evicted from the same political 'safe house' former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler lived in until he was made homeless in 2007 (see paragraph 8 below), the Applicant and his wife were nominated for the US-based Population Institute's Global Media Award 2013 for a website described by one of the nominators as "the most important cutting edge population website ever created" (see Annex 1, Declan and Lola Heavey: PI Global Media Award Nominees 2013, p. 18).

Related blog post (14 October 2015): "Mayor of London's Clearing House service withholds financial data against us in defiance of court ruling"

Click to enlarge

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

http://churchandstate.org.uk/about/

http://churchandstate.org.uk/letter-from-the-chairman/

http://churchandstate.org.uk/category/church-and-state-press/

If you would like to help us personally, please feel free to pick up one of our books (shameless plug, I know, but every sale helps us to work our way out of our precarious situation). There is currently five books available in Church and State Press here, and all proceeds from the first four of these books go to us with the authors' permission. Thank you all for all the support you have given us, and I hope we can keep our Church and State website going despite the constant threats.

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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Are we criminals?

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