Deletion of files on the NAC website

We are having more problems with our website. Now it seems that files I have posted to the site are being deleted. I have already discovered that our most important page “NAC Petition to the United Nations in Support of SCNT Signed by 24 Nobel Prize Winners” – from which the entire site has been derived - is missing. When I click on the “SCNT” icon I created for the site and my Facebook page, I get the standard error page, stating: “404 - Not Found. The page you are trying to access does not exist.” It was in fact an email we received yesterday from the US which brought the deletion to our attention.

Declan launched his petition to the United Nations from the street on 22 October 2007, calling for the establishment of a reasonable timetable for a UN declaration that would draw a distinction between reproductive cloning and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), sometimes referred to as “therapeutic cloning”, while specifically leaving it to UN member states to decide for themselves on SCNT within a regulation framework. To date, and despite that Declan’s personalised emails inviting scientists and academics to sign this petition were branded as spam by SpamCop on 6 March 2008 (see blog of 14 March “SpamCop reports Declan as a spammer”), the petition has been signed by 591 scientists and academics, who include recognised authorities from the world’s leading universities and research institutes, as well as 24 Nobel Laureates.

As I have stated in previous blogs, I believe there is a link between the SpamCop report and an email Declan received the day previous, on 5 March 2008, from the Home Office advising in response to several emails he addressed to Home Secretary Jacqueline Smith that no warrant to intercept his communications had been issued (see blog of 9 March “Home Office denies warrant to intercept communications”).

European Court of Human Rights declares application inadmissible

This morning the Dellow Centre handed Declan a letter from the European Court of Human Rights dated 14 October, which states that on 7 October the Court decided to declare the application in the case of Heavey v the United Kingdom “inadmissible” because it did not comply with the requirements set out in Article 34 and 35 of the Convention. “In the light of all the material and its possession, and in so far as the matters complained of were within its competence, the Court found that they did not disclose any appearance of a violation of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention or its Protocols,” it states (the letter is presented below).

The primary material to which the Court refers has been published in the following blogs: application of 8 September 2007 here; first request for priority of 8 September here; second request for priority of 4 July here. The Court first wrote to Declan on 22 November 2007 stating that it was “unnecessary” to consider his request for priority because it would be examining his application “shortly, possibly by the end of January 2008”; seven months later, in a letter dated 16 June (see here), it became “as soon as practicable”. We didn’t in fact expect to hear from the Court until well into the New Year. Anyway, with the likely election within two weeks of Barack Obama as the next President of the United States (he will be lifting the funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research imposed by President George W Bush), and with the United Nations set to revisit the cloning issue next week (see previous blog), we believe that the momentum is swinging behind Declan's petition to the UN on research cloning of embryos and stem cells and what will be our campaign in support of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning.

Prior to today we were not in a position to entertain the thought of signing on for benefits because Declan would have had to withdraw his application to the European Court – the Department of Work and Pensions terminated our benefits on 27 September 2006 because Declan did not ‘sign on’ two days before he was due to do so on 29 September. However, even now, signing on for benefits remains a non-option: there is clearly no remedy available to a claimant once the Department of Work and Pensions decides to terminate benefits. So we have no choice but to keep working as hard as we can to raise the £450 we need to buy a laptop for the campaign in support of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning that will eventually take us off the streets (see blog of 26 August “Fighting for the Right to Clone”).

This is the letter from the Court:

Application no. 22541/07
Heavey v. the United Kingdom

Dear Sir,

I write to inform you that on 7 October 2008 the European Court of Human Rights, sitting as a Committee of three judges (G. Bonello, President, David Thor Björgvinsson and J. Šikuta) pursuant to Article 27 of the Convention, decided under Article 28 of the Convention to declare the above application inadmissible because it did not comply with the requirements set out in Article 34 and 35 of the Convention.

In the light of all the material and its possession, and in so far as the matters complained of were within its competence, the Court found that they did not disclose any appearance of a violation of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention or its Protocols.

This decision is final and not subject to any appeal to either the Court, including its Grand Chamber, or any other body. You will therefore appreciate that the Registry will be unable to provide any further details about the Committee’s deliberations or to conduct further correspondence relating to its decision in this case. You will receive no further documents from the Court concerning this case and, in accordance with the Court’s instructions, the file will be destroyed one year after the date of the decision.

The present communication is made pursuant to Rule 53 § 2 of the Rules of Court.

Yours faithfully,
For the Committee

Fatoş Aracı
Deputy Section Registrar

United Nations Set to Revisit Cloning Issue

The Headquarters of UNESCO in Paris, France

The UN News Centre reports that the “permissibility of therapeutic cloning” will be the focus of a United Nations ethics panel later this month when it considers whether the non-binding United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning (2005), by which Member States were called on to adopt all measures necessary to prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life, should be reassessed in light of scientific, ethical, social, political and legal advances.

The General Assembly adopted the Human Cloning Declaration on 8 March 2005, voting 84 in favour, 34 against, 37 abstaining and 36 absent, after a decade of work on reproductive cloning by the International Bioethics Committee (IBC) of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). However, the Declaration makes no distinction between the fundamental and well-known differences that exist between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning, and its wording can be interpreted as a UN call for a total ban on all forms of cloning (noted by, among others, the United Kingdom, China, Spain, India, Japan and South Africa). A number of US and European medical and scientific groups expressed dismay over the adoption of the Declaration.

Now the IBC will debate the issue anew at a two-day meeting at UNESCO headquarters in Paris beginning 28 October, noting that some, mainly scientists, are urging a distinction between the reproductive cloning of human beings – which the UN condemned as contrary to human dignity in the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1997) – and therapeutic cloning. “Recent technological developments and new prospects for the use of stem cells in the therapy of human diseases have once again raised the issue of adequacy of international regulations governing this research,” an IBC working group set up at the request of UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura said in a report in September.

“The IBC group calls for human reproductive cloning to be banned at the international level by a legally binding convention, while guidelines for regulating human embryo and stem cell research in countries where it is legal should be developed at the international level,” reports the UN News Centre. It adds: “An Observatory Group could be established to new ethical, legal, social, political and scientific developments, and UNESCO should develop specific strategies and materials to promote international discourse on this topic” (UN News Centre, 13/10).

Upon release of a 2007 United Nations University (UNU) report titled “Is Human Reproductive Cloning Inevitable: Future Options for UN Governance”, UNU director AH Zakri said: “A legally-binding global ban on work to create a human clone, coupled with freedom for nations to permit strictly controlled therapeutic research, has the greatest political viability of options available.” Declan’s petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning indeed calls for the establishment of a reasonable timetable for a UN declaration which “would draw a distinction between reproductive and therapeutic cloning while specifically leaving it to UN member states to decide for themselves on therapeutic cloning within a regulation framework”. It has already been signed by 563 scientists and academics, including 24 Nobel Laureates, despite that the vast majority of emails I am sending to scientists and academics on Declan’s behalf are being dumped to spam boxes (or to cyberspace, see blog of 4 September “Obama: Yes to stem cells, funding”); I have been recording the spamming with statistics in almost every blog for over two months now.

We believe that the momentum is swinging behind Declan's petition and what will be our campaign in support of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning. Yet, things are being made increasingly more difficult for us: from 10 November we will not be able to have a registered pitch to sell The Big Issue - a magazine sold by homeless people throughout the UK on registered street pitches (see blog of 7 October “Letter to the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Big Issue”); we continue to have difficulties with computer bookings and internet access in our local council's Idea Store Whitechapel library (see blog of 13 October “Letter to the Leader of Tower Hamlets Council”); and on 13 October we were sprayed with a hose by a cleaner at 4.50am as we were leaving the place we sleep in at night - the company that owns the building works with charities, according to their website (see the same blog of 13 October ). Oh, well.

Since 7 September we have been sleeping tucked away, about twenty paces from the side entrance of a building, down some twelve steps (prior to that we slept for almost two years in a porch). Relations between us and employees have always been cordial: we were visited by an employee within days, and on three occasions we have been given food. We were quite surprised therefore when last night we found a portable shower unit on wheels, with a clearly visible hose attached to the undercarriage, parked on top of the steps, to one side. We have decided that the next time we are sprayed Declan will seek to lodge a complaint with the City of London Police further to which he will revert back to the European Court of Human Rights for priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court. Of course, there is always the option of wetting the area we sleep to ensure we can't bed down. In this instance we may decide to sleep anywhere nearby for the night and, should the police insist we move on, I will take the arrest as I did on 11 September (see blog "I am arrested for breach of the peace"). As I stated in the blog of 13 September "Letter from the City of London Police", I am well prepared to have the legality of such an arrest tested under the Human Rights Act 1998.

The UNESCO press release can be seen here.

In danger

On Friday 12 October, I narrowly avoided again being assaulted in the porch we sleep in at night. This time Declan woke to noise only to find a guy with one foot in the porch coming straight for me (I sleep on the outside so that Declan can sleep with our well-tied bags). Declan actually stopped the guy from stepping on me with an outstretched hand, shouting "What do you think you are doing?" To this day we still do not know if this guy had intended standing on me, probably breaking a few of my ribs. Then a few hours later Declan had to sit up again to another guy who also wanted to have a go at me. Oh I forgot, the next morning we woke up to an empty can of Red Bull, only to discover that someone had thrown the contents of it all over our sleeping bags and ground sheet.

Friday appears to be the day of the week when I am particularly at risk. The last time I was assaulted – a guy that didn't like "f****** tramps" repeatedly kicked me in the chest and shoulders – was on 21 September, er, a Friday. And on 4 May, oh another Friday, I was assaulted twice (a guy dragged me out of the porch by the ankles and a few hours later I was kicked in the back). And although not just directed at me, on 7 September (yet another Friday) somebody threw a glass of beer all over us as we slept.

So mindful that the next Friday (that is, yesterday) Declan might not wake up in time to prevent me ending up with something fractured, both he and I spent all week working non-stop on a petition to the United Nations in relation to human embryonic stem cell research. This petition was posted yesterday evening in one of these online petition sites and we will next be contacting prominent scientists and academics who might be interested in the petition's proposal, and perhaps put their name to it. (Last night in the porch was pretty quiet: with the exception of a guy who at 5.00am on the button – the time we get up Monday to Friday – passed by the porch roaring something at us, there was nothing else. Even the porch's floor, which I have to clean with water and paper every single night, was clean.)

On Thursday evening Declan's pitch – where he sells The Big Issue magazine – was taken over again by The London Paper, a free tabloid owned by News International of Rupert Murdoch's New York-based News Corporation. Under the Big Issue code of conduct a vendor can't argue with another street trader over pitches, so Declan had to leave. We didn't sell much last week and now find ourselves with 15 magazines which we bought but were unable to sell. Oh, well.

Declan phoned the Big Issue and also emailed the Big Issue outreach manager. There isn’t much more Declan can do, having been told by John Bird, the founder and editor-in-chief of The Big Issue, in a letter of 10 September, to more or less stop bothering him. This is his email on Thursday:

Subject: The London Paper

Dear Paul

Further to the graphic telephone message I left for you this evening with David (surname unknown), please find below copy of my email of even date to the Executive Chairman of News International, Mr Les Hinton, regarding the takeover again this afternoon of my Big Issue pitch by The London Paper.

Yours sincerely,
Declan Heavey
Badge no. 1163

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

Dear Mr Hinton,

I refer further to my letter and enclosure to you of 31 July 2007, a copy of which I sent by fax and registered post to the Chairman & CEO of News Corporation, Mr Rupert Murdoch, and wish to confirm the takeover again this afternoon of my Big Issue pitch outside McDonald's on Liverpool Street by The London Paper.

Yours sincerely,
Declan Heavey

cc  Mr Nick Hallett, Distribution Manager, The London Paper
     Mr Paul Joseph, Outreach Manager, The Big Issue

The main problem with selling so few magazines is that this weekend we can't for example put together a few pounds to buy food for Saturday and Sunday, never mind a cup of coffee. I wanted to spend a couple of hours begging on Friday afternoon – yes, I am afraid that on top of everything else, I also have to beg people for some change, which is illegal by the way – but we realised that it was more important to get the petition posted before going back to the porch for the night. Last night when we were walking to the porch we were both so hungry we decided to walk back to Sainsbury and buy a cheap packet of biscuits for 33p.

The subject-matter of the weather is currently on the verge of replacing the hunger though. According to the Met Office’s website, next week temperatures will be “below normal with overnight frosts”. Temperatures now don’t go above 12C or 13C, which would be fine if a person wears a jumper, a coat and a cap. Admittedly I do have an autumn coat, which was given to me by a customer who normally buys the Big Issue from me, but underneath all I have to wear are light long sleeve tops. When I asked the Sisters of Mercy nun who is in charge of clothes in the Dellow Centre (the only centre we can now attend for showers, coffee and a cereal breakfast since the minister’s wife of the Methodist Church-run Whitechapel Mission barred us on 18 June due to concerns about our safety) for warm clothes on 8 October, she didn’t even give me a cap.

So my feet are usually cold, and so are my ears (I found a scarf a few days ago) and when I stand in my Big Issue pitch, especially between 7.30am and 9.10am, I totally understand the meaning of the expression “cold to the bone”. At night I am also cold and would be colder if Declan hadn’t found me a very big plastic sheet, which I use to wrap around my sleeping bag once I am inside it – I have to punch holes in it to try and stop my sleeping bag from getting damp, defeating the purpose, I suppose. If we ever get off the streets, and it won’t be thanks to the helping hands of those organisations whose purpose it is to help homeless people with whatever they need, Declan and I intend working for NAC 24/7, if only to avoid being put back on the streets.