You're Not Dead, Not Forgotten
Kulaprabha explains how working with Amnesty International connects with her Buddhist practice.
I first met members of Amnesty International (AI) when I attended a talk arranged by an Amnesty group in Edinburgh. The speaker was Donald Woods, who had just published his book about the death of Steve Biko in the custody of the South African police. There was also an exhibition of the group’s work on behalf of prisoners of conscience held in countries other than South Africa. I did not join AI.
I was very moved by Woods’ account of Steve Biko. I was also angered by his first-hand descriptions of the inhumanity of apartheid in action. But I did not believe that any worthwhile or lasting results would be achieved by an organization which fought against torture, illegal imprisonment, wide-scale government-backed killings, and disappearances merely by asking people to write polite letters to members of those same governments. AI of course does just that: to become an AI member is to become a prolific letter writer.
At the time I assumed that only action at government level could successfully effect a change in the way other governments treated their people, and only involvement at that level could help to dismantle the vast machinery of their oppressive internal security systems. It must be said that in holding to this view I was letting myself in for a great deal of frustration since there often seemed to be a pressing reason why my own government did not want to pursue any action: Sanctions would throw our people out of work
, or If we don’t supply them, someone else will
, and even Well, it’s not our business and, anyway, what about our balance of payments situation?
Years can go by and lives can be broken while such prevarication persists.
Some time later I decided to try AI’s method, and so joined a local AI group in Glasgow. The group’s main concern at that time was to work on behalf of a Russian who had been imprisoned for arranging exhibitions of modern artists’ work in his flat in Leningrad (as it was then still called). The artists did not have the ‘approval’ of the Soviet government. We wrote letters, to Georgy himself, to Soviet legal prosecutors, to the prison governor, to the Russian Republic’s administrators, and to the Soviet Embassy in London. I think we received one reply. We organized exhibitions about Georgy and collected petitions for presentation to the Soviet President. Nothing happened. In those days Soviet prisoners of conscience were rarely released early and Georgy was freed only at the end of his five year sentence. At times I wondered if it had been worth the effort — even though I knew that, on average, each day saw the release of four prisoners whose cases had been taken up by AI; in other cases, torture was halted and the conditions of imprisonment improved.
AI’s original vision was (and still is) to work by encouraging individuals to write letters on behalf of prisoners. However in the process of gathering the information needed for these letters, AI has grown into a highly respected, world-wide human rights organization with consultative status at the United Nations. As such it can bring pressure directly to bear on governments, making them act to alleviate the conditions of prisoners of conscience and others. It does what I thought could only be done by another government, and it does it much more effectively. AI has no vested interests and always acts in the name of its thousands of individual members of all nationalities — using their individual actions is the basis for its overall call for change. Some of the best evidence for AI’s impartiality is provided by the insults it receives from governments of all political shades! Take your pick: An instrument of communist terrorism
(Brazil); In a leading position among organizations which conduct anti-Soviet propaganda
(USSR); This imperialist body
(China); This espionage agency
(Iran).
There were personal consequences from working for AI, too. Imagine standing in Glasgow Central railway station, collecting money for AI, and being accosted by an irate Irishman demanding to know why AI was betraying Northern Ireland by criticizing the British Army’s handling of the situation there. Merely to state the facts of the situation and leave it at that seemed a weak and rather futile response, so I argued and defended vociferously — and, in the end, only gave my accuser an excuse to walk off even angrier than before, and not much better informed about AI. Looking back on the episode a little later I could see that, though it was difficult not to return the anger being aimed at me, it had become impossible to convey AI’s perspective once I had given way to righteous indignation. The situation had demanded some attempt, at least, to maintIn a non-partisan attitude which in turn required a non-attached attitude from me: non-attached to my views, to wanting other people to agree with AI, and to wanting other people to be convinced by me! In the heat of the moment I could not maintain any such attitude.
I think that that was the fist time I realized that AI’s overall impartiality depended in a very real way on my impartiality and my non-violent attitude. In this very real sense AI is a grassroots organization: if its members are not able to reflect at least something of its non-violent, humanitarian ideals — and to reflect them in practical, real-life situations — then AI will decline and its effectiveness will become impaired.
A similar state of mind was required when writing letters on behalf of prisoners of conscience. Some of my first attempts at writing to Russian officials had to be tactfully edited by the more experienced members of our group. And although I understood intellectually why they were suggesting more moderate language and deleting any hint of a haranguing tone, emotionally I found it difficult not to use the letters as an outlet for the very real anger I felt when learning more and more details about the way in which human beings could abuse each other.
But if anger is not an effective basis from which to work for AI, what is? At about this time I started practising the Metta Bhavana meditation. I had also started reading some Buddhists texts and had been studying the transcript of a seminar on which the Buddha’s teachings on non-violence has been discussed:
He abused me, he beat, he defeated, he robbed me, the hatred of those who harbour such thoughts is not appeased.He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me, the hatred of those who do not harbour such thoughts is appeased.
Hatreds never cease by hatred in this world; by love alone they cease.
(Dhammapada, trans. Narada Thera)
My letter-writing for AI took on a new dimension when I started to see the practical connections between these teachings and my wish to help bring human rights abuse to an end. Universal loving- kindness is not universal unless I reach out to my enemy with as much goodwill as I give to my friend. Likewise, I began to see that to work effectively on behalf of prisoners of conscience I had to think about and communicate with their captors and torturers with as much feeling of human solidarity as I felt towards their prisoners. When writing to a prison governor it was only by appealing to our common humanity that I could hope to influence his attitude to his prisoners in any meaningful way. If I needed any reminder of that I had only to read some of the letters from released prisoners who had realized and, moreover, practised the same principle under far harsher conditions than those I enjoyed. I think the effectiveness of AI stems from just this foundation of common humanity expressed by one individual towards another and addressed directly to them over and above any nationalistic, religious, or political considerations.
By this time I was Scottish Coordinator for AI’s Urgent Action Scheme, a network of people who send telegrams on receipt of a case sheet. This meant that I saw details of every case of torture and oppression which came under the remit of the scheme. Looking back, I do not think I could have done the job for as long as I did without the support of my Metta Bhavana practice. As it was, there were times when I felt inclined to withdraw — saddened to see abuse end in one country only to see it arise in another, sometimes with such ferocity that AI could not name individual prisoners for fear of precipitating their immediate execution. But encouragement came in the form of follow-up notes on urgent action cases telling of early release, the end of torture, or other improvements such as a better diet or access to writing materials. Sometimes released prisoners wrote describing how they had been helped merely by knowing that other human beings knew of their plight and had not forgotten them. One prisoner, ill-treated and held incommunicado, was lifted from the depths of suicidal despair by these words from a guard: You are not dead — too many people know you are alive.
I am not now so immediately involved with AI. These days I am more likely to be heard giving a talk about Buddhism than about human rights abuse. However, trying to follow the Buddha’s advice that the eradication of suffering comes about by embodying the ideal of human Enlightenment does not mean abandoning the rest of the world. I have not forgotten the lessons I learnt from AI. This world is our creation — whose else could it be? If we individuals do not try to eradicate its ills, then who else will? AI and the Metta Bhavana can both help to change the world. They have certainly helped me change myself — not as separate influences but intertwined, the one illuminating the knots of the other.