He was convicted of terrorism and treason. According to the
trial judge, the death sentence was an option, but in what some probably
regarded as the greatest error of judgement in modern legal and political
history, he passed a life sentence instead, probably calculating that the accused
would be forgotten in time as he languished in jail for the remainder of his days.
Nelson Mandela eventually became the most famous political prisoner in the
world., and the South African government came to realise the extent of his
appeal when a 70th birthday tribute to him at Wembley Stadium in
June 1988 reached a global audience of hundreds of millions, and hastened his release.
Now that Madiba has joined the ancestors, it is interesting
to consider who has inherited that dubious title of the world’s most famous
political prisoner. A number of people come readily to mind: Chelsea (née Bradley)
Manning, who is currently serving a 37-year sentence in a US military jail for
leaking thousands of highly embarrassing US documents, for one. Many believe he too was lucky
to escape the death sentence. The same sentence has also been demanded by many
American patriots for Julian Assange, head of WilkiLeaks, now sheltering under
the protection of the Ecaudorian Embassy in London, for publishing those
documents. These two individuals are, as many have secretly hoped, only rarely
in the news these days. Not quite so with Edward Snowden, who would also face
the death sentence were he to return to the US, as many pundits have also
declared him guilty of high treason for leaking information on US mass
surveillance on its own citizens and on millions of people around the world. He
isn’t in jail either, but continues to cause damaging embarrassment to his
country from his exile in that enemy state, Russia.
For me, there is no question that the most famous of all
contemporary political prisoners is a man who is entering his sixty-first year in
the State Correctional Institution in Mahanoy, Pennsylvania. It would be a
pleasant surprise if the forthcoming sixtieth birthday of Mumia Abu Jamal makes it onto mainstream media the way Mandela’s did, for Abu Jamal’s
supporters are convinced that the media are complicit in consigning this remarkable activist to the dark, shadowy
margins of world consciousness.
Who is Mumia? Instead of the “terrorist” label that was placed on
Mandela’s head, Mumia is known as a “cop killer”, period. According to his
supporters, he was framed for the murder of a policeman and sentenced
to death, way back in 1982. His real crime? Speaking truth to power, first as a
member of the Black Panther Party and later as a radio
journalist who bravely used his popular broadcasts to highlight police brutality
against Blacks in Philadelphia and around the USA. It is not at all surprising that
32 whole years after his imprisonment, the Fraternal Order of Police are at the forefront of moves to keep him demonised in the American psyche.
When in 2012 the NAACP Legal Defence Fund finally won a decades-long battle to
have Mumia taken off death row (where he had spent thirty years) and his
sentence commuted to life imprisonment, the FOP must have been very displeased.
It seems they got their revenge when a few months ago, they led a successful campaign
for the Senate to reject President Obama’s nomination for Chief of the US Justice
Department’s Civil Rights Division, as
Debo Adegbile had for a time been acting head of the LDF as Mumia’s appeal was
being prepared. Some would say that
Adegbile’s nomination was a presidential error of judgement too. The coverage
of this episode in Democracy
Now! is quite instructive, as that show’s guests touch on the history of
Mumia’s case as well as the implications of the nominee’s rejection on the
practice of civil rights law in the USA.
A cursory listen to any of Mumia’s broadcasts from prison will reveal
why he is so reviled by many influential entities in the United States. In his
quest to speak truth to power, few of the world’s most powerful individuals and interest groups have escaped his incredibly wise and incisive analysis and criticism.
Few would have heard his radio commentary last December, tilled “Mandela
Sanitised”, where he paid his own tribute to the great man, but reminded
the world that “South African independence ...
opened the door to elective office but closed the door to South Africa’s vast
wealth by putting it in private hands. Dr. Nelson Mandela was hired to
consolidate this state of affairs”. If Mandela’s worshipers couldn’t be spared this “inconvenient truth”
about their hero, and if Abu Jamal is brave enough to buck the lionising trend
in such a public way (as with for example his
recent commentary on the current crisis in Ukraine), it is little wonder
that the powers-that-be in the US want him confined to the obscurity of prison for
the remainder of his days.
There will be no
Wembley-style celebration of Mumia’s birthday in the UK. There will be some
celebrations in the US. Certainly, Mr. Obama is unlikely to even mention Mumia’s
name – that would be an error of judgement too far. However, as Obama so
happily accepted his role as star turn at the global media circus that was Mr.
Mandela’s memorial service, one cannot help but be struck by the
appropriateness of the words that he so eloquently used at Madiba’s send-off if
they were to be applied to a Mumia tribute on his birthday:
“... He accepted the consequences of his actions,
knowing that standing up to powerful interests and injustice carries a price.”
“He understood that ideas cannot be contained by
prison walls, or extinguished by a sniper's bullet.”
“Around the world today, men and women are still
imprisoned for their political beliefs; and are still persecuted for what they
look like, or how they worship, or who they love. That is happening today.”
“There are too many leaders who claim solidarity
with [his] struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own
people.”
The last person to
speak at Mandela’s funeral ceremony (Obama and thousands had left the stadium by
then) was the venerable Archbishop Desmond Tutu. His contribution to the event
is nowhere near as memorable as Mr. Obama’s but what does exist elsewhere (on the
freemumia.com website in fact) is a video which some might consider to be a most
venerable, most reverend error of judgement: a
demand for the release of Mumia Abu Jamal.
If it's good enough
for Archbishop Desmond Tutu, it's good enough for me.
