Difficult Philanthropy

The fight for the men in the orange jumpsuits.

The work we do at Reprieve is not likely to win any popularity contests.  My client may be a person on death row, so hated that society wants to strap him down and take his life; or, someone in Guantanamo Bay, branded the “worst of the worst” by President Bush and held incommunicado for five years in a solitary cell.  But the very fact that my clients are so reviled is why I choose this work.

Different societies have different philanthropic tendencies:  Americans give more than Europeans, and the most generous Americans are from Utah.  In Britain, despite their parsimonious reputation, the Scots are give away more money per capita than Londoners.  In both countries, the goals of most charitable activity are generally uncontroversial and often outright conservative.  Utah leads the table because of the Mormon tradition of tithing to the church.  The top ten recipients of charitable giving in the UK are medical research, children, animals, religious organizations, overseas relief, blind people, disabled people, elderly people, education, and the rescue services. 

Ah! the British: animals in need of shelter receive far more support than homeless humans.  Of course, people in prison, who are either accused or convicted of a crime, are even further down the list of worthy causes, close to the bottom.  We tend to believe that people without power are those most in need of help, yet those who are most despised are often the most powerless.  These are the people, and the most unpopular of causes, where Reprieve focuses its work. 

One morning, many years ago, I went to see a teenage client who was facing a capital trial in Louisiana.  He  was of course presumed innocent in theory, but there were few citizens who cared to await his trial before reaching their verdict.  As I came to the visiting room, the kid was in tears.  I asked him what was wrong, and he asked me whether I had listened to the local radio that morning:  A local shock jock was asking listeners to call in and suggest which of his body parts we should rip from his body today.  I can still feel his fear and isolation.          

If the death row cell is lonely, then the Guantánamo cell is desolate.  When I first met him in 2005, Mohammed el Gharani had heard not a word from the outside world for three years.  He had been just fourteen years old when the U.S. seized him in Pakistan.  Mohammed had a cigarette burn on his wrist from one interrogation.  For a while he had been a ghost prisoner, tortured in a secret prison.  When he told me that I was the first white person who had ever been kind to him, I felt an overwhelming shame for the human race.

Those who would dissolve human rights come first for the pariahs of a particular society – black men in Mississippi in 1965, or the Muslim with a beard today.  My clients on death row and in Guantánamo wear the same orange jumpsuits, setting them apart from the rest of us, but the erosion of liberty always works its way from the margins towards the centre.  Ultimately, it threatens to dissolve the free society that we once considered our birthright.  Meanwhile, repressive laws never made the world safer for anyone but the tyrant.  It has never been shown that executions in the US have an impact on the murder rate and imprisoning Mohammed without trial has only inspired more Muslims to take arms against such Western hypocrisy. 

At Reprieve we provide frontline investigation and legal representation to prisoners denied justice by powerful governments across the world, from death row to Guantánamo Bay. We believe that fighting in the darkest trenches on behalf of the condemned is a privilege rather than a sacrifice. We welcome your assistance and support.