Tuesday, April 21, 2015
NY judge to consider claims that chimpanzees are ‘legal persons’
Supreme Court Justice issues order requiring university to defend right to keep primates
An animal rights group has been granted a court hearing in which it will argue that two chimpanzees who live at a New York state university cannot be held captive because they are autonomous, intelligent creatures. Photograph: Thinkstock.
An animal rights group has been granted a court hearing in which it will argue that two chimpanzees who live at a New York state university cannot be held captive because they are autonomous, intelligent creatures.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe in Manhattan issued an order late Monday, called a writ of habeas corpus, requiring the State University of New York at Stony Brook on Long Island to defend its right in court to keep the primates, Hercules and Leo. A writ of habeas corpus requires a person to be released from unlawful imprisonment.
In what it said was the first case of its kind in the world, the Nonhuman Rights Project claims that because chimpanzees are autonomous, intelligent creatures, their captivity amounts to unlawful imprisonment under the law.
They want the pair of chimps, who are used in research on physical movement at the university, to be sent to a sanctuary in Florida.
Under the law, such orders can be granted only to “legal persons,” so Ms Justice Jaffe would need to find that chimpanzees have at least some limited rights traditionally reserved for humans.
The judge did not explain the reason for issuing the order in Monday’s brief decision.
The university did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.
The hearing, in which the university will be represented by the New York state Attorney General’s office, is scheduled for May 6th.
In separate cases, the group, founded by Boston attorney and animal rights activist Steven Wise, sued the owners of two chimpanzees who live in upstate New York. State judges tossed out both lawsuits, and separate appeals courts upheld those rulings.
Mr Wise has asked the state’s top court, the Court of Appeals, to hear the cases. He has said a victory could spur similar cases on behalf of elephants, dolphins, whales and other intelligent animals.
In a more traditional animal welfare case in December, a judge in Argentina said an orangutan who lives at a zoo could be freed and transferred to a sanctuary.
The group behind that case made similar arguments to those presented by Wise, but the judge did not go so far as to grant the orangutan, Sandra, the rights reserved for humans.
Reuters
All hands on deck as pub opens in shipping container
He serves pints in his London shipping container, where customers can exchange football stickers for pints.
But for this enterprising Cork man, owning his own sports bar is a dream come true.
Carrigaline native Sebastian O’Driscoll moved to London after graduating from college in 2008. Despite working for charities as a programme manager, he harboured other ambitions.
“I always wanted to open a bar,” he said, and the would-be publican spotted his opportunity in a novel community for start-up businesses.
Artworks is a project on Elephant Road in central London that rents refurbished shipping containers to new retailers, restaurants and start-ups. Over 50 of these containers have been refurbished and rented out to a community of new businesses, including a Mauritian tearoom, a Caribbean take away, stores and even a library.
“It’s ideal for a start-up as the economies mean it won’t absolutely break you to have a go. I wanted to open a pub in the area where you could go to watch sports, a place that wasn’t a dodgy bar or part of a chain,” O’Driscoll explained.
The appropriately-named Six Yard Box opened in January, a traditionally quiet time but the kick-off of the Six Nations saw an upturn in business.
The small pub has been packed since and regularly hosts events such as Fifa video game tournaments, Fr Ted bingo and screenings of all major televised sports events.
Having roped in some friends to put in the hard work required to turn the empty container into a bar, O’Driscoll saw potential in the unit’s low ceiling.
“We had collected World Cup stickers over the summer and thought ‘why not cover the ceiling with them?’ In reality the stickers we had barely covered half of it.”
And with that, pounds sterling were replaced with Panini stickers.
“For the first few weeks people would bring in their football cards and stickers and we’d give them a few pints for them. It became a sort of currency and was great for getting stuff for the ceiling. Soon word spread around about the bar,” he said.
The Artworks community is a temporary project, but O’Driscoll has ambitions that stretch beyond the flat-pack shopping centre’s five- year life span: “I want to open a place with five-a-side pitches and a bar. A sort of social sports place. So many people in their 20s and 30s move to London and don’t know anyone here. I want to create a social hub where people can meet, go for a kick around and a pint after.”
Until then his customers will have to content themselves with a kick around on the tabletop football within the cosy environs of the Six Yard Box.
Joe Leogue
Adams: Royal visit will 'promote reconciliation, respect and understanding'
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams hopes that the visit of Britain’s Prince Charles and his wife Camilla to Ireland next month will "promote reconciliation".
Clarence House had earlier confirmed that the prince and his wife will visit the Repulic of Ireland and N. Ireland between May 19 and 22, with the trip including a visit to Mullaghmore in Co Sligo, where Charles' great-uncle Lord Louis Mountbatten was killed in an IRA bombing in 1979.
Mr Adams said that this visit, and the visit of the Queen of England to the Republic of Ireland four years ago, would help to mend relations between the two countries.
The Sinn Féin President said: "The visit by the British Queen to the Garden of Remembrance, her words of reconciliation and the subsequent meetings with Martin McGuinness demonstrated the potential of these events.
“I am conscious that Prince Charles is the symbolic head of the British Army's Parachute Regiment and the grievous wrong they have done including to the people of Derry and Ballymurphy where I grew up.
“However, I am also conscious that the British Royal family have also been directly affected by the actions of republicans.
“I hope this visit will be an occasion to promote reconciliation, respect and understanding.”
US donors gave Fianna Fáil nearly $1.3 million
Donors to party between 1984 and 2000 included businessmen, clergy and unions
Businessman Galen Weston donated to the party. Photograph: Matt Kavanagh
Pamela Duncan, Simon Carswell, Erin McGuire
Donors to Fianna Fáil’s US fundraising arm over almost two decades included well-known businessmen, monsignors, unions and companies including the US Tobacco Company, Tara Mines and Waterford Crystal.
The Irish Times has digitised US department of justice filings made by Friends of Fianna Fail which show the party raised almost $1.3 million between 1984 and 2000 ranging in donations of between $5 and $27,000.
The highest cumulative donations were made by Irish-American businessman John Sharkey who donated a total of $37,000 to the organisation in two separate donations in 1996 and 1999. Businessman Declan Ganley donated $25,000 to the organisation in 1996.
Billionaire businessman
Lesser amounts are listed for individuals including billionaire businessman Galen Weston, the late founder of the Central Remedial Clinic Lady Valerie Goulding and deceased New York pub and restaurant owner Eamon Doran.
Donations to Friends of Fianna Fáil 1984 to 2000
Donations received by Friends of Fianna Fáil between 1984 and 2000. The organisation stopped filing returns with the US Department of Justice in 2003 having reported no donations from December 2000 onwards.
Figures exclude two loans from Bank of Ireland, one for $40,000 reported in July 1987, and another for $20,000 recorded in March 1989, which were listed among the donations. Bank interest is also excluded.
A $5,000 donation in the name of Dermot Desmond is recorded in December 1990, while two further donations totalling $6,000 and made in 1988 are listed under the name “D Desmond”.
Attempts to contact the financier to confirm whether these donations were made by him or on his behalf were unsuccessful.
US-based Irish publisher Niall O’Dowd made two separate donations totalling $500 in the late 1980s.
Two of the publications he founded, the Irish Voice newspaper and Irish America Magazine , are also listed as contributing $10,700 in total.
When contacted Mr O’Dowd said the latter donations were for tables at dinners hosted to mark Albert Reynolds’s role in the peace process. He said contributions in his name were for attendance at private Friends of Fianna Fáil events at which no press facilities were offered.
A $2,000 donation in 1997 is listed in the name of Fianna Fáil TD Éamon Ó Cuív.
When contacted Mr Ó Cuív said the donation was not made by him but by an individual based in Canada which he forwarded to the party.
Individual donors also include members of the clergy including the late Monsignor James Murray who donated $1,500 in two donations and the late Monsignor Daniel J Bourke who donated more than $1,300.
The United States Tobacco Company made a $3,750 donation in 1988, the same year in which Tara Mines made a donation of $3,703 and Waterford Crystal donated $1,500.
Unions including branches of the Bricklayers Local Union, a branch of the Excavators Union and the Transport Workers Union of America donated a total of $1,600 between them.
A total of $1.27 million was raised by Fianna Fáil in the years covered by the filings (this figure excludes revenue raised from bank interest and two loans totalling $60,000).
This compares with the $12 million raised by Friends of Sinn Féin between February 1995 and October 2014, the last period for which the latter organisation reported donations with the US department of justice.
In that time the parties shared some of the same donors: Structure Tone and its founder, Pat Donaghy, are listed as having donated $14,000 and $3,000 respectively to Friends of Fianna Fáil up to 1996.
Friends of Sinn Féin have received more than $200,000 in donations from Mr Donaghy and his associated businesses: more than $63,000 in personal donations, $87,000 from Structure Tone and $56,000 from Favour Royal.
Coca Cola Corporation
The late Irish-American businessman Donald Keough, a former Coca Cola Corporation president/chief operating officer, made a donation of $10,000 to Friends of Sinn Féin and an equivalent donation to Friends of Fianna Fáil split over two contributions in 1996 and 1999.
Friends of Fianna Fáil stopped filing returns with the US department of justice in 2003 having reported no donations from December 2000 onwards.
Since 2001 Irish political parties had been prohibited from accepting foreign donations under the Irish Electoral (Amendment) Act.
Other Irish political organisations have been far less successful in raising funds in the US than Friends of Fianna Fáil and Friends of Sinn Féin.
A group called Friends of Fine Gael raised $140,000 from a dinner in November 1995 while another group, Supporters of Fine Gael Inc, set up in 2007, raised $28,350.
It has not raised any money since then and has not lodged a filing to the Department of Justice since 2011.
Friends of the Irish Progressive Democrats LLC raised $45,771 at two fundraising dinners in the six months to the end of March 2001, the last filing made by the US wing of the now defunct party.
An entity linked to the Labour Party, Friends of Irish Labour in America, was established in 1996 but carried out no fundraising activity in the US.
Tomi Reichental has turned his childhood horror into something positive
Tomi Reichental outside Bergen-Belsen in a scene from 'Close to Evil'
He remembers barefoot summer days and winters filled with the happy shrieks of tobogganing children.
However, 79-year-old Tomi Reichental has other memories too.
Playing hide-and-seek with his friends around heaps of rotting corpses at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Watching as emaciated inmates fell to the ground in front of him and didn’t get up.
The nightmarish ‘funeral’ of his 76-year-old grandmother Rosalia, who died some months after the family’s arrival at the camp. Her pitiful skeletal body was picked up by the arms and legs, dragged from their hut, dumped on top of a wheelbarrow already overloaded with corpses, and finally thrown onto one of the corpse heaps.
Bodies of victims of starvation and disease being buried in a mass grave at Bergen-Belsen
One of his earlier memories is of being told that from this day forth, he had to wear a yellow star.
Reichental was about six at the time, and he remembers coming to the realisation that he was different from the children who didn’t wear a star and who shouted at him and called him a “smelly Jew”.
There are other memories — being forced to leave the village school in his native village of Merasice in Czechslovakia because of his religion. And of being arrested by the Gestapo, aged nine, with his brother Miki in a shop in Bratislava.
There’s also the horror of the seven-day journey to the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp along with Miki, his mother Judith, his grandmother Rosalia, his aunt Margo, and cousin Chava.
To this day, he can recall the sickening stench from up to 50 people crammed for a week in an airless cattle wagon with no toilet facilities and little food or water.
Starving people waiting at the cook house gate at Bergen-Belsen for rations of potato soup
In the twinkling of an eye, Reichental says, he and his family went from civilised people to being treated like animals.
“In all, 13 members of my family were rounded up that day in Bratislava and brought to a detention camp, Sered, in Slovakia.”
Following a selection process, he and five other family members were sent to Bergen-Belsen where they arrived on November 9, 1944.
The other seven were sent to the slave labour camp at Buchenwald, where inmates were literally worked to death. Only one of those family members survived. Bergen-Belsen, he recalls, was “hell on earth”. “People were dying around us and we could see their corpses around us.
“The inmates around us were like skeletons with shaved heads. We didn’t know if they were male or female.
“Sometimes they fell down and didn’t get up. We saw people dying in front of us. We could see their corpses all around us.“
“Besides, typhoid and diphtheria which were the biggest killers, people were dying of starvation and cold in their hundreds.
“First the bodies were removed and burned but later they were just piling up in front of our barracks — there were piles of decomposing bodies.
“The soldiers who liberated Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 said they could smell the stench for two miles before they reached the camp.
“In the camp, I couldn’t play like a normal child. We didn’t laugh and we didn’t cry. If you stepped out of line, you could be beaten up, even beaten to death. I saw it all with my own eyes.”
Things got worse in January 1945, which brought such a massive influx of inmates from other camps that the crematorium at Belsen was unable to deal with the vast number of bodies. “They were just left outside to rot, and we as children used to play among the corpses.
“When we were liberated on April 15, 1945, there were 20,000 or 30,000 corpses lying around and the young children were playing among these rotting and decomposing bodies — playing hide and seek behind piles of corpses, ” says Reichental, whose 2014 documentary on the Holocaust has led to an investigation into an elderly woman alleged to be a member of the SS.
Directed by Emmy award-winning Gerry Gregg, Close to Evil which follows Tomi’s quest to find one of the SS guards at the camp, prompted German federal prosecutors to question 93-year-old Hilde Michnia about her alleged role as an SS guard at Belsen — in 1945 she and three others were found guilty of crimes against humanity.
Reichental, who moved to Ireland in 1959, attempted to meet Michnia, who is also suspected of being involved in an evacuation/death march in 1945, on which 1,400 women perished. “I decided to meet her and make a reconciliation with her,” says Reichental , who lost 35 members of his family in the Holocaust and who gives his account of being imprisoned as a child at Belsen concentration camp in his book I Was a Boy in Belsen. The book was actually the catalyst for the documentary — material about Michnia, sent to Reichental by a RTE radio listener who heard him being interviewed, sparked his quest to find her. He was hoping to find a sense of atonement in that meeting, he says.
“I didn’t want to accuse her or to go over history but she never showed any remorse.”
“I had a good intention,” he says, adding that he had hoped that this woman, who had been in the SS at the age of 22 or 23, would accept that she had been brainwashed with propaganda and would acknowledge that she was a different person today.
But it was not to be — Michnia refused to meet him.
“She is stuck in 1945,” says Reichental, who lives in Dublin.
In the film, Reichental, Gregg, and a German television producer contact Michnia at her home near Hamburg but she declines to meet the former child prisoner.
However, after seeing the documentary when it was screened in Germany, one man filed charges through the federal prosecutor, outlining why Hilde Michnia still has a case to answer.
What infuriates Reichental is Michnia’s assertion that the camp commandant somehow brought all those bodies into the concentration camp:
“She implied they did not die there and that he brought them in — such a lie! I was there and I saw them dying every day and that is why Hilde did not want to meet me. She couldn’t tell me these things because I had been there.”
Despite her failure to meet him however, he sees the story as a moral victory because he has been able to refute that claim.
“I have no wish for her to go to prison — she is 93 — it is too late,” says Reichental.
In 2012, he was awarded the Order of Merit, the highest honour that Germany bestows for services to the nation, by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Joachim Gauck, for his untiring commitment to furthering mutual understanding, reconciliation and German-Irish friendship. He’s also a recipient of the Global Achievement Award and last December was awarded the International Person of the Year for his untiring work in promoting tolerance, reconciliation, and rejection of racism and bigotry.
Reichental is concerned by the rise in anti-semitism, not just in France but across Europe as a whole, he says, adding that he feels the Irish media is not sympathetic to the Israeli cause.
“The problem in the Middle East is a very complicated conflict,” he says.
“I think there is a misunderstanding of what is happening in the Middle East here in Ireland.
“It’s easier to be anti-Israeli but very difficult to be anti- Palestinian.
“There’s no real understanding of what is happening in the Middle East,” says Reichental, who, it later emerged, only survived the gas chamber by a twist of fate. He learned that the cattle wagon in which he and several members of his family journeyed to Bergen-Belsen, was initially destined for the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
“However, on November 7th, the gas chambers in Auschwitz and Birkenau were blown up and we were diverted to Belsen.
“Ours was the first transport from Slovakia not to go to Auschwitz. If I’d been arrested 10 days previously, I wouldn’t be speaking to you today.”
Ailín Quinlan
Tomi Reichental is one of the keynote speakers at the 2015 Cork World Book Fest which runs at Cork City Library and the Triskel from April 21- 24. He will make his address at 2pm on Friday April at the Triskel Christchurch. At 8.30pm that night he will also feature in a double bill with author, Evelyn Conlon at the same venue for a presentation entitled Memory & Survival.
Monday, April 20, 2015
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