The Truth Buried Alive

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I was worried about Lissu. On July 19, 2001, a group of Tanzanian police interest lawyers wrote the nation’s president asking for an investigation–instead, Lissu’s law partner in Dar es Salaam was arrested. The police were hunting for Lissu. They broke into his home and office and turned them upside down looking for the names of Lissu’s sources, his whereabouts and the evidence he gathered on the mine site clearance. This was more than a legal skirmish. Over the next months, demonstrations by vicims’ families were broken up by police thugs. A member of Parliament joining protesters was beaten and hospitalized. I had to raise cash quick to get Lissu out, and with him, his copies of police files with more evidence of the killings. I called Maude Barlow, the “Ralph Nader of Canada”, head of the Council of Canadians. Without hesitation, she teamed up with Friends of the Earth in Holland, raised funds and prepared a press conference–and in August tipped the story to the Globe & Mail, Canada’s national paper.

The Toronto-based newspaper was excited: This was big news about one of the richest men about town, Barrick CEO Peter Munk–not to mention their former prime minister Brian Mulroney, George Bush, repression, greed and blood. The rule in the news biz is, if it bleeds, it leads. So they promised Maude a front-page splash if she’d hold off on her public statement.

The Globe & Mail quickly put Mark McKinnon, their best reporter, on the case. Just as quickly, they yanked him off it and told him to fly home from Africa. From page one to page nothing. Barlow was incensed at the decision of the editor. According to Barlow, the editor pleaded that it wasn’t his call–the spike came from “the highest levels.”

While the big shots at the Globe & Mail dove to the mat, spunky little Frank magazine effectively retracted its retraction. They’d seen a videotape with bodies–spirited out of the country by Lissu–and would not stand silent. Barrick insisted the bodies in the films were not from the mine clearance–but Frank wasn’t buying.

Meanwhile, not waiting on that palsied institution, the so-called free press, to act, I issued an alert to human rights groups worldwide. The Guardian’s lawyers went ballistic: In the United Kingdom, one can’t complain of being sued for libel, because under their law, a paper is guilty of defamation until it proves itself innocent. Therefore, publicly defending oneself “repeats” the libel and makes the paper and reporter subject to new damages and court sanctions. Kafka had nothing on the British court system.

The pressure was on. I’m pleased to say that my editor refused to sign the abject, lying retraction–just fifteen minutes before the court-imposed deadline. He told me these encouraging words: “We are now going to spend hundreds of thousands on some fucking meaningless point you are trying to make. I hope you are happy.”

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