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The Times (London)
May 12, 2012 Saturday
Edition 1; National Edition
Peer on a mission to share the darkness of the voiceless;
Baroness Cox has put herself in the firing line to help imperilled
Christians. She talks to Bess Twiston Davies
by Bess Twiston Davies
"We are a small charity," says Baroness Cox of Queensbury, founder of
the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (Hart), "and we travel, often
unofficially, sometimes by unorthodox means, under the radar."
This approach she has long favoured, whether it means smuggling
medicine to Soviet-era Poland on board 32-tonne trucks, taking planes
at risk of being shot down by the National Islamic Front in
war-stricken Sudan, or travelling through Burmese mountains in
vehicles just inches from a 2,000-foot precipice.
Lady Cox, 75, a life peer since 1982, is inspired by a passion to
reach "the voiceless" - those peoples trapped behind closed borders
suffering atrocious violations of human rights.
Many of those helped by Hart, which Cox founded in 2004, live in
areas, such as the Nuba mountains of Sudan, which are rarely reached -
for reasons of geography or safety - by mainstream charities. When
Lord Alton of Liverpool made his first visit to the persecuted
tribespeople of Karen State, Burma, the first group he met asked him
"How is Lady Cox?"
Between half and a third of each year Cox visits Hart's local
partners, in countries including Egypt, India, Nigeria, Burma, South
Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, Timor-Leste, Russia and the Armenian enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh. In Uganda she interviewed ex-child soldiers
traumatised by the memory of drinking human blood, while in
Nagorno-Karabakh, which is in Azerbaijani territory, she visited
children maimed by cluster-bombs.
Such a catalogue of horrors might depress many. Cox, however, a former
president of the charity Christian Solidarity Worldwide, is inspired
by the "radiant faith" she finds "in many of the darkest parts of the
world". Meeting persecuted Christians "leaves me humbled. My faith is
often pretty shaky," she says.
"But the way they hang on to their faith suggests to me that it must
be true what it says in the Bible, that God is a very present help in
trouble," says Cox, who last autumn published with Ben Rogers a book
called The Very Stones Cry Out: The Persecuted Church - Pain, Passion
and Praise.
Often when visiting a destroyed church "you just find an empty space,"
shge says. "Yet when you meet people in those churches, there is never
any hatred, there's always just love."
Cox says that a night which she spent in a broken-down truck in Soviet
Poland was seminal in confirming her convictions and her future
missions. Alone and meditating on Psalm 46's injunction to "Be still,
know that I am God," Cox wondered what on earth she was doing trying
to do. "Then very clearly came the words 'share the darkness'."Some 18
months later she returned to Poland as the guest of its first
post-Soviet parliament. The chairman of Poland's Senate thanked her in
particular for "sharing our darkness".
That, she says, has been her mandate ever since - to "share" the
darkness of human rights abuses little known in the West. And so, once
back from her travels, Lady Cox, who for 20 years (1985-2005) was
Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords, will give vivid firsthand
reports of what she has seen. Sometimes this can even prevent an
impending disaster. On one occasion she enlisting a BBC world
journalist and set off for Chin State, North Burma, where, every 50 or
so years, the bamboo flowers. The bounty of food leads to an explosion
in the rat population.
The rats then eat everything else, and famine strikes.Cox's resulting
documentary induced the UK to give £600,000 in food relief to the
people of Chin. "That was very encouraging," says Cox who believes
firmly that it is the local people who should decide how to allocate
charitable aid. This, she says, offers them "the dignity of choice".
"Several times in places such as Sudan people have said 'thank you for
asking. Many aid organisations just come and tell us what they are
going to do. Why don't they ask us? We know our needs.' If you work
with local partners, you don't need megabucks," she adds, citing as
proof the $12,500 given to an African bishop to diversify local
agriculture. The proceeds funded an orphanage and two healthcare
centres. The surplus went to a women's empowerment programme which
bought a crop of sunflowers, giving the seeds to mine injury victims
who "have just signed a contract to make soap with the oil from the
seeds".
That was in Sudan, a country she flew into 30 times during its civil
war to redeem slaves captured in the Christian/animist South, then
sold to the Arab North. When we meet in the House of Lords, it is not
even a year since South Sudan became in the summer of 2011 a separate
nation.
Does slavery still exist in the North? "Certainly the [South Sudan]
leadership has asked us to raise the issue of the continuation of
slavery but it can't do anything because they are enslaved in the
North. It's really up to Khartoum," Cox adds, though she hopes the UK
will put pressure on Khartoum to reinstate an organisation set up to
free women and child slaves.
The privilege of living in a democracy is not one that Cox, whose
background is in nursing and sociology, takes lightly. Scandals - such
as MP's expenses - coming into the public arena are an indicator that
our democracy is working, she says. "In many countries the bad news of
what governments are getting up to would never see the light of day."
Our conversation moves to the Arab Spring. Does she believe democracy
and Islam are compatible? "There are examples of nations that are
certainly trying the combination," she replies, referring to
Indonesia, a Muslim majority population with a constitution upholding
religious diversity: "Worryingly, recently, there have been more
attacks on religious minorities and one hopes it can hold the line
against a much more aggressive Islamism," she adds and refers to
Islam, Islamism and the West: Is ideological Islam compatible with
liberal democracy? the book she co-wrote in 2005 with John Marks. It
concludes that "ideological totalitarian Islam sadly has not yet
proved itself capable of enshrining principles of liberal democracy."
The trigger for a Private Member's Bill on gender equality, civil law
and Sharia rulings that Cox introduced last year was a women's rights
conference. There Muslim women revealed the problems of polygamous
marriage, of rulings in Sharia courts encouraging battered wives to
return to their husbands, and the ease with which a divorce may be
granted if a Muslim wedding has not been accompanied by a civil
wedding service.
"My concern is a quasi-parallel legal system which is operating to the
detriment of vulnerable members of our society," she explains.
Cox has spent nearly two hours talking to me but we have to stop, she
says. It is nearly 7pm and another group in the lobby is waiting to
meet her. Her day is far from over.
She interviewed ex-child soldiers traumatised by drinking human blood
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
May 12, 2012 Saturday
Edition 1; National Edition
Peer on a mission to share the darkness of the voiceless;
Baroness Cox has put herself in the firing line to help imperilled
Christians. She talks to Bess Twiston Davies
by Bess Twiston Davies
"We are a small charity," says Baroness Cox of Queensbury, founder of
the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (Hart), "and we travel, often
unofficially, sometimes by unorthodox means, under the radar."
This approach she has long favoured, whether it means smuggling
medicine to Soviet-era Poland on board 32-tonne trucks, taking planes
at risk of being shot down by the National Islamic Front in
war-stricken Sudan, or travelling through Burmese mountains in
vehicles just inches from a 2,000-foot precipice.
Lady Cox, 75, a life peer since 1982, is inspired by a passion to
reach "the voiceless" - those peoples trapped behind closed borders
suffering atrocious violations of human rights.
Many of those helped by Hart, which Cox founded in 2004, live in
areas, such as the Nuba mountains of Sudan, which are rarely reached -
for reasons of geography or safety - by mainstream charities. When
Lord Alton of Liverpool made his first visit to the persecuted
tribespeople of Karen State, Burma, the first group he met asked him
"How is Lady Cox?"
Between half and a third of each year Cox visits Hart's local
partners, in countries including Egypt, India, Nigeria, Burma, South
Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, Timor-Leste, Russia and the Armenian enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh. In Uganda she interviewed ex-child soldiers
traumatised by the memory of drinking human blood, while in
Nagorno-Karabakh, which is in Azerbaijani territory, she visited
children maimed by cluster-bombs.
Such a catalogue of horrors might depress many. Cox, however, a former
president of the charity Christian Solidarity Worldwide, is inspired
by the "radiant faith" she finds "in many of the darkest parts of the
world". Meeting persecuted Christians "leaves me humbled. My faith is
often pretty shaky," she says.
"But the way they hang on to their faith suggests to me that it must
be true what it says in the Bible, that God is a very present help in
trouble," says Cox, who last autumn published with Ben Rogers a book
called The Very Stones Cry Out: The Persecuted Church - Pain, Passion
and Praise.
Often when visiting a destroyed church "you just find an empty space,"
shge says. "Yet when you meet people in those churches, there is never
any hatred, there's always just love."
Cox says that a night which she spent in a broken-down truck in Soviet
Poland was seminal in confirming her convictions and her future
missions. Alone and meditating on Psalm 46's injunction to "Be still,
know that I am God," Cox wondered what on earth she was doing trying
to do. "Then very clearly came the words 'share the darkness'."Some 18
months later she returned to Poland as the guest of its first
post-Soviet parliament. The chairman of Poland's Senate thanked her in
particular for "sharing our darkness".
That, she says, has been her mandate ever since - to "share" the
darkness of human rights abuses little known in the West. And so, once
back from her travels, Lady Cox, who for 20 years (1985-2005) was
Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords, will give vivid firsthand
reports of what she has seen. Sometimes this can even prevent an
impending disaster. On one occasion she enlisting a BBC world
journalist and set off for Chin State, North Burma, where, every 50 or
so years, the bamboo flowers. The bounty of food leads to an explosion
in the rat population.
The rats then eat everything else, and famine strikes.Cox's resulting
documentary induced the UK to give £600,000 in food relief to the
people of Chin. "That was very encouraging," says Cox who believes
firmly that it is the local people who should decide how to allocate
charitable aid. This, she says, offers them "the dignity of choice".
"Several times in places such as Sudan people have said 'thank you for
asking. Many aid organisations just come and tell us what they are
going to do. Why don't they ask us? We know our needs.' If you work
with local partners, you don't need megabucks," she adds, citing as
proof the $12,500 given to an African bishop to diversify local
agriculture. The proceeds funded an orphanage and two healthcare
centres. The surplus went to a women's empowerment programme which
bought a crop of sunflowers, giving the seeds to mine injury victims
who "have just signed a contract to make soap with the oil from the
seeds".
That was in Sudan, a country she flew into 30 times during its civil
war to redeem slaves captured in the Christian/animist South, then
sold to the Arab North. When we meet in the House of Lords, it is not
even a year since South Sudan became in the summer of 2011 a separate
nation.
Does slavery still exist in the North? "Certainly the [South Sudan]
leadership has asked us to raise the issue of the continuation of
slavery but it can't do anything because they are enslaved in the
North. It's really up to Khartoum," Cox adds, though she hopes the UK
will put pressure on Khartoum to reinstate an organisation set up to
free women and child slaves.
The privilege of living in a democracy is not one that Cox, whose
background is in nursing and sociology, takes lightly. Scandals - such
as MP's expenses - coming into the public arena are an indicator that
our democracy is working, she says. "In many countries the bad news of
what governments are getting up to would never see the light of day."
Our conversation moves to the Arab Spring. Does she believe democracy
and Islam are compatible? "There are examples of nations that are
certainly trying the combination," she replies, referring to
Indonesia, a Muslim majority population with a constitution upholding
religious diversity: "Worryingly, recently, there have been more
attacks on religious minorities and one hopes it can hold the line
against a much more aggressive Islamism," she adds and refers to
Islam, Islamism and the West: Is ideological Islam compatible with
liberal democracy? the book she co-wrote in 2005 with John Marks. It
concludes that "ideological totalitarian Islam sadly has not yet
proved itself capable of enshrining principles of liberal democracy."
The trigger for a Private Member's Bill on gender equality, civil law
and Sharia rulings that Cox introduced last year was a women's rights
conference. There Muslim women revealed the problems of polygamous
marriage, of rulings in Sharia courts encouraging battered wives to
return to their husbands, and the ease with which a divorce may be
granted if a Muslim wedding has not been accompanied by a civil
wedding service.
"My concern is a quasi-parallel legal system which is operating to the
detriment of vulnerable members of our society," she explains.
Cox has spent nearly two hours talking to me but we have to stop, she
says. It is nearly 7pm and another group in the lobby is waiting to
meet her. Her day is far from over.
She interviewed ex-child soldiers traumatised by drinking human blood
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress