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Caroline Cox: 'We cannot do everything but we must not do nothing'

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  • Caroline Cox: 'We cannot do everything but we must not do nothing'

    The Times, UK
    Jan 25 2014

    'We cannot do everything but we must not do nothing'

    Caroline Cox, Credo


    Over the years I have developed a passionate belief in the fundamental
    importance of freedom. Brought up a Christian, I was familiar with
    Jesus's words "You shall know the truth and the truth will make you
    free." Experience has taught me the fundamental importance of truth
    and freedom, through exposure to the suffering of those who are denied
    them. The German theologian Ernst Käsemann said "Jesus means freedom".
    I have witnessed how Christianity so often motivates individuals and
    societies to speak for the oppressed and to set the captive free.

    My awareness began with academic freedom. In the 1970s, as head of the
    department of sociology at the Polytechnic of North London, with 16
    out of 20 staff being members of the Communist Party, I was so deeply
    disturbed by ruthless indoctrination, academic blackmail and violence
    in "occupations" premised on lies that I eventually co-wrote a
    book,The Rape of Reason, to which Bernard Levin devoted three columns
    inThe Times, one headed "In all Its Brutality, the Making of an
    Intellectual Concentration Camp".

    In the 1980s I travelled many times to Poland to people suffering
    extreme deprivations of martial law. I always returned humbled by
    their courage, faith and dignity. One vignette: totalitarianism meant
    one could be sent to prison for smuggling blank paper. I was warned:
    "It's dangerous: one can write ideas on it."

    In the 1990s I travelled many times to Sudan, then in the grip of the
    Islamist National Islamic Front regime which had declared jihad
    against all who opposed it - Muslims, Christians and traditional
    believers. That war killed two million, displaced four million and
    enslaved hundreds of thousands. I was privileged to help to rescue
    several thousand. I will never forget their heartbreak stories, such
    as little Deng's, aged about 6. As we talk, tears stream down his
    cheeks. He has just learnt that both his parents had been killed in
    the raid when he was abducted; he is now an orphan. But before we
    part, a little wistful smile appears and he says "At least I am home
    now, I am called my own name, Deng; I'm no longer called Abd [Arabic
    for slave]."

    I believe no one should be called "slave" in our world today. But
    there are at least 27 million slaves in our world. I am so passionate
    about this barbaric phenomenon that I have brought out a new edition
    of a book on modern slavery with three chapters about people into
    whose eyes I have looked who have been slaves - and their voices speak
    for those whose voices we cannot hear, because they are still
    enslaved.

    William Wilberforce's mission is far from accomplished. I believe we
    have a moral imperative to continue his mission.

    In the 1990s my passion for freedom led me to try to be a "voice for
    the voiceless" - for victims of oppression ignored by the big aid
    agencies and international media, often trapped behind closed borders.
    Big aid organisations can generally only visit places with the
    permission of a sovereign government. If a government is victimising a
    minority and denies access, humanitarian organisations such as the UN
    cannot reach those victims. I therefore established a small NGO,
    Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (Hart), to reach such people with aid
    and advocacy. One example: a small historically Armenian land,
    Nagorno-Karabakh, was cut off by Stalin from Armenia and reassigned to
    Azerbaijan. In the early 1990s Azerbaijan began ethnic cleansing the
    150,000 Armenians who lived there, unleashing full-scale war. With
    courage - and some miracles - the Armenians hung on to their historic
    land. A ceasefire was signed in 1994. Now, Hart supports a
    path-breaking Rehabilitation Centre there and I have just returned
    from my 80th visit.

    We try to serve and speak for other people denied their freedom and
    trapped in conflict, including the Rohingya Muslim, Shan Buddhist and
    Christian Kachin peoples in Burma; and the peoples of Sudan and South
    Sudan who have suffered too much for far too long.

    I am painfully aware that my endeavours are minuscule. But I believe
    that we who have freedom should use our freedom in the service of
    those denied theirs.

    HART is very small. We often feel overwhelmed by the enormity of our
    partners' needs on frontlines of faith and freedom around the world.
    We could feel almost paralysed. But we have a motto: "We cannot do
    everything, but we must not do nothing."

    I believe, if, together, we all do something, we really can make a difference.

    Baroness Cox's book This Immoral Trade was reissued in a revised and
    e-book edition in August 2013

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