Complaint against the UK in re: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

254 Pentonville Road, Suite 101 London N1 9JY England Her Excellency Michelle Bachelet Jeria High Commissioner for Human Rights Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Palais Wilson 52 rue des Pâquis CH-1201 Geneva Switzerland 12 July 2019 Your Excellency, I write as the Managing Director of the non-profit Network for Church Monitoring to ask you to urge the United Kingdom to accede to the First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the multilateral treaty that commits its parties to respect the civil and political rights of individuals, including the right to freedom of expression enshrined in Article 19 ICCPR and construed by the European Court of Human Rights in Handyside v. United Kingdom (1976).

The First Optional Protocol sets out a system by which the UN’s Human Rights Committee can receive and consider complaints from individuals who allege a violation of the ICCPR. But since the UK Government has not ratified the First Optional Protocol, individuals living in the UK are not currently permitted to submit written communications to the Committee.

Indeed, the UK is the only European Union member state (prior to its possible exit from the EU in October 2019) and one of only three members of the Council of Europe not to have acceded to the Protocol.

My wife and I complain of an orchestrated campaign of harassment and intimidation by the UK’s Security Service (MI5) and/or Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) over a period dating back to 2003. We have exhausted all available domestic remedies and my claim has been dismissed by the European Court of Human Rights on the ground that it “did not disclose any appearance of a violation of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention or its Protocols”. Please see my Communication enclosed herewith. Paragraphs 49-55 outline why the Vatican and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church should be monitored.

We note the UK Government’s response in the sixth periodic report under the ICCPR that it does not see “a compelling need to accept individual petition to the UN” and that “the practical value to the individual citizen is unclear”. We believe that the UK Government should be urged to reconsider accession to the First Optional Protocol in order to guarantee effective and consistent protection of the full range of ICCPR rights to those living within its borders.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey Managing Director Network for Church Monitoring 1

DECLAN HEAVEY v. UNITED KINGDOM COMMUNICATION SUBMITTED FOR CONSIDERATION UNDER THE FIRST OPTIONAL PROTOCOL TO THE INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS Before: The United Nations Human Rights Committee Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights United Nations Office at Geneva Palais Wilson, 52 rue des Pâquis CH-1201 Geneva, Switzerland InfoDesk@ohchr.org Submitted by: Declan Heavey 254 Pentonville Road, Suite 101 London N1 9FQ United Kingdom Mobile: +44 (0) 7880 437 681 Email: dheavey@gmail.com Date: 12 July 2019

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Contents I.

APPLICANT/STATE CONCERNED

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A. Information concerning the Applicant of the Communication B. State party concerned

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II. ARTICLES VIOLATED/EXHAUSTION OF DOMESTIC REMEDIES/OTHER INTERNATIONAL PROCEDURES A. Articles of the Covenant violated B. Exhaustion of domestic remedies C. Other international procedures III. BACKGROUND FACTS A. B. C. D. E. F. G.

Living in Birmingham, 2003-06 Homeless on the streets in London, 2006-09 Living in a political ‘safe house’ in London, 2009-13 Brief stay in Brighton, 2013 Back to being homeless on the streets in London, 2013-14 Housed through Mayor of London’s Housing First, 2014 up to the present day On surveillance, free speech and the right to privacy

IV. VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 19 OF THE COVENANT A. Violation of Article 19 of the Covenant B. Why the Vatican and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church should be monitored

4 4 5 6 7 7 8 9 10 11 12 15 17 17 18

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I.

APPLICANT/STATE CONCERNED A. Information concerning the Applicant of the Communication

1. The Applicant in this Communication is Declan Heavey, a citizen of the Republic of Ireland who lives in London in the United Kingdom (UK). He was born on 4 September 1960 in Dublin and is a former physical education teacher. His wife is a naturalized Irish citizen born on 26 March 1965 in Madrid in Spain. She is a former social psychologist and lives with the Applicant in London. They came to England in 2003 from Ireland. They have no children.

The Applicant founded Network for Church Monitoring (N4CM) as a company limited by guarantee in 2011. This non-profit recognises the importance of secular government. The Applicant has been part-time employed as the Managing Director of N4CM since February 2014, and his wife part-time employed as the company’s Webmaster from the same date.

2. The Applicant and his wife were forced to live rough on the streets of London for almost four years in total from 3 November 2006 to 13 July 2009 (see paras. 20-22 below) and from 14 April 2013 to 17 May 2014 (see paras. 28-32 below). They were housed by the Mayor of London’s Housing First project in May 2014 but are facing the prospect of a lifeand-death struggle to stave off eviction from their home (see paras. 33-38 below). This notwithstanding that they are both part-time employed by N4CM. There are 235 distinguished academics and other intellectuals listed as Honorary Associates of N4CM, including 15 Nobel Laureates and eight knighted professors. And there are no less than 57 Nobel Laureates on N4CM’s news website Church and State: www.churchandstate.org.uk.

B.

State party concerned

3. The State Party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the Covenant or ICCPR) against which this Communication is directed is the UK. 4. The UK formally acceded to the ICCPR on 20 May 1976 but has yet to accede to the First Optional Protocol of the Covenant. Please see the cover letter with this Communication, in which the Applicant asks the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to urge the UK to accede to the First Optional Protocol in order to guarantee effective and consistent protection of the full range of ICCPR rights to those living within its borders.

II. ARTICLES VIOLATED/EXHAUSTION OF DOMESTIC REMEDIES/OTHER INTERNATIONAL PROCEDURES A. Articles of the Covenant violated 5. This case arises in relation to harassment, surveillance and interception of communications by the UK’s Security Service (MI5) and/or Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) over a period dating back to September 2003. It is submitted that the matter involves the violation of Article 19 of the Covenant, which attached special importance to free speech (see paras. 44-48 below). Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms formulates what is the core of free speech. “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression.” In an important interpretation of this article, the European Court in Handyside v. UK (1976) indicated that this “freedom of expression” should be construed as follows. It “is applicable not only to ‘information’ or ‘ideas’ that are favourably received, or regarded as inoffensive, or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population”. Such are the demands of 4

that pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness without which there is no “democratic society” (Cliteur, 2010).

B. Exhaustion of domestic remedies 6. Since 2003, the Applicant has repeatedly sought without success to put a stop to the harassment in its various forms. On 16 June 2010, the Applicant’s parliamentary representative, then Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone, wrote to then Home Secretary Theresa May (now-outgoing Prime Minister) laying out the Applicant’s concerns about the interception of his and his wife’s emails. In a letter dated 12 November 2010, then Security Minister Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones recommended the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) to investigate. The IPT is the only UK Tribunal to whom complaints about the intelligence services can be directed, and under section 67(8) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 there is no appeal from a decision of the IPT. The Applicant therefore exhausted all possible domestic remedies by bringing a claim before the IPT. 7. The Applicant lodged his complaint with the IPT on 10 August 2011 in respect of interception involving MI5 and/or GCHQ over a period dating back to September 2003. The Applicant also complained of harassment and surveillance that included, inter alia, the disabling of Internet access at home and in public libraries and the interfering with a website and blog involving one or both agencies.

8. The Applicant informed the IPT that he and his wife were living at the time in the same political ‘safe house’ former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler lived in for a couple of years (until 2007), where they were being harassed and victimised by their then live-in landlady, human rights activist Belinda McKenzie (see para. 23 below). According to BBC Panorama, Mr. Shayler “caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair”. He was jailed for seven weeks in 2002 for breaking the Official Secrets Act. It is unfortunate that Mr. Shayler declared himself the Messiah in 2007, became a squatter, and was subsequently ridiculed in the press and media for changing his name to Delores Kane. A New Statesman article published in September 2006 featuring Mr. Shayler and Ms. McKenzie gives no indication that Mr. Shayler believed he was the Messiah at that time; whilst a Daily Mail interview with him the following year reveals he believed himself to be Jesus by June 2007. He has never regained his normal self.

9. Within two weeks of the Applicant’s complaint to the IPT, Facebook had disabled his wife’s account; their web host SiteGround had twice blocked their IP address as a result of Distributed Denial of Service attacks that overwhelmed the server; Ms. McKenzie had served them with a backdated notice to vacate their flat; and Haringey Council had left the Applicant with his first shortfall in rent to pay (see para. 23(i) below). Nonetheless, the Tribunal dismissed the claim within three weeks, on 1 September 2011, stating as follows (see Annex 1, p. 22): The Investigatory Powers Tribunal has carefully considered your complaint and Human Rights Act claim, and has concluded that it is obviously unsustainable, and thus falls within the provisions of Rule 13(3)(a) of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal Rules 2000, such that, pursuant to s67(4) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, the Tribunal has resolved to dismiss the claim.

10. The Applicant remains aggrieved by the decision of the IPT to dismiss his claim so abruptly, and without calling upon information or evidence in addition to that provided by him, which he had informed the Tribunal was “wide-ranging”, including, inter alia, emails, letters, photographs, videos and other evidence from his wife’s Church and State Blog. This blog, which has been vandalised in various ways on countless occasions over the years, even 5

carried and still carries a screenshot of a Skype chat from January 2010 in which homophobic abuse by an anonymous perpetrator is hurled at an American scholar with whom the Applicant’s wife is communicating. It was also made known to the tribunal that the Applicant could adduce evidence other than his own. For example, third parties could have confirmed that phone calls from the Applicant had been cut off in mid-conversation and confidential and privileged correspondence sabotaged (see para. 42 below).

11. The IPT was created in October 2000 by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and given the power to investigate any complaints against GCHQ, MI5 or MI6, as well as complaints about surveillance operations mounted by the police or any other public bodies.

The Guardian reported on 5 March 2014 that the tribunal, which claims to be completely independent of the UK Government, is secretly operating from a base within the Home Office, by which it is funded. The newspaper found that the IPT had investigated about 1,500 complaints and upheld only 10, five of which concerned members of one family who had all lodged complaints about surveillance by their local council. No complaint against any of the intelligence agencies had ever been upheld. The discovery that the IPT is lodged within a Whitehall department has fuelled criticisms of the tribunal that has been levelled by rights groups, lawyers and complainants. The IPT’s critics complain that the secrecy is excessive and that its procedures are stacked so heavily in favour of the government and against complainants that it is fundamentally unfair. According to The Guardian, some senior lawyers have described the IPT as “Kafkaesque”, while one eminent barrister dismissed it as a “kangaroo court”. The newspaper also reveals that because of the secrecy surrounding the tribunal and the perception that it is unfair, many would-be complainants spurn it.

12. It is important to underscore that the discriminatory surveillance suffered by the Applicant and his wife is not an isolated event. Rather, it is emblematic of a larger pattern of surveillance by law enforcement officials in the UK that has been well-documented by international and domestic human rights bodies. For example, GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) specialises in the “4 D’s”: deny, disrupt, degrade, deceive. It has been branded by the press as the spy agency’s “deception unit”. Though its existence was secret until 2014, JTRIG has developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit engaged in “dirty tricks” like deploying sexual “honey traps” designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down Internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks and generally warping discourse online. Previous reporting on GCHQ had established its focus on what it regards as political radicalism. Beyond JTRIG’s targeting of Anonymous, other parts of GCHQ targeted political activists and groups deemed to be “radical”, even monitoring human rights NGOs. Simon Davies, founder of the London-based Privacy International, asked: “If spying on human rights NGOs isn’t off limits for GCHQ, then what is?”

C.

Other international procedures

13. The Applicant complained to the European Court of Human Rights on 19 October 2011. He invoked Articles 8 (right to respect for private and family life and correspondence) and 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights. He submitted in relation to Article 8 that the interference with his rights was not prescribed by the law, that it did not pursue any of the legitimate aims in Article 8(2), and that the interference was not necessary in a democratic society. With reference to Article 13, the Applicant alleged that he did not have an effective remedy.

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14. The European Court, sitting in a single-judge formation (V.A. De Gaetano assisted by a rapporteur), dismissed the Applicant’s claim within 14 weeks, on 24 January 2012. The Registry wrote in a letter of dismissal dated 31 January 2012 (see Annex 2, p. 23): In the light of all the material in its possession, and in so far as the matters complained of were within its competence, the Court found that they did not disclose any appearance of a violation of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention or its Protocols.

15. The Court’s letter of dismissal refers to the Applicant’s “application lodged on 5 September 2011”. In fact, the Applicant’s application was lodged with the Court on 19 October 2011. On 5 September 2011, the Applicant merely expressed his intention to lodge an application with the Court.

III. BACKGROUND FACTS 16. The Applicant believes that the activities complained of are directly linked to a 1997 High Court case in Ireland involving the Roman Catholic Hospitaller Order of St. John of God (also known as the St. John of God Order), and his and his wife’s subsequent move to England in 2003 as joint survivors of church abuse with a view to forming a network organisation. As reported by national press and radio, the four-day High Court case, which the Applicant successfully defended in person, was the first ever hearing of a ward of court action before a jury. The Applicant also applied to have the case heard publicly and – in another first in the history of the State – the ward of court process was opened to public scrutiny. The Applicant successfully argued that the action, which arose out of a family dispute over his late father’s will, was no more than an attempt by the State to cover up wrongdoing by the St. John of God Order in the mid-1980s (see Annex 4 and 5, pp. 25-27). In an opinion piece for The Irish Times, legal correspondent Carol Coulter wrote: “The fact that this all arose out of a disputed will raises the question that this law, with its serious consequences for the individual concerned, is open to being used in family disputes in such circumstances” (see Annex 3, p.

24).

17. The St. John of God Order is a Spanish Catholic order that carries out a wide range of health and social service activities in 389 centres and services in 46 countries. It provides mental health services, care for older people and services for children and adults with disabilities. The order was party to a controversial 2002 redress agreement with the Irish Government for survivors of institutional child abuse. The Government’s redress scheme indemnified 18 religious orders from claims made by abuse victims in exchange for their contribution to a compensation fund capped at €128 million. Unpublished estimates compiled by senior Department of Education officials put the final bill for the scheme at €1.47 billion, according to The Irish Times. In February 2017, ABC News in Australia reported that the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse had found that “forty per cent of the members of the Brothers of St John of God had allegations of child sexual abuse against them from 1950 until 2010”.

A. Living in Birmingham, 2003-06

18. The Applicant and his wife came to England from Ireland on 18 August 2003.

Almost immediately, they made contact with victims of church abuse. They settled in Birmingham, the UK’s second largest city. From the outset of their first tenancy, they were subjected to an orchestrated campaign of harassment and intimidation that included difficulties with Internet access, the maladministration of bank, electricity, gas and council tax accounts, as well as extensive flooding from the flat above them. All of this is well7

documented in the Applicant’s personal website (now offline), which contains, inter alia, photographs of the damage done to ceilings and walls of their flat. For two years, the Applicant and his wife survived off their savings until they were forced onto state benefits in July 2005. They moved within the city that same month.

19. On 27 September 2006, the Applicant’s joint claim for Jobseeker’s Allowance was terminated by the Department for Work and Pensions following an allegation by Erdington Jobcentre in Birmingham that he did not sign on for the benefit earlier that day (see Annex 6, p. 28). In fact, the Applicant and his wife were not scheduled to sign on until two days later. A simple check of the Applicant and his wife’s previous signings would have established that they signed on every second Friday, not every second Wednesday. Nonetheless, subsequent letters of complaint from the Applicant to the jobcentre and then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions John Hutton went unanswered and both he and his wife were forced into street homelessness in November 2006. They made the decision to take to the streets in London rather than in Birmingham to avail of a wider range of services for rough sleepers in the capital, and where they would have easier access to the Administrative Court Office in the High Court in London’s Royal Courts of Justice.

B.

Homeless on the streets in London, 2006-09

20. The first time the Applicant and his wife were forced into street homelessness, they lived rough on the streets of London for more than two-and-a-half years from 3 November 2006 to 13 July 2009. During this period, the Applicant’s claim in relation to the termination of his joint claim for Jobseeker’s Allowance was dismissed for want of a tribunal finding by the High Court (Judicial Review), the Court of Appeal and the European Court of Human Rights (see Annex 7, p. 29). This notwithstanding that the Applicant had been denied the internal appeals process whilst living in Birmingham, and thereby also a tribunal finding (see para. 19 above). The Applicant and his wife were forced to frequent church-run day centres for homeless people where they suffered harassment and violence. This is well-documented with crime reference numbers and other supporting evidence in the Applicant’s wife’s Church and State Blog. The Applicant’s wife has also blogged crime reference numbers and other corroborating evidence to establish that at night they endured harassment by the City of London Police as well as physical assaults including being urinated upon. One pre-meditated attack on the Applicant’s wife involved her being grabbed by the ankles whilst asleep in her sleeping bag and dragged out of a two-step porch and a good six metres down the street pavement.

21. Directed surveillance is essentially covert surveillance in places other than residential premises or private vehicles. The following are some examples, by no means exhaustive, that bear all the hallmarks of directed surveillance during this period of street homelessness: (i) On 22 September 2007, at a time when the Applicant was answering questions on the U.S.-based James Randi Educational Foundation Forum to try to raise some money to support him and his wife on the streets, his wife was viciously and repeatedly kicked while sleeping (crime reference no. CR/007884/07). (ii) On 29 February 2008, in an email to then Home Secretary Jacqueline Smith, the Applicant complained about the interception and sabotage of his communications and that all emails sent to him after 12 August 2007 had been moved to trash and over 300 draft documents deleted. Among the draft documents deleted were those that contained the names and email addresses of more than 2,500 scientists who had signed or may have been willing to sign the Applicant’s online petition in support of human embryonic stem cell 8

research, which had by then been signed by hundreds of distinguished scholars from around the world, including 22 (now 31) Nobel laureates. (iii) On 8 March 2008, three days after a reply from the Home Secretary stating that it was unlikely the Applicant’s emails were being intercepted, the Applicant and his wife’s then website in support of victims of church abuse was removed permanently from the Internet. (iv) On 18 June 2008, the same morning the Applicant was due to post his second Request for Priority to the European Court, all his personal documents (passport, etc.) and other items were stolen in the Dellow Day Centre run by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy (crime reference no. 4215697/08). It is a matter of written record that the centre subsequently refused to release CCTV coverage of the robbery to the police. None of the stolen items were recovered, nor were the homeless couple who carried out the robbery ever charged by the police or reprimanded by the centre for the robbery.

22. The Applicant complained in open correspondence about the targeted harassment in day centres and elsewhere to church leaders, senior police officers and politicians – all to no avail on any front. He and his wife survived financially by selling The Big Issue, a street magazine sold by homeless people. However, because of problems with Big Issue and other street vendors (such as encroachment on their registered pitches), the Applicant’s wife was forced on multiple occasions to approach people for change in Liverpool Street train station.

There she faced further harassment by the London Transport Police, which included on one occasion being frogmarched by two transport police officers out of the station and into the rain. On 13 July 2009, the Applicant and his wife made contact with human rights activist Belinda McKenzie through an American professor. Ms. McKenzie, who had previously housed MI5 whistleblower David Shayler for a couple of years (see para. 8 above), agreed that they could live in her home as tenants in an upstairs self-contained flat. She later wrote to the same professor that it was her expectation that her home would become an “in-house charity” for impoverished political activists supported by some kind of international fund.

C.

Living in a political ‘safe house’ in London, 2009-13

23. The Applicant and his wife lived under Ms. McKenzie’s roof from 13 July 2009 to 14 March 2013. Three months into their tenancy, on 9 October 2009, the Applicant’s joint claim for Jobseekers Allowance was reinstated (see para. 20 above). However, he and his wife continued to be the targets of a well-orchestrated campaign of harassment and intimidation from both internal and external sources. To take just one example of each from the last year of their tenancy: (i) On 24 January 2012, High Court Judge Mitting ruled that it was lawful for Haringey Council to leave the Applicant with a shortfall of £76.92 in rent to pay each month because the Council paid his annual rent liability. The Applicant was only able to meet these shortfalls out of his unemployment benefit for both his wife and himself of £111.45 per week because he paid rent inclusive of extraneous charges save telephone line. (ii) On 21 August 2012, Ms. McKenzie gave an undertaking to the County Court promising not to harass the Applicant and his wife following, inter alia, her builder’s removal of the door to their flat (see Annex 9, p. 31). The Independent Police Complaints Commission upheld the Applicant’s appeal against the police investigation of the door removal “on information only”. Although harassment is a criminal offence, it was the Commission’s finding that “no further action” was required by the force because Ms. McKenzie had given the said undertaking to the court.

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24. On 17 October 2012, Deputy District Judge Peart issued an accelerated possession order giving Ms. McKenzie possession of the Applicant and his wife’s flat on 1 November 2012. At an appeal hearing on 7 December 2012, District Judge Alderson conceded that Ms. McKenzie’s claim for accelerated possession did not contain the correct paperwork. However, he set aside Peart J’s accelerated possession order and issued an order giving Ms. McKenzie possession of their flat on or before 21 December 2012. At an appeal hearing on 11 March 2013, Circuit Judge Cryan refused the Applicant permission to appeal to the Circuit Court against a decision by the District Judge Manners to refuse him a stay of eviction. Cryan J. had before him a newly issued note from Ms. McKenzie’s ex-husband, Dr. Nigel McKenzie, a consultant psychiatrist in Highgate Mental Health Centre, stating that the Applicant and his wife’s flat was needed for somebody with a mental illness. Cryan J. dismissed the Applicant’s request for permission to appeal on the basis that it had no reasonable prospect of success (see Annex 10, p. 32). The Applicant and his wife were evicted by the bailiff on 14 March 2013, three days after Cryan J. read his judgment.

25. In his permission to appeal skeleton argument, the Applicant provided Cryan J. with ample evidence that he and his wife had been experiencing an accommodation blockade through surveillance that included the interception of communications, the sabotage of flat viewings, and 41 recorded internet cuts in the preceding two weeks alone. The Applicant also pointed out that he and his wife had been refused assistance by Haringey Council, having been assessed by the Council as non-priority because they had no children, the Applicant’s wife was not pregnant, and they were not vulnerable as a result of age, disability, mental health issues, etc. Immediately upon eviction by the bailiff, the Applicant and his wife took the train to Brighton in the south of England in an attempt to break the accommodation blockade they had been experiencing. At the time, Brighton was described by needaproperty.com as “an ideal location to find flats”.

D. Brief stay in Brighton, 2013

26. Whilst staying in Bed and Breakfast accommodation in Brighton, the Applicant and his wife ran into the same accommodation blockade through surveillance that had been previously maintained against them in London. For three weeks from 14 March 2013 they were subjected to lengthy internet cuts at the B&B and over 40 letting agents failed to get back to the Applicant with a flat viewing. On 21 March 2013, they were denied assistance by Brighton and Hove City Council on the ground that they were not deemed to be sufficiently vulnerable, and the next day Brighton Housing Trust could only advise the Applicant to leave the city with his wife as soon as possible.

27. On 26 March 2013, having secured a commitment from a benefactor in America for an interest free loan to cover six months’ rent (to be paid back through Brighton and Hove City Council’s Housing Benefit scheme), the Applicant finally got to view a one bedroom flat from the local newspaper. The landlord agreed to accept the Applicant’s deposit and six months’ rent up front with a credit reference; however, forty minutes after the landlord texted his email address for this reference, he withdrew his offer of the flat by text (see Annex 11, p.

33). Thereafter, the Applicant was unable to obtain a flat viewing in Brighton or the surrounding areas despite talking with several landlords over the telephone who had advertised in the local newspaper and/or on the Gumtree website. He and his wife returned to London on 5 April 2013 in a final desperate attempt to avoid becoming street homeless for the second time.

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E. Back to being homeless on the streets in London, 2013-14 28. As a direct consequence of the accommodation blockade through surveillance that the Applicant and his wife experienced in London and in Brighton, they were forced back into street homelessness in London on 14 April 2013. St. Mungo’s is a charity and housing association working directly with people who are sleeping rough. It’s CEO Howard Sinclair had written in The Guardian that there were occasions when the charity accommodated rough sleepers straight from the streets. However, St. Mungo’s (then called Broadway Homelessness and Support) denied the Applicant and his wife support to find rented accommodation. This notwithstanding that they: a) had been provided by a benefactor in America with the funds to cover the deposit on a flat and one months’ rent up front; b) had a perfect rent payment track record; and c) had a wholly acceptable reference letter from Belinda McKenzie, their previous landlady, stating that they “kept the property in very good order, were quiet and paid the rent on time”.

29. In August 2013, the Applicant filed a claim in the High Court for judicial review against then Commissioner of the City of London Police Adrian Leppard and then Home Secretary Theresa May. He argued that it was unreasonable for the City of London Police to refuse to ask St. Mungo’s (then abbreviated to Broadway) to help him and his wife find rented accommodation whilst at the same time threatening them with hosings by street cleaners. On 6 February 2014, Deputy High Court Judge Bidder ruled: “The refusal of the First Defendant to ask the charity ‘Broadway’ to engage or help the Claimant and his wife with their welfare or accommodation is not arguably unreasonable. It is not its job to intervene in any disagreement between a charity and those seeking that charity’s help” (see Annex 12, p. 34).

No disagreement with this charity was identified in court papers other than its refusal without explanation to engage or help the Applicant and his wife around finding rented accommodation.

30. On 7 January 2014, the Applicant and his wife enrolled on a three-month rolling winter night shelter programme run by West London Churches Homeless Concern (WLCHC).

Two days later they attended Barnsbury Jobcentre to sign on for Jobseeker’s Allowance only to be told that the Applicant’s joint claim had been terminated. It was only after the Applicant filed a claim in the High Court for judicial review against then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith on 22 January 2014 that the Department for Work and Pensions conceded that there were no grounds for terminating the Applicant’s claim and paid the full arrears owed to him. High Court Judge Phillips subsequently ruled that the Applicant “has obtained the relief he sought in these proceedings, which are now therefore academic” (see Annex 8, p. 30). The day before the Applicant lodged his claim with the High Court, on 21 January 2014, he and his wife were approached by a WLCHC caseworker about an offer of a flat made by the Single Homeless Project (SHP). They were told that the rent for the flat would be paid by the local authority if they could get back on Jobseeker’s Allowance or alternatively, as suggested by the Applicant, they could produce two employment contracts that would pay them the equivalent of the benefit for them both of £6,000 per year. In February 2014, following a donation from an American benefactor, the Applicant and his wife provided SHP with two such contracts as employees of N4CM. They were then told that the accommodation in question was uninhabitable due to an “electrical fault” but may come through for them some time in the future.

31. On 14 April 2014, the same morning WLCHC’s winter shelter programme ended, the Applicant attended Charing Cross Hospital where he was diagnosed with asthma as well as a chest infection (see Annex 13, pp. 35-36). He attended the Royal London Hospital the following night, the Discharge Summary stating: “Diagnosed with asthma and a concurrent 11

chest infection on 14th April at first attendance to Charing Cross Hospital. Was assessed and advised to continue with current treatment, but if situation worsening to reattend as chest infection could worsen to pneumonia. If possible, should try to find accommodation off the street”. The following day, on 16 April 2014, Haringey Council refused the Applicant and his wife temporary accommodation whilst they were waiting for SHP to come through with their offer of a flat on the ground that the Discharge Summary had not established a “priority need” for such accomodation. On 22 April 2014, as the Applicant and his wife were about to bed down (the Applicant was still quite ill), two City of London Police officers threatened the Applicant’s wife with arrest on the trumped-up charge of assaulting a police officer if they did not pack up immediately and move on. The Applicant’s wife wrote an account of this incident in her Church and State blog the following day. It reads in part as follows: Last night a Barbican security guard called the police as we were bedding down and PC 667CP and PC 602CP from Bishopsgate Police Station were on us in minutes. They threatened to dump our belongings on the pavement if we didn’t move on immediately, which then became they were going to come around later with street cleaners to have us hosed out, and which then became two female officers were going to arrest me later on the trumped-up charge of assaulting a police officer. (I immediately thought of an article I read a couple of weeks ago about a gang of Romanian rough sleepers who had been terrorising residents, tourists and shopkeepers for two years around Marble Arch, one of the capital’s best known and most central landmarks, because the police could do nothing about them.) We eventually decided to spend the night in King’s Cross train station rather than risk my arrest on such a trumped-up charge, and today we have decided that we have no choice now but to spend our nights sleeping on night buses until the Single Homeless Project come through with their offer of a flat, first tabled on 21 January.

32. The two police officers involved in this incident reported to the City of London Police Professional Standards Directorate (PSD) in response to a complaint the Applicant made against them on 1 May 2014 (complaint reference: CO/0021/14). On 27 August 2014, the City of London Police PSD made the decision not to uphold the Applicant’s complaint, choosing instead to accept the officers’ word against his. Seemingly no weight was applied to the fact that the Applicant and his wife risked the Applicant contracting pneumonia by sleeping on night buses the night after the incident and until such time as SHP’s offer of a flat would materialise, if at all. It in fact took almost month from the date of incident for the Applicant and his wife to be finally housed in the flat that had been declared by the SHP unhabitable three months previous due to an electrical fault.

F.

Housed through Mayor of London’s Housing First, 2014 up to the present day

33. On 17 May 2014, the Applicant and his wife were housed through the Mayor of London’s Housing First project in a St. Mungo’s Clearing House property owned by Peabody (then called Family Mosaic Housing Association), with support provided by SHP. Housing First is an internationally acclaimed programme for entrenched rough sleepers, the core principle of which is the provision of permanent accommodation and non-compulsory support (Johnsen and Teixeira, 2010). This was reflected in the then funding agreement between the Greater London Authority (GLA) and SHP, which provided at Schedule 1 that “[C]lients who meet the criteria for a Housing First offer will be offered long term tenancies…. Long term tenancies would mean for a minimum of two years with the possibility to extend and preferably for the lifetime of the client.” Having been informed they had the possibility to extend their tenancy beyond the expiry of the initial term, the Applicant and his wife spent on furnishings the deposit they had for accommodation. Their flat came without furnishings save cooker, fridge and carpets. The Applicant even had to install shelves that had been removed from the kitchen and replace curtain rails, curtains and net curtains that had been removed from the bedroom and living room windows. Subsequently, British Telecom would remove a 12

loosely fitting master telephone socket and replace it with a new socket securely fitted on the same wall.

34. Less than four months into the Applicant and his wife’s tenancy, on 4 September 2014, the Applicant received an email from SHP informing him for the first time that Housing First was a pilot scheme ending in March 2015 and that they would be referred to the GLAcommissioned St. Mungo’s Clearing House. The Clearing House departs significantly from Housing First, in that accommodation may not be permanent nor support voluntary. The latter meant that the Applicant and his wife may have been required to comply with holistic support plans. They were deeply concerned by this turn of events, especially considering the problems they were having with their support from SHP. First, the Applicant received on 21 July 2014 a support plan from SHP that stated that he and his wife “appear very grandiose in their thinking” and that “they both demonstrate symptoms of mental ill health”. The Applicant then discovered that not only had SHP passed this information onto the Clearing House, but they had also submitted to the service inaccurate information about him and his wife in relation to their employment status and financial standing. On 8 May 2015, District Judge Brooks ruled that SHP had “acted unlawfully in holding or uploading information about the [Applicant] relating to his debts, his employment status and an alleged mental health condition”. Having received assurance from SHP that all this information would be removed from their and the Clearing House’s websites, Brooks J. ordered SHP to pay damages to the Applicant for distress of £750 (see Annex 14, p. 37).

35. The Applicant repeatedly protested to the GLA his and his wife’s open-ended referral to Clearing House, but to no avail. His application for permission to apply for a judicial review against the GLA was dismissed by High Court Judge Lavender on 12 August 2015.

The Applicant then filed a claim in the County Court at Central London against the GLA, citing Connors v UK (2004) in saying that the legal framework applying to the referral decision that deprived the Applicant of a review did not provide him and his wife with sufficient procedural protection of their rights. At a preliminary hearing on 3 February 2016, District Judge Silverman ruled that the County Court did not have jurisdiction to hear the case (see Annex 15, p. 38). However, Silverman J. elicited a commitment from counsel acting for the GLA that round table talks between the Applicant and St. Mungo’s would be arranged. A subsequent meeting between the Applicant, St. Mungo’s CEO Howard Sinclair and then Clearing House Manager Kate Moon resulted in a written support agreement that specifies that the Applicant and his wife will not be subjected to “assessment” or “support plans” and that their “support is voluntary”. This then paved the way for the renewal of their tenancy on 16 May 2016 on the exact same terms as the original tenancy agreement.

36. The Applicant and his wife’s tenancy agreement was renewed like-for-like for the second time last year, but only when court proceedings against St. Mungo’s were imminent two months after the Applicant complained that the decision not to reissue another tenancy for two former rough sleepers with support needs amounted to a type of harassment and a death threat. Since then, the Applicant has been battling St. Mungo’s from pillar to post to stabilise his and his wife’s tenancy (see Annex 16, pp. 39-41). First it was problems with inaccurate case notes, which got more serious in August 2018 when the Applicant discovered that notes St. Mungo’s assured District Judge Avent the year previous had been rectified by them were in fact being held under the Applicant’s wife’s name. Last year the Applicant also had to battle St. Mungo’s for his own Tenancy Sustainment Team (TST) caseworker and to stave off enforced joint visits. This year the Applicant has already had to twice battle St. Mungo’s to have removed outrageous notes that were inputted into their system on both occasions without his knowledge or consent. Last month, in June 2019, the Applicant’s professional referee observed: “This obscene disregard for your rights seems to continue unresolved!” The 13

following week, the Applicant’s wife received from her TST caseworker a completed volunteer reference form that had been sent to St Joseph’s Hospice. This caseworker left blank a question relating to the Applicant’s wife’s “honesty, reliability and temperament”, and has not explained her reason for not completing this section of the form. The Applicant’s wife’s application was not successful.

37. On 8 April 2019, the Applicant complained to Mayor of London Sadiq Khan about a blockade across London on his volunteer applications notwithstanding his support from the Mayor-commissioned St. Mungo’s TST. For over two years, the Applicant fought without success to secure a long-term volunteer position through Newham Council’s Active Newham.

He had applied to Active Newham in 2016 to befriend an older or isolated person in his community. The Applicant is a former physical education teacher who has taught in Glenstal Abbey, one of Ireland’s top schools. He is cleared by the police to work with children and adults, and has a high-quality written recommendation from his professional referee (see Annex 17, p. 42). Last year the Applicant became an accredited UK Athletics assistant coach to further enhance his volunteering applications. Nonetheless, the supporting emails that St. Mungo’s TST has written to Active Newham, Bromley by Bow Centre, Sense and KEEN London have either been ignored or overlooked by the recipients. The case notes most recently rectified by St. Mungo’s TST relate to his TST caseworker’s supporting emails to learning disability organisations for voluntary roles that require no specialist skills or experience. For example, in the case of KEEN London, the Applicant’s TST caseworker’s supporting email of 15 March 2019 and follow-up phone calls on 22 March and 2 April 2019 have in effect all been ignored. In an image attachment of notes that the Applicant received on 1 May 2019, the agreed-upon notes relating to this TST caseworker’s two phone calls to KEEN London were omitted from the record. The Applicant has had no contact with KEEN London. It cannot, therefore, be suggested that he compromised this support.

38. The Applicant and his wife have never been able to get the basic and reliable support they need from St. Mungo’s TST. Newham Council has twice suspended the Applicant’s Housing Benefit following erroneous notifications from the Department for Work and Pensions that he and his wife had vacated. The Applicant has even had difficulties securing their address from misconduct by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs staff, and despite several high-level complaints related in part to an unauthorised update to their address. It has been acknowledged by the GLA in court papers that the Applicant and his wife can live independently – they do not have addictions or mental illness or behavioural issues. Their needs are solely related to the harassment, discrimination, intimidation and victimisation they routinely face. They are extremely concerned that next year they will be forced to challenge a destabilising periodic tenancy, as opposed to fixed term, in a court action against St. Mungo’s for dereliction of duty and violation of their human rights. This notwithstanding that it has become abundantly clear that they have been and continue to be deprived of satisfactory tenancy sustainment support. As the matter stands, therefore, there is a threat to life and wellbeing in this case considering the following range of factors as applicable: (i) The Applicant has a history of respiratory diseases such as pneumonia, bronchitis and other lung infections. Both he and his wife doubt he has the respiratory health to survive even another year or two on the streets. The Applicant is in his late fifties (58), and during their first period of homelessness, he was hospitalised with pneumonia in December 2006 and with a viral infection in October 2007. Near the end of their second period of homelessness, in April 2014, he was diagnosed with asthma as well as a chest infection (see para. 31 above).

14

(ii) Back on the streets the Applicant and his wife will be restricted to sleeping on night buses in all sorts of weather (money permitting), notwithstanding the Applicant’s asthma and now increased susceptibility to respiratory disease. They were forced into this predicament prior to coming off the streets the second time because of an excessive use of force by police officers to move them out of where they were sleeping. This included the Applicant’s wife being threatened with arrest on the trumped-up charge of assaulting a police officer (see paras. 31-32 above). Since the subsequent escalation of the migration crisis in Europe, the police have been given more powers to crack down on rough sleeping and need less to resort to unlawful measures. (iii) Both the Applicant and his wife have serious concerns about the health care the Applicant has or has not received over the years from National Health Service (NHS) England. Prior to his hospitalisation with pneumonia in 2006, he lost consciousness while vomiting and could have easily died had his wife not been with him. Chelsea and Westminster Hospital discharged him 42 hours after admission whilst still unwell (into the shivering cold and dense fog), placing him at risk. The Applicant most recently complained to NHS England about emergency dental treatment he received in January 2018. He complained that he had a nerve removed from a tooth but was only prescribed antibiotics after the tooth had erupted within days of the treatment, the tooth itself being extracted a month to the day after the nerve had been removed. NHS England did not uphold any aspect of the Applicant’s complaint.

G. On surveillance, free speech and the right to privacy 39. The Applicant and his wife’s Church and State website has been removed from the Internet on five distinct occasions. For example, in May 2012, Just Host, the domain’s then registrar, changed the domain name server records without permission and disabled the Applicant’s wife’s facility to correct these records herself. Shortly after the domain was transferred to SiteGround’s registrar, the site was vandalised to such an extent that the Applicant’s wife was advised by the WordPress theme developer to start afresh with a new theme. N4CM Chairman Dr. Stephen D. Mumford has been paying for the hosting of the Church and State website since December 2010. Nonetheless, the site continues to be attacked in various ways, such as with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. In October 2015, SiteGround responded: “We have blocked the network that is being used by that user agent and now the server should remain working normally.” There have subsequently been 2,117 recorded blocks on access to the Church and State since July 2016; and unprecedentedly, the site was the target of five full DDoS attacks in May 2019 lasting for as long as 24 hours at a time. SiteGround is paid $1,000 per year to host the site and manage the server.

40. The Applicant’s wife has encountered numerous problems with Facebook. In August 2011, then Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone wrote to Facebook on the Applicant’s behalf, asking that they explain why his wife had been barred (see Annex 18, p. 43). The bar was subsequently lifted; however, since December 2015, Facebook has blocked her from posting to groups she belongs to 58 recorded times lasting for as long as 12 days at a time, and seldom with any explanation. In December 2015, then Shadow Home Office Minister Lyn Brown made an enquiry on the Applicant’s behalf to Facebook UK and Ireland Managing Director Steve Hatch, asking if he could explain why his wife was being blocked (see Annex 19, p. 44). To the best of the Applicant’s knowledge, Mr. Hatch never replied to this letter. The Applicant’s wife only ever posts to groups that are specific to an article’s subject and that she is well familiar with, and she only ever posts articles that she has already published on the Church and State website. Facebook’s concerted campaign against Church and State escalated in November 2017 after the site topped more than 3 million hits over the previous eleven 15

months. Subsequently, Facebook’s blocks have gone from 47 days in 2017 to 179 days in 2018 plus 109 days this year. Nonetheless, Church and State gets hundreds of thousands of hits - 2.3 million hits in 2018 despite the equivalent of six months of blocks; and 3.2 million hits this year despite over 3 months of blocks. Since 2 May 2015, Facebook has been blocking the page listing all the groups the Applicant’s wife belongs to (72 days), and as usual without an explanation. She has reported this block to Facebook five times without eliciting a response.

41. In October 2017, SiteGround’s solicitors told the Applicant to remove a popular article from the Church and State website for alleged copyright infringement or the site would be disabled pending his legal challenge by counter notice. The Applicant’s wife removed the article even though it had a Creative Commons licence applied to it, as do all Addicting Info articles. Her Church and State blog has been attacked in various ways over the years: links have been broken and images exchanged, deleted or temporarily removed. So too have the Applicant and his wife’s laptops. For example, in December 2015, an attack on the Applicant’s wife’s web browsers prevented her from using her laptop to publish material on the Church and State website. She could not create a WordPress post, add images, or click on most of the platform’s buttons. She had posted a video of the attack on her blog before the browsers were returned to normal functioning the following afternoon. The Applicant pays British Telecom £900 per year for Superfast Fibre 2 Unlimited broadband with an average advertised speed of 67Mbps. Nonetheless, since September 2017, the internet connection speed on either his or his wife’s laptop has been reduced from anything between 1-74Mbps, frequently rendering it almost impossible to open a web page or send an email on the targeted laptop. Since 26 May 2017, their internet connection has been cut 326 recorded times lasting for as long as 3 1/4 hours at a time. And the bandwidth on their second BT YouView box is seldom sufficient for TV or Prime Video viewing irrespective of their laptop internet connection speeds. (Because of this, their TV usually operates off the TV aerial or their viewing restricted to the BBC iPlayer when all players and apps have not been disabled.) BT Executive Level Complaints has established that there is no problem with the Applicant and his wife’s telephone line and has only ever been able to find fault with their own equipment.

42. The Applicant further complains that the extent of the interference with his emails resulted in 2011 in the shelving of his and his wife’s petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research, which had by then been signed by 29 (now 31) Nobel laureates as well as hundreds of academics. In April 2010, an American professor wrote to Minister Featherstone: “I am truly appalled by the unlawful violation of the Heavey’s basic right to send and receive email without interference. I would be most grateful for anything you may be able to do by way of taking measures to correct this gross abuse.” Minister Featherstone’s subsequent letter to then Home Secretary Theresa May and the Applicant’s Human Rights Act claims to the IPT and European Court have had no effect; if anything, the situation has gotten substantially worse. In February 2019, 68 of the Nobel laureates emailed since the previous month had not seen their email, according to Mailtrack. On 21 April 2019, the Applicant’s MP Lyn Brown acknowledged by autoreply his complaint about the interception of email but hasn’t responded to it. Last month (June 2019), 155 of his and his wife’s emails went unread, including four reply emails to those who had just agreed to be listed as Honorary Associates of N4CM. The Applicant has also amassed evidence relating to incoming and outgoing mail delivery. For example, in May 2017, he complained to Royal Mail about the mishandling of his and his wife’s incoming mail following the loss in London of their employment contracts to the United States. He repeatedly complained about mail not being put through their letter box before he received £30 in compensation and a failed assurance from the Royal Mail Chief Executive’s Office that “the actions taken will prevent this happening again”. On 17 July 2018, the Applicant complained to the Office that their renewed Tenancy Agreement was 16

delivered through the bathroom window of another tenant’s flat. They can still find letters for them in the front hall of the property they live in.

43. The Applicant submits that the harassment, discrimination, intimidation and victimisation that he and his wife routinely experience is politically motivated, that it is the product of surveillance, and that there is no effective remedy. In June 2012, the Applicant received a response from the European Commission concerning the problems his wife encountered whilst seeking to renew her passport at the Irish Passport Office in London. She was told by a passport officer that her application could not be processed unless she surrendered the originals of all her proof documents, which then could only be returned to her by regular post. This was not something the Applicant was asked to do when he renewed his passport in December 2011. According to the European Commission Directorate-General for Justice, given that Irish law provides for passports to be issued and renewed to Irish Nationals, Ireland complied with its obligations under European Union law irrespective of how ‘burdensome’ or ‘unwarranted’ the requirements of the Irish authorities may have been (see Annex 20, p. 45). It is not open for the Commission to pursue a case further if there has been compliance by an authority with its obligations under European Union law. And the European Court of Human Rights has already dismissed the Applicant’s claim under Articles 8 (right to respect for private and family life and correspondence) and 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights, claiming that it “did not disclose any appearance of a violation of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention or its Protocols” (see paras. 13-15 above).

IV. VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 19 OF THE COVENANT A. Violation of Article 19 of the Covenant

44. Freedom of expression is protected under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Article 19 of the Covenant provides that: 2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, whether orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this Article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary: a) For the respect of the rights or reputations of others; b) For the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals.

45. The Applicant and his wife are indisputably targeted because they are imparting information through their Church and State website that is critical of church authorities, particularly the Vatican and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Physically silencing criticism or dissent through harassment and intimidation is an old phenomenon, and also applies to Internet users. This issue has been explored in the Special Rapporteur’s report to the General Assembly under the section on “protection of citizen journalists” (A/65/284). The types of action taken by States to limit the dissemination of content online not only include measures to prevent information from reaching the end-user, but also direct targeting of those who seek, receive and impart politically sensitive information via the Internet. Such actions are often aimed not only to silence legitimate expression, but also to intimidate a population to push its members towards self-censorship.

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46. Freedom of expression, as protected under Article 19 of the Covenant, has been recognised by international tribunals, national courts and commentators as vital not only to the development of the individual, but to the securing and protecting of democracy itself. As the UN Human Rights Committee has explained: “[T]he freedoms of information and of expression are the cornerstone in any free and democratic society. It is in the essence of such societies that its citizens must be allowed to inform themselves about alternatives to the political system/parties in power, and that they may criticize or openly and publicly evaluate their Governments without fear of interference or punishment” (Aduayom et al. v. Togo, Communication Nos. 422-24/1990 (1996), 7.4).

47. The right to freedom of expression and opinion extends to ideas deemed unpopular, shocking, offensive or disturbing. The Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of freedom of opinion and expression outlines this in a 2012 report: [R]estrictions must be formulated in a way that makes clear that its sole purpose is to protect individuals from hostility, discrimination or violence, rather than to protect belief systems, religions or institutions from criticism. The right to freedom of expression implies that it should be possible to scrutinize, openly debate and criticize, even harshly and unreasonably, ideas, opinions, belief systems and institutions, including religious ones, as long as this does not advocate hatred that incites hostility, discrimination or violence against an individual or a group of individuals.

48. This is, again, a stance that is supported by the European Court in Handyside v. UK (1976), where the Court decides that Article 10 (freedom of speech) of the European Convention on Human Rights is not only applicable to “information” or “ideas” that are favourably received, or regarded as inoffensive, or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that “offend, shock or disturb” the State or any sector of the population. As stated at the outset, there are 235 distinguished academics and other intellectuals listed as Honorary Associates of N4CM, including 15 Nobel laureates and eight knighted professors. And there are no less than 57 Nobel laureates on N4CM’s Church and State website. Indeed, these numbers would be indisputably far higher were it not for the blockage of the Applicant and his wife’s email over the years (see para. 42 above).

B.

Why the Vatican and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church should be monitored

49. If the Special Rapporteur was concerned that restrictions on criticising religions or institutions created problems under Article 19, the UN Human Rights Committee will surely find the harassment and intimidation that the Applicant and his wife endure to be troubling.

Sadly, the institution of the Roman Catholic Church appears to have become a political one above all else. To survive and expand for so many centuries it was compelled to become a political power, and it has become a financial power as well. Sometimes the Church undertakes activities that are political or economic under the guise of religion. But the image of the Catholic Church presented by the mainstream media does not reflect these realities.

50. N4CM Chairman Dr. Stephen D. Mumford, the founder and President of the North Carolina-based Center for Research on Population and Security, has written extensively about the grave threat to the future of humankind and the democratic institutions of the United States posed by the Catholic Church. He has revealed that the Church has exerted great influence on U.S. policy in population matters as a result of its intimidation of elected officials and the built-in reverence most Americans have for an ecclesiastical hierarchy. The teachings of the Church and its hierarchy’s insistence that these teachings be followed have resulted in an unintentional suppression of the substantial knowledge about the consequences of overpopulation. The main source of energy, organisation, and direction of the anti-abortion 18

movement in the United States and the movement to frustrate enforcement of U.S. immigration laws is the Catholic Church.

51. In his book, American Democracy and the Vatican, Dr. Mumford, who has been called to provide expert testimony before the U.S. Congress on the topic of world population growth as a national security threat, reveals that the Catholic Church in effect controls most governments in Latin America and many in Africa and the Philippines. Authorities in these countries live under constant intimidation by the Church, which can threaten to bring about the downfall of a regime by arousing its citizens through pastoral letters and other means should the government refuse to conform to the Church’s agenda. This ultimate step is ordinarily avoided through manipulation – by weeding out “troublemakers” before they rise to power. On the other hand, those who are loyal are well rewarded in their search for positions of power; they are assisted by the Church in their ascension to high positions in government.

Government leaders who owe their first loyalty to the Vatican represent different proportions of office holders in different countries.

52. Dr. Mumford cites the example of the Papal mediation in the boundary dispute between Chile and Argentina (1978-1985). In 1979, with approval from the minister of health of Chile, Dr. Ben Viel began setting up a female sterilization programme with $1 million worth of sterilization equipment provided by the International Planned Parenthood Federation in London. When the equipment arrived in Chile, a Father Ibanes Langlois, serving as a messenger for the Vatican, met with the president of Chile. There was then a disagreement between Chile and Argentina, almost bringing the two countries to war over the Beagle Channel, a strategic and potentially oil-rich waterway at the tip of South America. Chile and Argentina had agreed to let the pope mediate the dispute. Langlois informed the president that, if this sterilization equipment was not removed from Chile, the pope would favour Argentina in the settling of the Beagle Channel dispute. The president called in the minister of health and ordered him to get the sterilization equipment out of the country. Dr. Viel was so notified by the minister of health, and it was shipped out.

53. In a 1992 interview with Dr. Mumford, Prof. Milton P. Siegel, one of the founding fathers of the World Health Organization, detailed how the Vatican seized control of WHO family planning policy-making right from its earliest stages. (The videotape of this interview is available for public viewing for the first time on the Church and State website.) During the third World Health Assembly (1950), the Vatican threatened to kill WHO and start their own organisation if the director general did not stand up before the Assembly and specifically state that WHO would not get involved with family planning, which he duly did. WHO did not get involved at all for more than a decade. In its 69-year history, WHO has had a deplorable record in family planning. Its commitment has been minuscule, and even today family planning accounts for only a tiny fraction of its budget. In the mid-1990s the Vatican succeeded in having appointed as director of WHO’s Human Reproduction Program a professor from a Catholic University in Rome, Dr. Giuseppe Benagiano, the son of Pope Paul VI’s dentist. Dr. Benagiano promptly set out to kill any further clinical studies of a nonsurgical method of female sterilization called quinacrine sterilization (QS). At that time, QS had been accepted voluntarily by more than 50,000 Vietnamese women with no reported deaths or life-threatening complications.

54. As American scholar Paul Blanshard points out in his book American Freedom and Catholic Power, the Vatican has a full civil government with a flag, a police force, courts and postage stamps. It issues currency and passports to its citizens, and has a large and active diplomatic corps, headed by a Secretary of State with ambassadors called “nuncios”. The government is completely autocratic with all legislative powers vested in the pope. This 19

means that there is no separation of church and state. It also means that the Vatican claims jurisdiction “everywhere where there are Catholics”. It claims representation in the United Nations and functions like a nation-state in international gatherings at the same time that it functions like a church. Yet, politicians would never investigate the Vatican’s numerous attempts to influence or control nation states’ foreign or domestic policy because, like a chameleon, it would claim it was merely functioning as a church, not as a state. In fact, it is already so powerful that anyone who tried to investigate it would find such an endeavour a political liability.

55. The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from these observations is that the Catholic Church is skilfully manipulating governments and influencing international bodies of a purely secular nature. The Vatican uses its position not only to protect its autonomy from outside intervention, but to impose its view on the rest of the world. Numerous observers over the years, including Paul Blanchard, have correctly described the Catholic Church as a political institution cloaked in religion. As such, the Vatican and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church should be monitored by the likes BishopAccountability.org, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and N4CM. Declan Heavey Applicant 12 July 2019

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TABLE OF ANNEXES ANNEX 1:

MI5/GCHQ: Investigatory Powers Tribunal (2011)

22

ANNEX 2:

MI5/GCHQ: European Court of Human Rights (2012)

23

ANNEX 3:

Irish Wards of Court Office: The Irish Times (1997)

24

ANNEX 4:

St. John of God Order: Elliott Duffy Garrett Solicitors (1997)

25

ANNEX 5:

St. John of God Order: Provincial of All Ireland (1998)

27

ANNEX 6:

Department for Work and Pensions: Termination of benefits claim (2006)

28

ANNEX 7:

Department for Work and Pensions: European Court of HR (2008)

29

ANNEX 8:

Department for Work and Pensions: High Court Judge Phillips (2014)

30

ANNEX 9:

Belinda McKenzie: Undertaking to the Court not to harass (2012)

31

ANNEX 10: Belinda McKenzie: Possession Order by Circuit Judge Cryan (2013)

32

ANNEX 11: Brighton: Landlord’s texts (2013)

33

ANNEX 12: City of London Police: Order by High Court Judge Bidder (2014)

34

ANNEX 13: Charing Cross Hospital: Discharge Summary (2014)

35

ANNEX 14: Single Homeless Project: Order by District Judge Brooks (2015)

37

ANNEX 15: Greater London Authority: Order by District Judge Silverman (2016)

38

ANNEX 16: St. Mungo’s: Applicant further to pre-action letter (2019)

39

ANNEX 17: Newham Council: Reference for LD volunteering (2018)

42

ANNEX 18: Facebook: Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone (2011)

43

ANNEX 19: Facebook: Shadow Home Office Minister Lyn Brown (2015)

44

ANNEX 20: Irish Passport Office in London: European Commission (2012)

45

21

ANNEX1

22

ANNEX2

23

ANNEX3

24

ANNEX4

25

26

ANNEX5

27

ANNEX6

28

ANNEX7

29

ANNEX8

30

ANNEX9

31

ANNEX10

32

ANNEX11

33

ANNEX12

34

ANNEX13

35

36

ANNEX14

37

ANNEX15

38

ANNEX16

39

40

41

ANNEX17

42

ANNEX18

43

ANNEX19

44

ANNEX20

45