This story was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 28, August 21-27, 2005

Lennox Hinds: Unlikely Lawyer

Prof. Lennox Hinds, who sat in the Presidium of Judges of an International People’s Tribunal that indicted President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for human rights violations, hardly looks like a lawyer and didn’t originally intend to be one. He decided to become a lawyer amid the advent of the civil rights movement in the U.S. in the 1960s, and nearly 40 years later he’s still at it.

BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat

You’d hardly think he’s a lawyer if you didn’t know he is one – what with an earring on his left ear – something that is not usually associated with lawyers, who are known for being very formal in their attire. But a lawyer he is, and an internationally renowned one at that.

Lennox Hinds, 65, permanent representative of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) to the United Nations (UN), sat Aug. 19 in the Presidium of Judges in an International People’s Tribunal that indicted President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for human rights violations committed under her watch.

The IPT conclude the International Solidarity Mission (ISM) that investigated allegations of human rights violations against the Arroyo regime.

A total of 4,207 cases of human rights violations committed by the Arroyo administration from January 2001 to June 2005 were presented to the IPT that convened at UP Diliman. The cases affected 232,796 individuals, 24,299 families and 237 communities. At least 400 were victims of summary execution, while 110 were victims of forced disappearances. Twenty of those killed were human rights workers.

The cases range from extra-judicial killings or summary executions, assassinations, massacre, disappearances, torture, forced evacuation and displacement, illegal arrest and detention, and other violations constituting crimes against humanity.

The IPT deliberated for nearly a whole day at the Film Institute of the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman, Quezon City, and Hinds looked tired after the event. But he found some time to answer questions from reporters.

Asked whether he had anything to say to Arroyo, Hinds replied: “I would ask her why has she failed to investigate the allegation of extrajudicial killings, kidnappings, and massacres that have occurred. Why hasn’t she investigated and come out with a report which could refute what has been said here?”

The IPT found Arroyo guilty of crimes against humanity and urged foreign governments to withdraw support for her government, while at the same time resolving to support the campaign to oust her.

But Hinds admitted that the verdict of the IPT has no “real” legal effect, and would not result in the arrest of Arroyo.

It is more of a “political weapon,” he said. “It is sent around the world and so on and so forth, and the impact then is on world opinion,” he said. “First of all it is domestic opinion then world opinion, because people in the world have seen evidences and will cause the government being indicted to have problems in its foreign relations.”

Hinds, who teaches at the Rutgers University Law School in New Jersey where he took his law degree, is known around the world as an expert in international humanitarian law. But a lesser-known fact about him is that law was not his original career.

He originally took chemistry at the City College of New York in Manhattan, and did post-graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Minnesota. As chemist, he worked first for Charles Pfizer & Company and then at Cities Service Research & Development Company.

His experience with exploitation in the corporate world, as well as the advent of the civil rights campaign in the 1960s, made him decide to shift careers from chemistry to law. He got into the civil rights movement, fighting against racial segregation in the U.S. as a member of the Congress of Racial Equality; as well as campaigning for housing, education, and employment for Black Americans.

After receiving his law degree, Hinds worked for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and eventually became director of the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCOBL) of the U.S. and Canada. The NCOBL, he says, had as clients personalities and organizations who traditional civil rights organizations considered as too radical for them to defend: among them the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), South West African People’s Organization (a Namibian liberation movement), and the Liberation Movement for Angola.

He is best known to have served as legal counsel for former South African President Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC), which for decades waged an armed struggle against apartheid in the said country.

Mandela was once labeled a “terrorist,” but he is now hailed worldwide as an anti-racist hero. Does Hinds see any similarities between Mandela’s experience and the plight of political groups in the Philippines that have been named “terrorist” organizations?

“Yes, Mandela was declared a terrorist at one time, and most groups and individuals who have been fighting for liberation against a repressive regime are declared to be terrorists,” he said. “George Washington was. Thomas Jefferson was. All of those who signed the Declaration of Independence – the British government at that time had ‘Wanted’ posters for them – they were wanted, dead or alive. If the American Revolution had been lost, they would have been hanged.”

“So most regimes who face opposition – especially if there’s an armed struggle – describe those who fight against them as common criminals, and in today’s parlance, terrorists,” he added.

Aside from being the permanent representative to the UN of the IADL – of which he is also the vice chairman – Hinds has been teaching full-time at the Rutgers University School of Law since 1978, the same year he co-founded the Stevens, Hinds and White which he continues to manage. At 65, he continues the work he started as a young civil rights activist in the late 1960s, and shows no sign of throwing in his towel. Bulatlat 

© 2004 Bulatlat ■  Alipato Publications

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