The Murdoch witchhunt Zimbabwe: a time to speak

PETER TATCHELL. S IS not a voice with which this newspaper always finds itself in wholehearted agreement; but his searching questioning of Mr Tim Lamb, chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, earlier this week, could hardly have been more to the point. "You wouldn't have played in Nazi Germany or in Cambodia under the Khmer rouge. How can you play with Mugabe when he is starving, torturing and murdering the people of Zimbabwe?"
The trouble is. of course, that English cricketers were probably saved from the ignominy of playing in Nazi Germany or in Pol Pot's Cambodia only by the fact that the Germans and Cambodians have never played cricket. English athletes did perform at the 1936 Olympics, from which Hitler derived huge international kudos. It might have been a better argument to say that English cricketers would not have played in South Africa under apartheid — not because of their own moral revulsion, but because human rights activists worldwide, backed up by Churches, governments and the United
Nations, had made it impossible for them to do so with impunity.
When they look around them today, English cricketers find a very different scene. Only belatedly did the government express any disapproval of the ECB's intention to go to Harare; and among activists, Peter Tatchell is a lone voice. All the former campaigners against sporting links with South Africa have remained resolutely silent. So for the most part (so far as we can discover) have been spokesmen on peace and justice issues within the Churches, including the Catholic Church — not only on the narrow issue of the Cricket World Cup, but on the long standing scandal of Mugabe's monstrous tyranny. Will they remain silent, now that Zimbabwean Christians in Bulawayo (Christians together for Justice and Peace) have asked the Zimbabwe Cricket Union "to stand in solidarity with our suffering.
oppressed and neglected people and to play the World Cup matches outside this country"?
"IT WOULD BE good to think", this newspaper said before Christmas. "that with Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor's Newsnight interview last week the current onslaught on him and on the Catholic Church in this country, sparked off yet again by the paedophile activities of Fr Michael Hill. might have come to an end." The Cardinal had grasped the nettle, and suffered himself to be grilled by Jeremy Paxman. He had subsequently sent all the papers relating to cases of alleged paedophile abuse by Catholic clergy in his former diocese to a legal expert, for an independent asessement of his handling of this grievous problem: the findings were that except in the case of Fr Michael Hill, he had behaved impeccably — in Fr Hill's case, he had already many times expressed his sorrow at his own misjudgment, and on Newsnight he did so yet again.
Quite simply, we can have confidence that there are no new paedophile scandals involving the Cardinal's time as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton to be laid at his door. it would be folly indeed to have gone through what he has suffered and not to have taken the opportunity to reveal any other lurking scandals known to him: and the Cardinal is not a fool.
But certain elements in the media notably the Murdoch Press — which came under hostile scrutinity over their coverage of this affair from other news papers at the time, have a vested interest in vindicating themselves. As we wrote at the time, "The Times, in particular, emerges from this story with very little credit; truly, the gutter press is no longer confined to the tabloids". Now, the Times's stablemate the News of the World. has attempted to revive this ignoble witchhunt with a grotesque story, that Bishop Howard Tripp. auxiliary Bishop of Southwark, on behalf of Cardinal Cormac, "spent 30 minutes with [Fr Michael] Hill in his prison cell and told him "the Church will give you £50,000 to let you disappear". This ridiculous fable was given credence by The Times (but by no other newspaper) the following day. The Cardinal has, of course, denounced the story as "totally false", and the Cardinal and Bishop Tripp have filed a formal complaint to to the Press Complaints Commission.
Before Christmas, the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Revd Crispian Hollis, said that -it does not help to castigate the media for the bad coverage we have been given; they, by and large, are doing their job". But there are those in the media who are not doing what should be their job: to tell the truth.
Where there really is a witchhunt, Catholics are not only entitled to protest: it is their duty to so so.