Martin Henry

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is dead. He died last Sunday at the ripe old age of nearly 90.

Solzhenitsyn is one of the great icons of freedom in the 20th century, that terrible century of totalitarian rule. The Soviet Union - which persecuted Solzhenitsyn, locked him up in its Gulag, took away his citizenship and expelled him - is also dead. Solzhenitsyn, who was born in December 1918, only 14 months after the 1917 October Russian Revolution, outlived that oppressive system by 17 years.

His literary works and stubborn personal courage helped to destroy the totalitarian Soviet system and with it, communism in most of the rest of the world. As one obituary puts it, his writings "inspired millions with the knowledge that one person's courage and integrity could help defeat the totalitarian machinery of an empire".

In 1974, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union for "systematic activities incompatible with the holding of Soviet citizenship". He first lived in Switzerland, then in the United States for a total of 20 years, before returning to post-Soviet Russia in 1994. By the time he was stripped of citizenship and expelled from his homeland, his first and great novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, had been translated into 79 languages. On March 5, 1981, I bought the little pocket-size novel of just over 100 pages in hard cover for J$5.65 and quickly devoured it. In that little space, Solzhenitsyn detailed the daily, soul-destroying grind of life in the Soviet labour camps in the story of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, his fictional self.

Grand gala A Blow-out

I was quite disappointed in not getting tickets for the family for the Independence Grand Gala. It was evident from early on Tuesday that the event was going to be a blow-out when free tickets could not be found in any outlet. With the Grand Gala having petered out and last being held five years ago in 2003 in a disappointingly compressed form, the new government took a huge gamble in bringing it back now, and won.

Viewed on television, it was an excellent, well-organised event. But nothing to excess! As the hours progressed, I was glad, after all, that I hadn't got through to taking my young foster grandchildren to the National Stadium. I started attending the Manley galas as a teenager and later on took my own children. It is a great way to connect with Jamaica.

This year, I particularly liked the conscious balancing of cultural elements and groups. And I also very much liked the presentation of the various arms of the Jamaican state and its government with appropriate commentary by the MCs. There was such a rich outpouring and range of activities this year for Festival, Emancipation and Independence!

People need patriotic things to rally around. Though not quite on the same scale of significance, the return of the Independence Grand Gala is a stroke of genius like P.J. Patterson's restoration of Emancipation Day in 1997. In solidarity, I attended the Emancipation vigil in Spanish Town Square where the freedom proclamation was read by the governor.

As a liberty scholar and advocate, I have always felt that Emancipation is by far our most important historical event for commemoration, not Independence. By happy accident, our Independence Day is close to Emancipation Day, giving us 'Emancipendence'. This is a wonderful time not just for commemoration and celebration, but for sober reflection on the maintenance of our freedoms.

balancing our civil liberties

This year's Emancipendence comes at a time of intense debate about balancing our civil liberties and security concerns in the face of escalating criminal violence, which is the biggest, ugliest blot on our Independence.

Like Solzhenitsyn, we too, in the majority, have had our Gulag, the Gulag of slavery. Indeed, as Rex Nettleford keeps pointing out, both the enslaved and the enslavers were trapped and imprisoned by the system in a common jail.

The Soviet Gulag was deliberately intended to strip people of their dignity, their personhood, and their capacity for resistance, making them totally compliant to the order of oppression. The slave system had the same objectives, as Orlando Patterson has masterfully set out in that painful book of his, Slavery and Social Death. "Slavery," he commences, "is one of the most extreme forms of the relation of domination, approaching the limits of total power from the view point of the master, and of total powerlessness from the view point of the slave."

As Patterson, himself the progeny of Jamaican slaves, goes on to enquire: "If the slave no longer belonged to a community, if he had no social existence outside of his master, then what was he? And he answers: "The response in almost all slave-holding societies was to define the slave as a socially dead person." There is no doubt in my mind that New-World slaves viewed their emancipation in resurrection terms. Their deep attachment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the quintessential Liberator, the Resurrection and the Life, provides powerful evidence. Solzhenitsyn himself came back to the Christian faith from being enamoured with Marxism during his youth - which betrayed both him and freedom - and spent the rest of his life advocating that freedom can only be grounded in an adequate faith and morals.

Slavery is behind us. We face no imminent outright threat of totalitarianism, like say, our brethren in Zimbabwe. What should be of significant concern to us is the erosion of civil liberties, which is a constant threat in every state. The matter is of particular significance as we struggle to balance civil liberties with safety and security concerns.

preventive detention

While preventive detention is hotly debated, there is hardly a mention of the charter of rights intended to enlarge the fundamental rights and freedoms of the Independence Constitution and which has been pending for a decade or more. The preamble of the charter begins with the declaration: "... All persons in Jamaica are ... entitled to preserve for themselves and future generations the fundamental rights and freedoms to which they are entitled by virtue of their inherent dignity as individuals and as citizens of a free and democratic society."

Martin Henry is a communications consultant who may be reached at medhen@gmail.com. Feedback may also be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.