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Citizens Inquiries and Peoples’ Tribunals are ways for ordinary people to highlight problems that politicians, corporations and governments would rather keep a lid on and they can catalyse real and lasting change.
By Jacquelene Pearson
Former Dean of Law at Sydney’s Macquarie University, Associate Professor Gill Boehringer, has been participating in and contributing to citizens inquiries, peoples’ tribunals, and the like, for over 10 years. He says they are “quite a movement these days”.
Boehringer is about to be one of eight experts on the panel for the first Citizens Inquiry looking at the health impacts of aging coal-fired power plants in NSW.
“About 10 or 11 years ago I was invited to join a Peoples’ Tribunal on the terms and conditions of the workers in factories making garments in various countries in Asia. This was a session organised mainly by trade unionists in countries including India, Cambodia and Indonesia under the auspices of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal (PPT) based in Italy,” he explains.
The PPT in Rome is the successor to what was called the Russell Tribunal organised by Lord Bertrand Rusell, British philosopher and logician.
Along with Russell was Jean-Paul Sartre and Lelio Basso, a socialist, member of the Italian parliament, editor of several journals and a lawyer. Basso, according to Gill Boehringer, was moderately wealthy through his legal practice.
“He set up a foundation to leave his money to so that, when he died, the tribunal was financially viable and he left his house in Central Rome to the foundation. It is quite an establishment. Then the Russell Tribunal became the People’s Permanent Tribunal and that is its headquarters.”
Human and environmental rights
“The roles of the Peoples’ Tribunal and indeed citizens inquiries are to deal with serious issues mainly about the violation of human rights and increasingly environmental rights because the states and the international community have done nothing or have shamefully pretended to do something.
“The way it happens is a group will organise around an issue. Here in NSW of course Future Sooner is organising around the issue of power stations and their human impacts on health and the environment.
“We always invite the bad guys, the perpetrators, to come along and give their defense because in a tribunal there is usually an indictment that is given to the alleged perpetrators and unfortunately or fortunately, however you want to look at it, they never come.
“In the case of the garment workers we held five different sessions,” he says.
Boehringer was on the panel of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal when it took up the case of the Rohingya people of Myenmar.
“We met in Kuala Lumpur and took up the case of different groups in Burma and exiles and experts who knew the history and the development of the struggle for freedom and we were the first organisation internationally to call it a genocide.”
He was also part of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal inquiry into fracking.
“The PPT set up a virtual session involving submissions from organisations in the UK, USA and Australia and we had a panel of experts from right around the globe including myself and basically we found fracking was inherently a dangerous operation.
“We noted that a number of countries had banned unconventional oil and gas extraction and one of our recommendations was it should be banned, especially in Australia.
“I have been involved in a PPT in Mexico looking at the violence and the trafficking of women and the oppression of trade unions and most recently the PPT held a session which was virtual again because we were dealing with a global problem, that is the killing of journalists.
“We looked at Mexico, Syria and Sri Lanka and made recommendations on the basis of evidence received.”
The power of silence
According to Gill Boerhinger, political fear is a major driver in stopping our elected representatives from lifting the lid on difficult issues related to human rights and environmental rights.
“In the case of shutting down our coal-fired power stations, for example, if they close them down and something like a blackout happens, perhaps time and time again, they will have to wear it and it could be dangerous for their political career and government,” he says.
“The second thing is of course if we follow the money trail, there is probably a lot of money in keeping quiet for somebody. If you look at the history of Vales Point, it was sold about a dozen years ago as I understand it for a million dollars and within a year it was valued for many times a million dollars.
“I am not suggesting there was any corruption there. I wouldn’t want to say that, but others have. One of the people to whom it was sold was a donor to the [governing] Liberal Party so there is always the concern that there is something going on that shouldn’t be going on.”
He notes inaction on the health impacts of coal pollution by public health units and the EPA even though a NSW Parliamentary Inquiry in 2022 recommended public health studies of communities living near aging coal power stations and their enormous uncovered and unlined coal ash dumps.
“I guess there is a degree of institutional inertia. I am not exactly sure why they did nothing in the first place but having not done anything about it, it is very embarrassing to them to have to say ‘we ignored the problem’.
No information freedom
Boehringer says the public has a right to know but highlights that there are very few ways for ordinary people to access the information kept quiet by corporations, bureaucracies and governments.
“I have tried Freedom of Information (FoI) at the federal level and, like so many other people, after a very long struggle involving a lot of paperwork and time and energy spent, I ended up with eight pages of a document with everything blacked out.”
He also points to the power of the corporations over-taking the powers of nation states. His experience investigating cases in countries like the Philippines indicates that even if authorities are ordered to investigate an issue, they may not wish to harm the accused industry because of its value to the economy.
What it takes
“It just takes a group of people, an organisation to say, ‘this is a problem, no one is dealing with it so we have to have a tribunal or inquiry’,” he says in response to being asked how to start a citizens inquiry.
“The group of people can organise it themselves – what I call a local tribunal and I have been interested in developing those – or they can appeal to a number of organisations who are geared up to do it whenever they get a good proposition.”
He says a citizens inquiry differs from a tribunal.
“The inquiry generally does not indict anyone. There is no prosecutor but a chair and panelists and we invite people to come along and tell us their stories, tell us what the problem is. We also invite experts in the area we are concerned with.”
Good media coverage is another element required in making a tribunal or inquiry a success and, he says, that’s not always easy – “the media is often times in the pockets of the people we are trying to put pressure on”.
Raising consciousness
Boehringer says the first purpose of a tribunal or inquiry is to raise consciousness – “getting the information out to the public because in so many cases nothing will be done until the people themselves mobilise and do something to force attention to the problem”.
“It is hard to say that there is a direct causal relationship to the change [that can come from the inquiry or tribunal] but in some cases it has been and in other cases it has been indirect.
“In the case of the garment workers, it was about the wages and conditions in which the garment workers live, and that usually involves young, exploited and often women – remember the triangle shirtwaist fire case.
“The tribunal was about the wages, and it was intended to block or subvert the process whereby companies pick and choose where to go depending on the cheapest labor. It was to establish a living wage and a floor wage – an attempt to make the wages equivalent depending on local circumstances.”
Boehringer explains that the tribunal was forbidden entry to most of the factories but had plenty of evidence because there had been “plenty written about it”.
High-profile brands like H&M, Nike, Adidas denied the testimony along with denying access to their garment factories.
“I think this was the only case that I have been in where one of the perpetrators came, I think it was H&M. There was a woman there, a very effective speaker, and she had all the charts and graphs and tried to make the case that ‘hey working for us is not a bad thing’.
After the publicity received because of the tribunal the brands began to negotiate about a living wage “so that was a good result”.
Change making
He says the Rohingya Tribunal resulted in positive change at a powerful international level.
“In terms of the outcomes of the Rohingya case, it was clearly a genocide, but all agencies try to avoid the ‘G word’ as presently with Palestine,” he says.
“We had evidence from quite a few people, Muslim groups, Christian groups, a number of groups who have their own armies and are fighting with the present government.
“The Rohingya didn’t have their own army. We called it a genocide and not long after that the UN set up a taskforce to investigate the situation.
“A few years later I found out from Chris Sidoti who used to be Commissioner for Human Rights. He said, ‘yes we read your report and felt satisfied to call it a genocide’.”
Right now in NSW
The Future Sooner Citizens Inquiry, the first of its kind in Australia to investigate the health impacts of pollution from coal-burning power stations, is fortunate to have someone as experienced as Gill Boehringer on its expert panel.
“The Future Sooner Citizens Inquiry is looking at health impacts of Eraring and Vales Point and other coal-fired power stations,” he says.
“We are asking people to come along and tell their stories. What has been the impact so far as you can tell on your health, and we will make recommendations to the state government, EPA and so forth.”
Once the actual inquiry is held, the expert panel will collaborate on a report which, he says, will be sent to governments, attorneys general, international bodies including the United Nations (UN) and World Health Organisation (WHO).
Lifting the veil of secrecy
Boehringer says the success of the inquiry is contingent on getting a good public rollup on the day and encouraging as many people as possible to tell their stories.
“We are trying assiduously to find people who are prepared to talk about their health problems, particularly cancer and asthma.
“One of the things that would be really important, and this is what we did with the factory workers, we got the workers to come but here it seems the workers have to sign a non-disclosure agreement with these corporations. Nobody wants to lose their job, but you can make an anonymous submission that someone else can read on the day.
“People generally have a sense of justice, and it is really unjust for these corporations to be making hundreds of millions of dollars in profits as a result of the damage they are doing to people in the community.
“In addition to testimony all the panel members will come with an accumulated knowledge and awareness of the literature in their field, be it health, economics, water, and we have doctors on the panel.”
He says the full report that will be produced as an outcome of the Future Sooner Citizens Inquiry will “go all over. It will certainly go to government departments. I imagine there will be a number of individuals who will want to use that report for their activism as evidence of the laxness of regulation and the serious negative impact on individuals along the Coast.
I think getting the WHO involved is an interesting idea. Why not make the report available to international organisations including the UN Human Rights Council. The UN has the Declaration of Human Rights and they recognise the right to life and the right to a healthy environment.”
The Future Sooner Citizens Inquiry – Are Coal Fired Power Stations Making You Sick – will take place on Sunday, 25 August from 1pm at the Halekulani Bowling Club in Budgewoi.
