Johann Hari

Before you read this column, I need you to do something. Drink ten cups of black coffee. Down three cans of Red Bull. Ask a friend to slap you in the face at the end of each sentence. The issue we need to talk about – electoral reform – can bring on narcolepsy in even the most alert people. But it matters, because it determines the very shape of our politics – and who gets to be Prime Minister. Every other political issue you care about starts here, with this.

We have a broken electoral system. It is called ‘First Past the Post’ (FPTP), and it is based on a crude principle. An MP is elected if he has more votes than his nearest competitor in his constituency – even if he has nothing like a majority. This means that some MPs (like mine, George Galloway) get sent to Parliament even though more than 80 percent of their constituents voted against them. Fewer than a third actually get majority support.

This runs contrary to basic notions of democracy. The current Labour government has 100 percent of the power, with just 36 percent of the vote.

FPTP could be a system designed to stir apathy. It leaves the vast majority of us piled up in safe Labour, Tory or Lib Dem constituencies, where we are ignored. There is no need to canvass or enthuse us. The only people who matter in this system are a tiny number of people in the dead centre of politics. Marketing men are getting better and better at identifying these 200,000 apolitical swing voters and tailoring everything our politicians say to their whims. If you ever wonder why our politicians all sound the same, or why they never try to excite and rally their own people, here’s one key reason. All the oxygen is sucked out of electoral politics as everyone tries to please this distracted sliver.

It also leaves us with a tiny, feeble menu of choices. At a time when we have choice in everything – I can pick from ten different types of toilet paper in my supermarket, and six different numbers for Directory Inquiries – we are offered only two realistic choices at the polling station (if we’re lucky). With such narrow choices, 39 percent of us no longer bother to take part.

But it goes beyond this: this electoral system distorts the political history of the country. If you look at what people tell pollsters or – more importantly – how they actually vote, since at least the Second World War Britain has been a mainstream European social democracy. Fat majorities of us support higher taxes, to pay for higher quality public services and holding down inequality. And at elections, 56 percent of us consistently vote for parties – Labour, Lib Dem or Nationalist – that we believe will do that. But Britain hasn’t been governed that way. We have had thirty years of lowered taxes, whittled-down spending, and growing inequality, only now being tentatively tackled by Labour.

Why? In part, because the voting system allows minorities to rule and impose their will. The 56 percent who always vote left are split between a slew of parties; the 44 percent who are willing to vote right unite behind the Conservatives. This could well happen again at the next election.

(Thatcher herself understood all this. She warned before the 1997 election that there could never again be another government as right-wing as hers if Labour came in and ensured votes were translated more proportionally into seats.)

At various times, FPTP has been even worse, and made the outright loser of an election into the Prime Minister. We jeer (rightly) at the fact that George Bush became President in 2000 after losing the election – but the same thing has happened here. In 1951, the Labour Party received its largest vote ever – but the Conservatives, with 250,000 fewer votes, ‘won’. In 1973, Edward Heath’s Conservatives got more votes than Labour – but Heath was tossed out of Downing Street. This too could happen at the next election in 2009, which is set to be close.

With a potential electoral abyss waiting for them, the Supporters of proportional representation like Make Votes Count hoped that – at last! – a move towards something more proportional was looming into view. These campaigners want something pretty simple: if a party gets 36 percent of the vote, it should get somewhat closer to 36 percent of the seats in parliament. If the British people don’t give anyone a majority, then one of the bigger parties has to form a coalition with the smaller parties, as in most European democracies – and within our own borders, in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

So what would a Britain with a more proportional electoral system look like? We would have a wider range of parties to pick from: are you Green? BNP? The Legalize Cannabis Alliance? Our votes would count, no matter where we lived: the ballots of people on forgotten estates in Tyneside would matter as much as those of Mondeo Man in Middle England. Because of all this, we would be more engaged: the Justice Department’s research found that “international evidence suggests that proportional systems have around five percent higher turn-out than majoritarian systems” like FPTP. It would be impossible to repeat the Conservative years, where Britain took a sharp turn to the right, against the will of the majority. The Tories would be locked into compromising with centrist or centre-left parties, or face being locked out of power.

Our recent history would look very different. In one of his last articles for this newspaper, Robin Cook said that “if we had a House of Commons elected by PR, we would never have had the war on Iraq in the first place” because the governing coalition would have fallen apart. There certainly would have been a much swifter shift to green policies, since Labour could only rule with the Lib Dems or Greens.

But incredibly, the government appears to be considering changing to the one electoral system that is less proportional than FPTP. The man in charge of the review is Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who has loathed and opposed proportional representation since he was a political advisor to Barbra Castle in the 1970s. In 2005, he called the advocates of PR “bad losers”, and mocked them for claiming there “is some fundamental flaw in the voting system.” PR would only produce “mush” and “damage our democracy,” he said with a wave of his hand.

Straw’s arguments consisted mostly of Straw-men. He said PR always produces weak governments that can’t do anything and fall apart at the first crisis – which will be news to the peoples of Spain or Ireland or Scotland. He suggested the campaigners wanted to introduce the chaotic Italian or Israeli systems of pure PR, which he must know is untrue.

To fend off demands for PR, Straw is proposing we switch to a system called the Alternative Vote (AV). When you go into the polling station, you would have to number the candidates according to preference – put a ‘1’ next to the Tory if you love him, down to ‘13’ for the Natural Law Party candidate if you hate her. If nobody gets more than 50 percent of the voters’ first preferences, they knock out the Natural Law yogis, or whoever came last, and redistribute their second-preference votes. They keep doing this until eventually one of the candidates wins a majority. Somebody, sooner or later, gets more than 50 percent.

Straw stresses, “AV is not PR”, and he’s right. It leaves in place almost all the problems of the current system.

There is just as little choice for voters, in reality. If you look at the country that uses pure AV to elect its House of Representatives, Australia, it has even fewer parties in parliament than Britain – just three holding 99 percent of the seats. The small number of swing voters are still all that matter. As Roy Jenkins wrote in his report into changing the electoral system, “There would still be large parts of the country which would be electoral deserts. Most seats in the country would remain safe.”

Worse still, parties with minority support in the country still get to take power. This is because votes pile up in constituencies, and nobody calculates them nationally. To give just one example: in 1998, the Australian Labour Party won more popular votes than the right-wing Liberal Party – but they won fewer seats, so John Howard took office again and marched his country to war. As Jenkins warned, “AV on its own is unacceptable because of the danger that in anything like present circumstances it might increase rather than reduce disproportionality.”

Some advocates of PR are arguing we should support the switch to AV as a “stepping stone” to getting real reform. This is apparently the position of Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg. But isn’t it inherently implausible to suggest we are going to change the voting system now, with all the hassle and (presumably) referendum-arranging that entails, and then do it again a few years later? And anyway, how do you take a step towards something by walking in the opposite direction?

There is still a way out of this. Somebody needs to dig into the basement of Downing Street and find the gently rotting proposals Roy Jenkins drew up in 1998. He suggested a system – glug some more Red Bull here – called ‘AV-Plus’. It’s a hybrid system, mixing the best of both. At the constituency level, you do exactly what Jack Straw wants: you pick a local MP by numbering your preferences. But you are also given a second ballot paper, where you pick your ‘top-up’ party. These top-up votes are then calculated at the national level, to make sure the parliament more proportionately reflects the will of the people. So if the Greens got 10 percent of the vote but didn’t win any actual constituencies, they’ll be given a suitably large cadre of top-up MPs. It sounds complex, but they do something similar in Scotland, and it works.

This was Roy Jenkins’ last gift to British politics, and one of his best: a system that keeps the constituency link, but moves towards PR. If we are going to change – and we must – this is our best bet. Labour should have pushed for it when they were strong, rather than waiting until they were staring into the electoral abyss.

We will only get one chance at electoral reform, for a generation at least. We have to get it right. Electoral reformers need now to press for the right model – instead of racing to be first past the post into Jack Straw’s trap.

You can join the campaign for electoral reform at www.makevotescount.org.uk

London is a city of tribes, and most of us never veer into the den of the tribes we loathe. The Littlejohn-loving football fans never enter a Somalian refugee centre. The East End jihadis never take a tour of Golders Green’s synagogues. But somehow – oh, how did this happen? – I am standing on the dance floor of Bouji’s watching toffs doing their meagre imitation of dancing – think a low-level epileptic fit – and my deeply repressed inner Bolshevik is raging.

“It’s the most exclusive club in London - where William and Harry hang out,” my friend said as she lured me into this 100mph full-frontal collision with my class prejudices. As soon as I walked out of South Kensington tube and approached the Bouji bouncers, my alarm bells began to sound. “Name?” the bouncer says with a look that says, “And I can tell it ain’t double-barrelled, bitch.” I explain I am on the guest-list – a touch of Standard magic – and descend a few steps into a poky little black hole. I assume at first glance there has been a mistake. Have I been taken to the cloakroom? The toilet? But no. This is it. This is Boujis. It is tiny. There is a cramped dance-floor, a cramped bar, and a few cramped seats, all built as though for dwarves. I squeeze to the bar, where I swiftly discover the cocktails cost £50 and a bottle of vodka costs a sweet £300. I try to imagine telling my grandmother people spend that sum on one drink, but I don’t want to kill her.

I look out across the aesthetically-cleansed dance-floor, tightly policed by the bouncers to keep out even a flicker of ugliness. (The regulars stare at me as if I have emerged from the septic tank at Chernobyl). You would expect centuries of inbreeding to have made the English aristocracy malformed, but they are depressingly beautiful, with scalpeled cheekbones, sun-stroked tans and handbags that cost more than my flat. They look like refugees from an episode of Dynasty, with fluffy hair and flowing dresses, and I can feel the superficiality seeping into my bones like radiation. Where are the fat people? Where are the black people? Where are the humans?

Dazed, I stagger to the toilet. A small man appears to open the door for me, and when I have finished, he squeezes the soap into my hands. Clearly the strain of urinating alone is too much for the regulars. Then – at last! – I spot a black person! A sign that we are in London in the twenty-first century! I rush across the dance floor to embrace him, and then I realise. He is holding a dustpan and brush, and wiping up cigarette butts from the floor.

I try to listen to the droning house music (which house – Amityville?), and then eavesdrop on a pair of girls who are discussing handbags. Non-stop. For twenty minutes. Once my brain has bled out of my ears (and been swept away by the Obedient Black Person), I stagger through this pile of skeletal bones that call themselves “women”, past the designer-clad clipboard Nazis on the door, and out into the cool Kensington air. I have, I realise, lost my faith in progress. A hundred years ago these people would have been characters in a Henry James novel. Today they are staging a trumped-up Eton school disco. Pass the razor blade, Wills.

The London mayoral election is being covered as if it was a series of ‘I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Into City Hall!’ where instead of eating kangaroo penis, the candidates have to endure the more distasteful fate of being interviewed by Nick Ferrari.

It’s not hard to see why personality rules the coverage. This is a fight between a Homer-quoting comedian who seems to have skidded from the pages of Evelyn Waugh on a bob-sleigh, a one-time-revolutionary Labour rebel with a love for amphibians and a hatred of SUVs, and Britain’s highest-ranking gay policeman – who happens to have confessed an interest in anarchism.

But when I interviewed the mayoral candidates for this month’s issue of Attitude – Britain’s best-selling gay magazine, out on Monday – I found that behind the glitz, there is a serious skills gap between the candidates.

When I meet Boris in the shell of the old City Hall building – long-since sold off to Japanese developers and turned into hotels and offices – he is everything his ‘Have I Got News For You’ fans would hope. The jokes – genuinely funny, which is almost unprecedented in politics – tumble out. I ask him if Eton in his day was a hot-bed of sodomy. “To a degree I find personally insulting,” he says, “it wasn’t really like that for me.” I ask him if he agrees with a Ken Livingstone line from the early 1980s, that we are all potentially bisexual. “Oh, I am a polymorphous pervert,” he replies.

But when we get onto the issues, I get worried. I ask him why he supported Section 28, the notorious legislation that banned teachers from “promoting” homosexuality – and it quickly becomes clear he doesn’t actually know what it was. “As I recall the issue was to do with compulsion. Wasn't the question [about] whether or not schools should be compelled to have [these lessons]? I thought the issue was: are you compelling teachers in schools to take a particular line? I'm not in favour of that… There’s far too much proscription already of what teachers have to say and do. I’m against bossiness”

But Boris, I explain – Section 28 was the act of bossiness and proscription. It was a flat-out ban, telling teachers not to talk about gays. He goes into his ‘oh cripes’ routine, as if it is charming that he supported a piece of legislation he had totally misunderstood.

On all the questions, he seems to go into a sort of panicked free association, where he desperately to find a link to something he does know about. When I ask him what he would do to reduce the sky-high rate of suicide among gay teenagers, he starts talking about the need to get kids out of gangs – as if the Brick Lane Massiv is stocked with gay-boys and lesbians. He admits he isn’t sure what you call the unions between gay people – they’re civil partnerships, Boris.

And when I ask him how he can justify comparing gay marriage to a man marrying a dog just a few years ago, he says: “I think, as society evolved, taboos will go and shift. I was just making the point that things that seem unacceptable to one generation can be acceptable to the next generation. All I was doing was making a powerful point in favour of tolerance.”

The contrast with Ken Livingstone is startling. When I meet him at the top of the new City Hall he dubbed “the glass testicle”, he is in a laconic mood after enduring a relentless press kicking. He’s keen to talk about global warming, and says with a wry smile, “Thirty years ago, when I was planning what we would do after the British revolution, I never imagined that now I’d be trying to get people to insulate their lofts to save the world.”

But I pepper him with questions about very specific issues affecting gay Londoners, he always responds – without notes – with a battery of statistics and facts. I ask about the rise in HIV infections among gay men, and he knows the figures off the top of his head. He talks me through the practical problems: at the moment, in most of London’s STD clinics, if you go and ask for a test, they give you an appointment in two weeks’ time. “A lot of young people just aren’t going to say, ‘I'm not going to have sex for two weeks,’” he says. “The research shows that’s when you see a lot of STD transmission.” He then lists how he is lobbying the local health authorities to close this waiting gap, and what they need to do now – before going on to list other practical problems, and his solutions.

He knows the names of STD clinics all over London, and I don’t think it’s because he’s coming down with ghonnorhea: he offers this level of detail on every question I ask.

But there is one issue where gay Londoners – who have seen Ken as a defender and champion for thirty years – were shocked by the mayor. In 2004, Ken Livingstone invited an Islamic fundamentalist called Yusuf al-Qaradawi as an “honoured guest” to City Hall. This Egyptian cleric has been quoted calling for the murder of gay men and lesbians – yet when Peter Tatchell challenged Ken over it, he announced Tatchell was “Islamophobic.”

Ken backs down, a little. He says he didn’t know much about Qaradawi before this scandal broke out: he just knew that he had been praised by everyone from the Guardian to the Sun as the voice of moderate Islam. He says he “probably shouldn’t” have slammed Tatchell (damn right) but he is reluctant to believe what he has read in the papers about Qaradawi because he has read “so many lies” about himself.

“In politics you engage with people which you have profound disagreements with,” he says. “When the Mayor of Moscow comes here, I talk to him too, and he bans gay pride marches. It didn't stop me lobbying him for his three votes on the Olympics, internationally. If it had gone the other way, well, then Paris would be holding the Olympics.” He stresses that on every act of practical policy, he has sided with gay rights against religious rights. For example, when the Blair government said religious groups don’t have to follow the law banning discrimination on the basis of sexuality, Ken used the mayor’s office to lobby hard against it.

The Lib Dem candidate Brian Paddick isn’t embarrassed to appeal to the gay vote as One of Us. He says, “You know, we went through decades of being targeted by the police. Now it's pay back time.” He speaks about gay issues as a man who has fought through them all: he pledges to crack down on homophobic bullying in schools, as a survivor of it himself, and he promises to crack open homophobia in the police, as a man who rose through it to be Number Two in the Met. He has moving stories and some fresh ideas – but at times they are sketchy. When I ask him specifically what we should be doing about homophobic bullying, he keeps vaguely saying we must “do more.” Ken, by contrast, talked on this issue about the specific organisations he wants to fund, and the projects he wants to pursue.

If this race is the X-Factor of politics, Ken may end up as an ex-mayor. But if this is about who has the administrative skill, progressive politics and practical knowledge to run London, then this is no contest at all.

Precisely a century ago, in a suburb of Boston, a child called Bette Davis erupted into the world. She was not only a woman; she was an electrical storm with skin. With nothing but raw talent and raw determination, she became the most famous woman in the world, taking on the Hollywood studio system, the FBI and the Catholic Church.

For a while, this not-especially-beautiful woman in her forties ruled Hollywood, playing tough women who chose their careers and their own desires over sacrificing for men or children or a picket fence. She never pretended to be dumb, or a little girl. She didn’t do soft, or simpering. She had a voice like sour cream, and eyes like a raven. Humphrey Bogart said about her, “Unless you’re very big she can knock you down.” And she was one of the great events of her time.

She was popular with the mostly-female movie audience – women like my grandmother, who gave me my first glimpse of Bette Davis movies from her lap – in part because her characters will not accept ‘their place.’ They want more, more, more. It was not easy to be a strong woman then: she said, “When a man gives his opinion he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion she's a bitch.” But she fought, and women responded to it. She was only the most shimmering example of a generation of tough Hollywood women whose characters saw the world as a place not to cower from or simper at, but to conquer: Mae West (who made her first film at 40), Lauren Bacall, Katherine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Barbra Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell, Marlene Dietrich, and more.

Bette was self-confident enough to demand to look bad on camera. On the cast of ‘Bordertown’, she had a four-hour screaming row with the director because she thought it was ridiculous to show her character wake up in bed with a wig and full make-up; she wanted curlers and cold cream all over her face. In’ Marked Woman’, she was shown with black eyes and a broken face. In Elizabeth and Essex, she wanted to be shown with a completely bald head – sending the studio into a panic. And she was self-confident enough to be unsympathetic on screen.

But something odd has happened since the reign of Queen Bette: women in cinema have become weaker. If the symbol of 1930s Hollywood was Bette Davis in ‘Jezebel’, defiantly wearing red to her virgin-white ball, today it is Cameron Diaz in ‘There’s Something About Mary’, rubbing semen into her hair because she is too dumb to realize it’s not hair gel.

As women have progressed, the women we idolize – in the movies, on television – have dramatically regressed. Who are our female icons now? Nicole Kidman, whose career is empitomized by her role in ‘Moulin Rouge’, where she plays a limp, passive prostitute, waiting to be saved. Julia Roberts, whose only iconic role is as a screwed-up prostitute, waiting to be saved. The women of ‘Desperate Housewives’ – chaotic ditzes, who are either jobless, or have jobs where they merely spread chaos. The women of ‘Sex and the City’, who are obsessed with shoes and – in the end – have to compromise their careers for men. The popular women are numb blondes or bony little girls with submissive smiles. If a female star becomes too ‘tough’, she becomes box-office poison: Demi Moore was seen after G.I. Jane as too hard, too ‘male.’ Even Thelma and Louise had to drive into the Grand Canyon in the end.

The closest we have to Bette Davis-style characters today are found in the films and TV shows of Aaron Sorkin. His dream-girl is a woman talking very fast about foreign policy while putting on her make-up. In West Wing, he found two glorious stars who would have held their own with the 1930s generation: Alison Janney, and Stockard Channing. But what happens to their characters? C.J. has to be given a sick father to humanise her – unlike any of the men – and in the end has to choose between Washington and love. Abigail Bartlett is stripped of her job entirely. Janney and Channing are now reduced to bit-parts in films about teenage girls.

The biggest female stars have contracted in every sense. As they are reduced emotionally to hollow male fantasies, they are reduced physically to skin and bone too. If Bette Davis has screen presence, skeletons like Keira Knightley have screen absence; you stop seeing her even when she is the only thing in the frame. Almost all of the great Hollywood starlets would be considered uncastably ‘fat’ now: who can forget Liz Hurley’s statement, “If I was as fat as Marilyn Monroe, I’d kill myself too”?

The few strong women in Hollywood movies and TV are safely located in an unreal world: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena: Warrior Princess. The closest to an unapologetic feminist is Lisa Simpson – and she is eight years old, and a cartoon. This isn’t because Hollywood is especially sexist. Hollywood largely gives us what we want – and we don’t want to idolize strong, powerful women today.

My female friends need to disguise or soften their ambition and intellect, in a way my male friends don’t have to. A while ago, after writing a column about feminism, I received an e-mail from a reader who said: “I think it’s great that you, as a man, write about these issues. But imagine a situation where you were exactly the person you are now, but female. Imagine you were comparably overweight, took comparably little care over your appearance, were comparably aggressive in your opinions, admitted to a history of depression, and were a lesbian. You would not be writing for a national newspaper at all.” I think that is undeniably true.

The fear of strong women isn’t confined to anecdotes; there’s reams of evidence for it. A study by Oxford University psychologists in 2006 found that having a high IQ is a boon for men in finding a partner – and for women, it is an obstacle. For each 16-point rise in IQ, a man is 35 percent more likely to find a partner – while for women, the same IQ bump reduces their odds by 40 percent. This is why so many clever women mask their intellects, in pubs and offices across the country.

This dynamic spreads to politics too. There’s a famous experiment called ‘the Goldberg paradigm’, where a group is given a speech and asked to rate how effective, intelligent and persuasive. Every time this is run, if they are told it is by a man, they invariably rate it ten to twenty points higher than if they are told it is by a woman.

(There are a thousand-and-one good reasons to oppose Hillary Clinton, but one bad one too: her gender. She fits into this Hollywood pattern. What were the two moments when Hillary – for a flickering second – was actually liked? It was when we found out her husband was cheating on her, and in New Hampshire, when she cried. When Hillary is strong, we loathe her. When she is weak, we warm.)

This rubbing-out of strong, clever women from the popular imagination is part of a subtle backlash against feminism. Women are unimaginably better off than in Bette Davis’ hey-day: while she was ruling Hollywood, both my grandmothers were leaving school at the age of 13, told there was nothing for them but the farm, the factory or the altar.

Today, a majority of graduates are female. Yet the culture says – yes, you can have your success, up to a point – but you will have to feel guilty about it. You will have to disguise your skills behind a carapace of self-deprecation and self-abnegation. You will be encouraged to idolise empty shells like Jordan or Victoria Beckham. You will be paid seventy pence to the man’s pound for the same work. You will be prompted to inject poison into your face, or have your breasts cut open, to conform to a warped vision of beauty that makes you dislike your own body. Updating Bette’s old dictum, the writer Arianna Huffington says, “For a man to be called aggressive, he has to be Joe McCarthy. For a woman to be called aggressive, she has to put you on hold.”

The fight against all this need to recapture something of the prehensile spirit of Bette Davis. She faced down these boring old prejudices with a perfectly-modulated snarl. As her biographer Ed Sikov says, “Bette Davis didn’t give a goddam. She dares us to hate her, and we often do. Which is why we love her.”

On the website of the British Foreign Office, a small photograph recently appeared. It shows Kim Howells, our Foreign Office minister, looking into the camera, smiling, as he is surrounded by gun-yielding men accused of murder. He had not been taken hostage. No: he was there to represent a government that gives these men money and military aid.

By tracing the story of this photograph, we can trace the worst aspects of British foreign policy – and find clues to why the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have crashed into their current bloody dead-end.

Howells was in Colombia, a country locked in one of the worst civil wars of the past century. It began over forty years ago, when parts of the hungry, mixed-race majority began to fight against the fact that a tiny white land-owning elite held virtually all the country’s wealth. Since then, it has hardened into a conflict between two gnarled human rights-abusing wings.

To the left, there is a slew of guerrilla groups – most prominently the FARC and the ELN – who fund themselves by kidnapping, extortion, recruiting child soldiers and ‘taxing’ drug-producers.

To the right, there is the Colombian government and the right-wing paramilitary death-squads it has unleashed against any community of civilians suspected of leftish sympathies, or of challenging the elite. That’s why to be a trade unionist in Colombia – organising for better wages and working conditions for your colleagues – is to carry a tombstone on your back: more than 3000 have been assassinated since 1986, more than in the rest of the world combined.

Between them, these violent wings have killed more than 30,000 people and driven three million people from their homes.

And Howells – our representative – was posing with some of the worst abusers. He was huddled with the High Mountain Brigades, who Amnesty International says have been involved in hunting down and murdering trade unionists. Standing next to him was General Mario Montoya, who is so densely linked to paramilitary death-squads that even the US Congress has cut off chunks of his funding.

Here’s what our taxes and support deliver to ordinary Colombians. On January 10th, at 10.30am, Colombian soldiers wearing balaclavas burst into the house of Rosa Maria Zapata house, a 56 year old indigenous woman. When the soldiers pointed their guns at her and barked that they wanted to know where the guerrillas were, she screamed back that she didn’t know; she doesn’t know any guerrillas. They told her she was hiding weapons for the FARC. They told her they knew. She howled and protested. So they started searching – and a moment later she heard gunfire. The police announced they had killed the guerrilla. She went running – and found her severely disabled 22-year old son dead.

The British pro-peace group ‘Justice for Colombia’ believes these soldiers received British training. They have documented 36 other civilians murdered by British-trained forces in a six-month period, and they are asking the Foreign Office to finally outline exactly where our money goes – rather than hiding behind the shroud of National Security.

Worse, we are funding a military that is so densely enmeshed with the union-slaying paramilitaries that they are known as the “sixth brigade” of the Colombian armed forces. The relationship was symbolised in a famous football game in the 1990s. The local community in Cacarica were made to gather at the local football field to watch a match. It sounds touching. But the head of the local left-leaning community leader, Marino Lopez, was used as the ball, after being hacked from his body with a chainsaw. Uribe is now offering a ‘peace deal’ to the right-wing paras like this that allows them to escape proportionate punishment, but offers no such deal to the left.

So how has Howells responded? Easily: he has called his critics supporters of terrorism. Last week, in the House of Commons, he declared, “This has all been created by the organisation ‘Justice for Colombia’, which supports FARC, a band of gangsters and drug smugglers.” He also announced that the FARC is responsible for “most” of the murders in Colombia.

Both were straightforward repetitions of the Colombian far right propaganda line. In reality, ‘Justice For Colombia’ – which is supported by more than half of all Labour MPs – is opposed to all violence within Colombia. And the FARC – while unequivocally disgusting – are responsible for far fewer murders than the government and right-wing death-squads, according to every major study.

So how did this happen? How did a minister in a Labour government end up defending a hard-right Colombian regime?

The British government says they have become the second biggest military donor to Colombia (after the US) because they want to promote human rights there. But if you had a few million pounds to support human rights in that country, the idea you would give it to the High Mountain Brigades is simply surreal. Sure, the government claims to be giving “human rights training” along with their weapons licenses and cash, to “iron out” abuses. But as the historian Mark Curtis explains: “The Colombian military is responsible for its violations not by accident… It is part of a concerted and active policy to nullify the opposition and terrify the general population into further submission.”

No – the explanations for British backing lie elsewhere. The first is a desire to support the United States, because we project our power in the world largely by being a loyal adjunct to American military might. If Britain wasn’t offering these funds, the Bush administration would be alone in the world in backing Uribe, against a Latin America tipping towards the left and urging peace talks with the FARC.

And we are doing it to support the global, unwinnable ‘war on drugs.’ Since Bill Clinton’s Presidency, the US has been spraying hundreds of thousands of tonnes of chemical poisons onto the vast tracts of Colombia where the coca leaves essential for cocaine production are grown. All plants and trees die in their wake. Birth defects and cancer rates are rising. Some of the most precious biodiversity on earth is destroyed. And the effect on drug production? It simply moves to another area.

(It is only the drug-producing areas controlled by the FARC that have been fumigated. The areas in the North, controlled by the right, remain untouched.)

Drug production is so profitable and so popular it cannot be fumigated off the face of the real world. Drug prohibition hands great swathes of the Colombian economy to armed criminal gangs, from the FARC to the right. It ensures they will always have enough money to buy enough guns to outshoot the government and preserve their patches of territory.

There is another way. More and more Colombians believe it is only by brining drugs into the legal economy – where they can be controlled and taxed – that the guerrillas and paramilitaries can be stripped of their cash-flow, and the Colombian state slowly unified. The people arguing for this are wildly diverse: from the current Conservative Interior Minister, Carlos Holguin, to the former Attorney General Gustavo de Greiff who busted the notorious Medelin drug cartel, to the coutnry’s most popular singer, Juan Esteban Aristizabal. They all believe an end to drug prohibition is the only long-term solution to the civil war. Yet Britain demands the opposite.

There is one more crucial reason why we are supporting the Colombian military. The British oil firm BP controls half of Columbia's petrol output. The historian Mark Curtis argues the UK is keen to ensure resources “remain in the correct hands” - that is, "our" hands. In a highly unequal country angry at seeing its resources siphoned off by foreigners, that means supporting an elite who are willing to use violence to keep the majority in their place.

These three factors can help us to understand why the military actions thousands of miles away from the jungles of Colombia – in Afghanistan and Iraq – have gone so wrong. As in Colombia, we got in, in large part, out of loyalty to the US: Tony Blair bragged he had “not disagreed with the US on a major issue” in his whole time in office.

We have misgoverned Afghanistan so badly because we are inflicting on the country the same ‘war on drugs’ we have wished on Colombia. If we turned up in any country on earth and announced we were there to destroy 40 percent of their economy, the people would fight back. The fact that the 40 percent consists of opium fields makes no difference to dirt-poor farmers. This is why we are losing Southern Afghanistan even to the hated Taliban.

And the US-UK government has misgoverned Iraq so catastrophically because – as in Colombia – it was primarily driven by a desire to ensure that control of the country’s resources went to The Right People. The protection of the Oil Ministry, while Baghdad’s museums and hospitals and universities were looted and burned all around it, is only the most bleak symbol of this.

The image of Kim Howells squatting with a unit who have tortured and butchered trade unionists can be seen as a Rosetta Stone for the dark side of our foreign policy. It is a reminder that, if we want to turn Britain into a force for human rights in the world, we have to campaign long and hard to turn much of it around. If we don’t, it will end with more women like Rosa Maria Zapata, clutching her dead disabled son and asking why.

You can read my other articles about drug legalisation here.

You can send comments on this article for publication in the Independent to letters -at- independent.co.uk or just for me to j.hari -at- independent.co.uk

Questa è la storia della tratta degli schiavi-bambini nel XXI secolo. Il mio viaggio nel mondo di questo particolare tipo di malavita ha avuto inizio dove più numerosi sono i bordelli e le prostitute: in Asia, dove stando alle stime delle Nazioni Unite ogni giorno un milione di bambini viene venduto e comprato.

Il viaggio mi ha portato in luoghi che non pensavo potessero ancora esistere: una prigione sotterranea in una zona di confine del Bangladesh dove regna la malavita e dove i bambini vengono segregati dietro le sbarre in attesa di essere condotti nei bordelli in India; un postribolo di ferro dove le donne hanno trascorso una intera vita di violenze sessuali; una clinica dove curano bambini di 11 anni malati di sifilide.

Ma la nostra storia comincia come tutte le storie: con una bambina e una bugia. Sufia si avvicina per parlarmi in un centro di recupero per bambini finanziato da «Comic Relief». Sufia finora ha parlato della sua drammatica esperienza solo con le assistenti del centro. Ma vuole che il mondo sappia quanto le è capitato.

Entra nella stanza avvolta nel suo sari rosso con delle grosse borse nere sotto gli occhi, sorprendenti per la sua età. Parla della sua esperienza lentamente, quasi con un filo di voce. Sufia è cresciuta in un villaggio vicino a Khulna, nella regione sud-occidentale del Bangladesh. I suoi genitori erano contadini e lei aveva sette fratelli e sorelle. «I miei genitori non potevano permettersi di badare a me», mi dice. «Non avevamo nemmeno il denaro per comprare da mangiare».

E qui arriva la bugia. Quando Sufia aveva 14 anni, una vicina disse ai suoi genitori che poteva trovarle un buon lavoro a Calcutta come collaboratrice domestica. Avrebbe vissuto bene, avrebbe imparato l’inglese e avrebbe avuto un futuro tranquillo. «Non stavo nella pelle dalla felicità», mi dice Sufia. «Ma appena siamo arrivate a Calcutta ho capito che c’era qualcosa che non andava. Non sapevo cosa era un bordello, ma capivo che la casa dove mi aveva portato era un brutto posto. Le donne indossavano abiti succinti e c’erano uomini dall’aspetto poco rassicurante che entravano ed uscivano». La vicina di casa in cambio di Sufia intascò 50.000 takka, circa 600 euro. Poi le disse di fare ciò che le avrebbe ordinato e scomparve.

A questo punto il lento monologo di Sufia si arresta. Volge lo sguardo dall’altra parte mentre continua a dondolarsi sulla sedia. Poi continua: «non potevo uscire. Dovevo vedere 10 uomini al giorno». Un’altra lunga pausa. «Prima d’allora non sapevo nulla degli uomini. È stata una cosa spaventosa».

Ha visto quanto accadeva in quel posto alle donne più grandi. Vengono costrette a «dare alla luce un figlio». Le loro figlie vengono allevate per fare le prostitute-schiave. Dopo tre mesi due altre ragazze imprigionate in quel postribolo le dissero che avevano un piano per fuggire. Intendevano mettere da parte i sonniferi che venivano distribuiti ogni sera - per impedire loro di singhiozzare, di lamentarsi e di respingere i “clienti” - per poi metterli nelle bevande dei loro carcerieri e così darsela a gambe.

Il piano funzionò. «Non avevo la minima idea di come orientarmi in città, ma loro erano delle ragazze sveglie», dice Sufia. Quando finalmente rivide la casa dei genitori fece un proposito: «non dirò mai alla mia famiglia cosa è accaduto. Dissi ai miei che avevo lavorato come cameriera e che mi erano mancati troppo. Non posso mai parlare con nessuno della mia esperienza, a parte la gente di qui. Se lo facessi nessuno mi sposerebbe e arrecherei disgrazia alla mia famiglia e la mia vita sarebbe distrutta».

Sa che deve sottoporsi al test dell’Hiv. Ha già fissato l’appuntamento due volte, ma non ce la fa. Non vuole sapere.

Sufia è stata venduta a una banda organizzata che commercia in esseri umani in tutti i continenti e che vende carne umana in cambio di denaro. Questa gente continua ad operare - e, a differenza di Sufia, la maggior parte delle donne non riescono a fuggire.

Sul lato di una strada sterrata a Jamalpur, una cittadina del Bangladesh, c’è un cancello di ferro. All’interno un labirinto di fragili baracche con il tetto in lamiera e all’interno di ciascuna baracca una donna in attesa.

Seduta sul letto dentro una delle baracche trovo Beauty, una donna di 34 anni. Quando le dico che vorrei mi parlasse della sua vita, mi sorride perplessa. «Mio cognato mi ha venduto allo sfruttatore quando avevo 13 anni», mi spiega. «Un giorno mi ha portato via e mi ha condotto qui. Al mio arrivo lo sfruttatore mi ha frustato e mi ha detto che non dovevo mai uscire dal bordello. Ero distrutta. Odiavo questo posto. Continuavo a pensare alla mia famiglia, a mia madre e piangevo in continuazione. Ma lo sfruttatore mi frustava continuamente e mi diceva che dovevo lavorare».

Ha avuto uno squarcio di felicità a 19 anni. Uno degli uomini che frequentava regolarmente il bordello le disse che si era innamorato di lei e le chiese di sposarlo. Pagò una somma di denaro per portarla via e ricondurla al suo villaggio natale da sua madre e da sua sorella. Era stato il sogno di Beauty: «pensavo di tornare ad una vita felice e normale». Ma la sua famiglia la respinse. Avevano sentito dire che faceva la prostituta - suo cognato aveva detto a tutti che era stata una sua libera scelta - e così «mia sorella mi tormentava, mi insultava, mi prendeva in giro e la gente del villaggio mi evitava». Dopo un po’ anche suo marito si stancò di lei e la rivendette al bordello. «Smisi di mangiare», mi racconta. «Volevo morire». Ed eccola qui. Sa che non potrà mai avere né un marito né una casa. Il suo destino è quello di essere evitata da tutti.

Fuori del bordello queste donne hanno una sola strada: diventare esse stesse delle sfruttatrici, mettere su un loro bordello e «guadagnarsi» la liberta’. Ma Beauty mi dice che non può farlo: «No, no... odierei essere una “madam”. Sono un cattiva ragazza, ma non fino a quel punto». Si passa le mani tra i capelli e aggiunge: «so che è triste. È la storia della mia vita. Non un granché, vero?».Non è difficile ricostruire le rotte dei trafficanti. Il confine tra India e Bangladesh è un lungo fiume dalle acque increspate. Mentre me ne sto in prossimità del confine posso vedere davanti a me la più popolosa democrazia del mondo, mentre alle mie spalle ci sono prigioni con le sbarre di ferro dove vengono tenute le ragazze del Bangladesh prima di essere vendute in India.

Tutta la gente del luogo lo chiama apertamente il «luogo dei trafficanti». Non si nascondono nemmeno. È inutile chiamare la polizia, mi ripetono gli abitanti del villaggio, perché i poliziotti sono sul libro paga dei trafficanti. Mi reco alla più vicina stazione di polizia - un bellissimo edificio di marmo bianco circondato da lussureggianti aiuole molto ben curate - per fare qualche domanda.Il vice-ispettore, un ufficiale sulla trentina in divisa marrone e un sorriso tranquillo, mi fa segno di “no” agitando al mano. «Non ho commenti da fare su questa faccenda», mi dice. Che vuol dire che non ha commenti da fare? Sicuramente la mia non è una domanda difficile. «Non ho intenzione di parlarne», e questa volta il suo tono di voce è più deciso.

Vi meravigliate allora se tutta le gente della vostra comunità pensa che prendiate le bustarelle? L’ufficiale di polizia accusa il colpo. «Hanno un problema di atteggiamento. Sono poveri e se la prendono con chiunque per i loro problemi», e scoppia a ridere.

Dacca, la capitale del Bangladesh, è una città assordante, rumorosa, caotica che mette a dura prova la vista l’udito, tutti i sensi. In questa megalopoli di 14 milioni di abitanti stipati come sardine, basta gettare lo sguardo in una qualunque strada affollata per essere bersagliati da più stimoli sensoriali di quanti in genere ce ne arrivano in una settimana.

Vistose auto occidentali sono bloccate nel traffico accanto a veicoli scassati e arrugginiti. Povere, eteree vagabonde si aggirano tra le automobili con i figli in braccio e la mano tesa per chiedere l’elemosina. Gli operai camminano tenendo in equilibrio sulla testa carichi enormi. Bambini sono impegnati a lavorare con la macchina da cucire sui tetti delle case. Donne pesantemente truccate ti chiedono 10 takka per farti vedere il serpente danzante nascosto nella scatola di legno che portano legata al collo. Uomini aggrappati agli autobus urlano ai padroni dei risciò che urlano ai pedoni che urlano parlando al cellulare.

Tutto questo accade accompagnato da un assordante rumore di fondo, una sorta di “melodia di Dacca”: lo strombazzare dei clacson delle auto, il cigolio dei risciò, le campanelle e le continue urla della gente.

In mezzo a questo tremendo caos ci sono 300.000 bambini di strada che vivono (e muoiono) per conto loro. Dormono a piccoli gruppi nella zona portuale, intorno alla stazione degli autobus o negli edifici in costruzione sparsi in tutta la città. Sono il sogno dei trafficanti, prede senza difesa.Seduto sul ponte in prossimità del porto trovo Mohammed e la sua piccola banda di amici. Ha 14 anni, indossa una sudicia camicia di cotone dozzinale e ha la zazzera incolta. Dimostra 10 anni tanto il suo corpo è scarno e scheletrico. Sulla caviglia ha un adesivo della serie Pokemon e lui e i suoi amici accettano di farmi vagabondare insieme a loro per tutta la giornata.

Mohammed sta insieme agli altri bambini da quando è fuggito a Dacca nella speranza di ritrovare sua madre che era stata costretta a lasciare i figli con la matrigna per andare a lavorare e mandare i soldi a casa.

Trascorrono le ore del giorno vagando per le strade di Dacca, raccogliendo pezzi di carta straccia e mettendoli in un sacco. Se la raccolta va bene, alla fine della giornata possono rivendere la carta per 10 takka - circa 15 centesimi di euro sufficienti a comprare un pasto e qualche spliff (NdT, canna con il tabacco).

Si lavano nelle acque fetide e puzzolenti del fiume e forse per questo Mohammed non fa che grattarsi il braccio infettato dalla scabbia. Qualche volta riescono a risparmiare qualche spicciolo per vedere un film - i suoi preferiti, mi dice, sono i film d’azione hollywoodiani e i film musicali di Bollywood.

Tutte le sere si mettono fuori dei ristoranti per rimediare qualche avanzo - e poi cercano di rubare qualcosa al mercato ortofrutticolo. Mi portano lì a mezzanotte, nell’unico luogo illuminato di una città avvolta dalle tenebre. Il mercato ortofrutticolo è un’ enorme città brulicante di persone dove migliaia di venditori eseguono una sorta di danza gli uni intorno agli altri trasportando sulla testa in apposite ceste montagne di patate e oceani di cavoli e mercanteggiando con i dettaglianti e con i proprietari di ristoranti. Mentre seguo la banda di ragazzini che rubacchia qualche frutto sono attratto dall’odore del peperoncino rosso e degli agrumi.

Poi finalmente, alle tre del mattino, si adagiano in un angolino vicino al porto e si preparano a dormire. I sacchi che usano per raccogliere la carta diventano rudimentali sacchi a pelo e si stringono gli uni agli altri per proteggersi dal freddo. Nel porto ci sono migliaia di bambini e famiglie che passano la notte all’addiaccio.

I ragazzini fumano uno spliff e ingoiano qualche sonnifero che hanno comprato. «Se siamo fatti non proviamo troppo dolore se arrivano i poliziotti e ci bastonano», mi spiegano. «So di aver rovinato la mia vita», aggiunge Mohammed. «So di essere un ragazzaccio e so che non uscirò mai di qui. Non ho speranze, non ho futuro. Cosa pensi che dovrei fare?». E d’improvviso mi rendo conto che la sua non è una domanda retorica. Mi sta sinceramente chiedendo consiglio.

La paura dei trafficanti di carne umana aleggia sulla testa di questi bambini come una minacciosa nuvola carica di pioggia. Il solo momento in cui Mohammed tradisce le sue emozioni è quando ricorda una ragazzina di nome Muni che era sua amica.

Un giorno di giugno dell’anno scorso, quando aveva nove anni e mezzo, un vecchio l’ha avvicinata e le ha detto che se l’avesse seguito le avrebbe trovato un buon lavoro. La piccola ha rifiutato ben sapendo cosa accadeva ai bambini quando andavano con queste persone. Ma lui l’ha portata via con la forza. Gli altri ragazzini hanno tentato di dirlo alla polizia, ma i poliziotti li hanno cacciati via.Il corpo della piccola è stato trovato tre giorni dopo: era stata violentata e strangolata. Mohammed è convinto che l’hanno uccisa perché si è rifiutata di farsi ingannare dalle bugie dei trafficanti e di farsi portare in un bordello e si è difesa con tutte le sue forze.

Mohammed ha bisogno di dormire. Si deve svegliare tra quattro ore per cominciare a raccogliere la carta straccia. Uno dei ragazzi deve rimanere di guardia - «ma è difficile», dice. Gli chiedo cosa gli piacerebbe avere da grande pensando che mi risponderà come fanno di solito i bambini che sognano di avere un macchinone lussuoso. «Avere?», mi chiede. «Vorrei avere mia madre». E ciò detto sorride amaramente e chiude gli occhi.

C’è un piccolo gruppo di cittadini del Bangladesh che ha visto rapire i propri figli dai mercanti di carne umana e che ha deciso - come Muni, con i suoi piccoli pugni - di difendersi e di reagire. Sono finanziati da Sport Relief e dipendono dalle donazioni in denaro dei cittadini britannici.Ishtiaque Ahmed è un intellettuale che - snocciolando una interminabile serie di numeri e statistiche - mi racconta come ha creato «Aparajeyo» (Imbattuti). È una delle principali organizzazioni che nel Bangladesh lottano contro la tratta dei bambini e delle bambine da avviare nei bordelli. Organizzano scuole nelle strade e offrono un rifugio ai bambini che sono stati fatti oggetto di violenze ed inoltre pagano un esercito di bambini recuperati dalla prostituzione che vanno in giro per la città ad insegnare agli altri bambini come difendersi dai trafficanti. Combattono la schiavitù salvando un bimbo per volta.

Faccio la loro conoscenza all’ultimo piano di un grattacielo trasformato in casa di accoglienza per bambini e bambine violentati che sono riusciti a fuggire. Sembra un posto come tanti altri con numerosi bambini che giocano e strillano. Per un momento non sono prede, sono solo bambini.Una ragazza piuttosto alta con gli zigomi sporgenti sta cantando. Mi stringe la mano e dice di chiamarsi Shelaka e di avere 16 anni. Poi, scegliendo con cura la parole e senza alcuna timidezza mi racconta come è finita qui.

È cresciuta in un villaggio a tre ore da Dacca e ha sempre amato cantare. «Cantare è la sensazione più bella del mondo», mi dice. Ma arrivata alla pubertà i suoi religiosissimi genitori le dissero che non stava bene che una ragazza musulmana cantasse e che non doveva più pensare a questi «stupidi sogni».

«Se mi mettevo a cantare mi picchiavano», mi racconta. E così decise di fuggire in città per poter continuare a cantare. Vendette la sola cosa che possedeva - l’orecchino ornamentale al naso - e comprò un biglietto dell’autobus diretto a Dacca. Arrivata in città chiese dove era la scuola di canto. Si aggirò per le strade e quando si fece notte una venditrice ambulante di dolciumi le disse che poteva dormire a casa sua. Shelaka la seguì perché la venditrice ambulante le era sembrata una persona gentile. Ma una volta arrivati a casa della signora, si presentò il padrone di casa con alcuni delinquenti. Shelaka fu sequestrata e tenuta prigioniera per tre mesi e costretta ogni giorno a prostituirsi fin quando la venditrice ambulante la aiutò a fuggire. Vagando per le strade capitò per caso dinanzi ad una delle scuole dell’organizzazione «Aparajeyo» e lì fu accolta ed ospitata.Vive qui da tre anni e continua ad essere aiutata e seguita. Le piace molto. «Sono come una bella famiglia». È iscritta all’Accademia del Bangladesh dove studia canto. Mi chiede se può cantare per me e la sua voce - pur in mezzo ad un frastuono di clacson e di campanelle dei risciò - è calma, bella e pura.

Una delle più belle realizzazioni di «Aparajeyo» si trova nelle enormi e degradate periferie di Khalijpur. In una minuscola stanzetta umida fatta di fango e di lamiera, trovo Rehana, una donna di 33 anni con la fronte piena di rughe. Mi racconta di come suo fratello ha venduto suo figlio per 3.000 takka - poco più di 30 euro. Rehana sapeva da anni che suo fratello era un mercante di bambini. «Mi vergognavo», dice. «Trafficava in bambini perché era povero, ma questo non lo giustifica».

«Andare alla polizia era inutile», mi dice. «I poliziotti erano tutti corrotti». Ma poi nel 2005, proprio il giorno della festa di Eid, suo marito litigò con suo fratello. Due giorni dopo suo fratello andò a prendere suo figlio di sei anni, Shamsul, alla moschea e lo vendette. Non contento di questo derise suo cognato dicendogli che suo figlio si trovava ormai in un bordello in India. «Sono impazzita, sono impazzita», mi racconta. «L’ho cercato dappertutto. Ho passato tutta la giornata a girare per le strade chiamandolo per nome. Non riuscivo a credere a quanto mi stava succedendo».

Dopo due anni di disperazione, Rehana vide un annuncio su un giornale. L’annuncio era stato messo da «Aparajeyo» e diceva: conoscete questo bambino? «Era Shamsul», mi dice commossa. La polizia l’aveva trovato che vagava per le strade e lo aveva affidato all’istituto. Non conosceva né il suo nome né l’indirizzo di casa.

«Quando l’ho riabbracciato era magrissimo e piangeva di continuo», mi dice la madre. «Se non mi vedeva accanto a lui si metteva subito a piangere. Faceva delle cose stranissime: fissava il sole fino al tramonto. Ma il fatto di averlo potuto ritrovare è stato meraviglioso».Shamsul si aggira per la casa mentre il sole tramonta alle sue spalle. Lo zio che lo ha venduto è sparito. Rehana è convinta che gestisca un traffico di bambini da qualche altra parte. «I trafficanti non abbandonano mai il loro mestiere», mi dice. «Io ringrazio Dio ogni giorno per il fatto che ci sono persone come quelli di “Aparajeyo” che lavorano per fermarli».

Suo figlio si siede sulle sue ginocchia. Almeno un bambino sottratto ad una vita di violenze sessuali. Passa la mano tra i capelli della mamma e con l’altra mi allunga una pallina viola e sorride.

Traduzione di Carlo Antonio Biscotto