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Frances Hui is policy and advocacy coordinator for the Committee for Freedom and Hong Kong Foundation. Having become an activist at the age of 14, Hui left Hong Kong to study journalism in the USA in September 2016. After returning to Hong Kong, she became the first Hong Kong activist to be granted political asylum in the United States following the adoption of the National Security Law in 2020.   CJLPA : I’d like to begin by thanking you, Frances, for speaking with The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art  to discuss your story of having to leave what became a threatening Hong Kong after you fought endlessly for human rights and democracy. I was hoping to learn more about your personal experiences in Hong Kong. What ignited the spark in you to speak out for human rights and democracy for the people?   Frances Hui : During my speech in Geneva, I mentioned that the first protests that I had ever been to were [regarding] the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. In Hong Kong, we traditionally have an annual vigil to commemorate the incident and that was my first time attending a public assembly. At that time, I was about ten years old, I think—growing up, learning of Hong Kong as being part of China and then all of a sudden getting to know like this piece of history was very daunting for me—and [especially] the fact that it only happened about ten years before I was born. It feels very close to me, it was just two decades ago, not a long time ago. The fact that in Hong Kong we are able to rally publicly, legally, without exposing ourselves to risk, I feel like it’s some sort of like—I don’t know I don’t know if it applies to everyone—but it feels like there is some sort of responsibility that comes to me. I feel like being a Hong Konger we should utilize the rights and freedoms that we enjoy. So it was a powerful moment to be in the middle of the crowd, knowing that everyone has the same values. It is very powerful when you chant the same slogan, and have people surrounding you who are with you and upholding the same values and probably had a similar culture as you growing up as well. It is something that draws me to public rallies, people’s movements. The feeling of being in the crowd and surrounded by people with the same values—I think that was the time that when my eyes were opened and I realised that this is our privilege and it is something that we should treasure and enjoy.   CJLPA : You became involved with activism at such a young age. What specifically were the rights and civil liberties infringed upon by the CCP in Hong Kong when you were growing up that brought everyone together?   FH : I think that when I was growing up way, the way that the CCP is trying to manipulate, Hong Kong is a little different from now. We always describe the situation as like putting a frog in a room temperature water, where it does not realise it is being cooked until it is done cooking. Now, I think [the situation] is more drastic [in terms of] the way that they infringe on our rights. Right now in Hong Kong, people don’t necessarily have the rights to go to the streets and speak up for themselves and speak up against a government. Back then, it was different. We had all those rights and freedoms. We had a legal system that hold the governments accountable. We had the justice system, even if we were arrested or something like that. But more so, I think people in Hong Kong back then were trying to create progress in order to achieve a democracy. One thing that we always try to tell people is that Hong Kong has never enjoyed a full democracy—a one person, one vote type of democratic system. In fact, it was promised in the basic law that eventually Hong Kong would develop its own electoral system and that people get to vote for their chief executive. That was one of the reasons why the 2014 Umbrella Movement broke out. I think before 2019, all we were trying to do was make progress on that promise, to eventually allow Hong Kong’s people to choose their own leader, the chief executive.

Anwar al-Bunni is a Syrian human rights defender who has fought for the right to freedom of speech and for democratic reform in Syria. He has defended individuals including Riad al-Turk, Kurdish protestors, and various media outlets shut down by the Syrian regime. Anwar’s interest in defending the human rights of Syrians against its oppressive government came after he was beaten and tortured by the Syrian forces during the Hama military sweep of 1981. After his escape from Syria in 2012, he has been continuously fighting the Syrian regime from Berlin. He has been awarded a number of awards throughout his career and was featured on Time Magazine’s ‘The 100 Most Influential People of 2022’. CJLPA : Good afternoon, Mr al-Bunni. It is an honour to have the opportunity to interview you for The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art . You’re an inspiring figure in much of your work defending the human rights of all Syrians around the world for the last few decades. Much of your work in Syria was done through pro bono cases, having to sell your car to pay your bills. Having said that, we would like to begin by asking you what motivated you to start a career as a human rights lawyer given the oppressive nature of the government you were residing under?   Anwar al-Bunni : It’s the situation I was in in Syria. When I was just in high school, my brothers and my sister were arrested for three years the first time, without any trial and without the possibility of contacting them. In the detention place, you couldn’t visit them once every two months, or every month—it was as the security allowed.   This was not only the case for three of my brothers, and one of my sisters, but also for some of my friends. It started in 1977, so from that time, I decided to be a lawyer to defend political prisoners or prisoners who expressed their opinion. After studying civil engineering in the first place, I decided to go to law university and study law to become a lawyer.   CJLPA:  Can you please tell us more about your work defending people who were prosecuted for expressing their opinions in nonviolent ways?   AB : You know, in Syria, they don’t send them to court. They keep them in detention places, sometimes without any contact. Why did I study law? Because two of my brothers were re-arrested, and my sister was also arrested. They disappeared for six years—we didn’t have any information about them.   So while I was a lawyer in 1986, two of my brothers and my sister were in jail. I knew there was nothing anybody or a lawyer could do in this situation. They transferred them to the High Security Court in 1994 and I knew the role of the lawyer was zero, because we didn’t have any access to the files. It was an exceptional court. We couldn’t do anything in front of it. The judgement or the sentence came with the file to that court. The judges just applied the sentence.

Ali Safavi is a member of Iran’s Parliament in Exile, National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), and President of Near East Policy Research (NEPR), a consulting and policy analysis firm in Washington, DC. A sociologist by career, Safavi studied and taught at UCLA, California State University Los Angeles and University of Michigan from 1972 until 1981. An activist during the anti-Shah student movement in the 1970s in the US, Safavi has been involved in Iranian affairs since then and has lectured and written extensively on issues related to Iran, Iraq, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and the political process in the Middle East. This interview was conducted on 4 November 2023.   Personal Introduction   CJLPA : Can you elaborate on your role and experiences as an activist during the Anti-Shah protests in the 1970s and your involvement in the student movement in the US during that period?   Ali Safavi : Before the revolution, I pursued studies in sociology at UCLA and taught at California State University, and the University of Michigan from 1972 to 1981. My older brother, Hossein, who was later executed by the clerical regime at the age of 29, was also studying in the US at that time. He focused on aerospace engineering at Northrop University in California and was a prolific writer and editor. Both Hossein and I actively participated in the vibrant anti-Shah student movement of the 1970s. We distributed pamphlets and reading materials opposing the Shah’s corrupt dictatorship, participated in meetings, conferences, and protests by Iranian students in Los Angeles, the Bay area, and elsewhere.   The plight of political prisoners, especially the leaders of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) also known by its Farsi name, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), deeply resonated with us in the mid-1970s. The MEK, initially operating underground during the mid-1960s, gained widespread recognition in 1971 after the arrest of most of its leaders and members. Figures like Mehdi Rezaei became prominent in the struggle. At only 19, Mehdi Rezaei delivered a poignant and historic discourse against the Shah during a military tribunal, knowing it would lead to severe torture and his execution. His sacrifices earned him the affectionate nickname ‘the rose of the revolution’ among the Iranian people, and he was executed by a firing squad in 1972. Mehdi Rezaei’s impact on society was so significant that Ahmad Shamlou, arguably Iran’s most famous poet, dedicated an entire poem in his honor.   The struggle, conviction, bravery, and perseverance under SAVAK’s brutal tortures of individuals like Mehdi Rezaei and Ali Asghar Badizadegan, one of MEK’s three original founders, inspired many students studying abroad, including myself. Badizadegan, despite enduring unspeakable agony, remained silent and was executed in May 1972. My understanding of the MEK deepened through reading the last defense of their leadership, including Massoud Rajavi, at the Shah’s military tribunals and their books smuggled out of Iran.

Mansour al-Omari is a Syrian human rights defender and legal researcher. He holds an LLM in Transitional Justice and Conflict. Al-Omari works with international and Syrian human rights organisations to hold the perpetrators of international crimes in Syria accountable. In 2012, al-Omari was detained and tortured by the Syrian government for 356 days for documenting its atrocities while working with the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression as the supervisor of the Detainees Office.   CJLPA : Good afternoon, Mansour al-Omari. It is an honour to have the chance to interview you for The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art . You have been a polarising figure in your work defending the human rights of all Syrians around the world for the last few decades.   Mansour al-Omari :   I appreciate your description of me as a polarising figure, as long as you mean that the two polarised divisions are the ones who support human rights and justice for all regardless of irrelevant considerations such as political, tribal, racial, or sectarian affiliations; and those who deny human rights and justice for all. CJLPA : When you first began working as a journalist, can you please describe the challenges you faced having to adhere to censorship by the Syrian government?   MO :   In 2011, the official Assad media, at its primitive level, was no longer able to confront the widespread citizen journalism. There were citizen journalists using social media accounts in every neighbourhood throughout Syria. The Assad regime realised the need to be present on social networking sites, which dominated the traditional media, so it had to enter this space. The regime’s organised presence on social media platforms began with the establishment of Internet centres affiliated with the security departments, in which people were employed, each with a large number of fake accounts on social networking sites. One of their tasks is to pursue posts and accounts related to the revolution, and to spread the regime’s narrative. This began in Internet cafés, including in Damascus, in the suburb of Harasta, in Latakia, and elsewhere. Then, centres dedicated to this activity arose, with each employee receiving a monthly salary of twenty thousand Syrian pounds (400 dollars) in 2011, a high income by Syrian standards. Subsequently, al-Assad supported the establishment of the so-called Syrian Electronic Army, whose mission was to spread the regime’s propaganda, and to hack newspapers, websites, and activists’ social media accounts.   In the same context, the Assad regime allowed the creation of orchestrated accounts on social networking sites of a news nature, under the supervision of intelligence, with the aim of confronting news accounts opposing the Assad regime narrative, including independent news websites and accounts of activists, in addition to publishing fabricated news and disinformation within the framework of psychological warfare during the war.

The book is a simple yet complex idea that has profound influence on culture, society, and religion that transcends time and civilization. The book is a platform or foundation for the study of the Humanities because it has so much power over the course of human life. The impact of books and the knowledge contained dictates human history, influences religious and political policy, supports the powerful, and inspires the repressed. In early book creation the relationship between word and image was essential. The word spoke to the privileged, the educated and the image informed the poor and illiterate, yet both groups needed books to guide their lives.   I grew up with books; my mother was a voracious reader and raised her children to cherish books. The book is a living memoir, a repository of memory and meaning that goes beyond the story that lies within. My work captures the physical body of the book as if it is a living figure with a spine, the leather cover is skin, and the pages flesh. The physical traits reflect the life of the book, both good and bad, exposing bumps, bruises, withering age, or a child's scribble. How often have you found a special memento in the pages of a book that floods your senses with memories? The Flag: J. Rosamond Johnson and Bob Cole, 2022, Ink Jet Print The Corn Stalk Fiddle: Paul Laurence Dunbar, 2022, Ink Jet Print The Hidden Life of Books explores various book collections. Chapter IV explores holdings in the British Library about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and the African American musicians, thinkers, and poets he admired and collaborated with. One of Coleridge-Taylor’s earliest collaboration was with poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose poetry and prose are often written in ‘the negro cadence’. Coleridge-Taylor was moved by Negro spirituals and inspired to integrate the music into his compositions. These sounds were foreign and fascinating. Through Dunbar he met Rosamond Johnson, James Weldon Johnson, WEB Du Bois, and Booker T Washington. These men developed lifelong friendships, and a creative exchange that influenced the Harlem Renaissance years later.

Brought from my cousin’s Shropshire home early September 2023, the spalted limewood log from which  Eyeless in Gaza  is carved had been left barely protected from the elements after the tree was felled by a storm. It was over four years since that disaster. Axe and saw joined the host of creatures that had invaded the wood before I started to cut with the gouges and chisels of the woodcarver. There was no idea to start with—only to incise and discover. Following routes burrowed by small insects, such as woodworm, and moulds into bark and sapwood seemed a way to learn its story and find what I, as co-sculptor with these small beasts, could expand. Fig 1. Eyeless in Gaza, Eternal Flame (Willow Winston 2023, limewood, 34 x 69 x 30 cm). © Willow Winston The wood was rough with uneven texture that often did not hold together. I removed much of this outer material, hoping to find firmer ground for a more durable image. As I was cutting an archway through soft tissue aiming to have a strong primary image through which to enter, news came of the fearful events of 7 October at the Gaza border. Without doubt, the response to the initial attack would be savage in the extreme. Nothing could be done to stop this humanitarian disaster, in the first days at least. Fig 2. Eyeless in Gaza, Despair (Willow Winston 2023, limewood, 34 x 69 x 30 cm). © Willow Winston

On 15 August 2021, the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan. The ‘Apagan’ operation initiated an airlift that successfully evacuated approximately 2600 Afghans to France. However, two weeks later, the airlift operations concluded, leaving a considerable number of the remaining 40 million Afghans trapped within the confines of Afghanistan. Since then, numerous Afghans, compelled by threats related to their profession, gender, or opinions, have been forced to either hide or flee. Those who manage to escape often find themselves stranded in neighbouring countries such as Pakistan, Iran, or Turkey, struggling to survive in precarious conditions. Among them are families yearning to reunite with a spouse or child in France, single women grappling with uncertainty, children, judges, journalists, and activists—all seeking refuge from a country they no longer recognize or one that no longer recognizes them. Limited Legal Routes to France In light of the challenging circumstances faced by Afghans, there are very limited safe and legal routes available for them to reach Europe. Regardless of the process, visa applications must now be submitted in a neighbouring country since nearly all European consular authorities are closed in Afghanistan. For foreign nationals to enter France legally, a short- or long-stay visa is required. However, Afghans fleeing their country for an indefinite period must secure a visa allowing them to stay for at least three months. It is only with these long-stay visas that they can apply for asylum or a residence permit upon arrival in France. Long-stay visas for France can be sought on various grounds such as family, education, profession, or humanitarian reasons, but they are only granted if specific conditions are met. These conditions are often impractical to fulfil, especially when the applicant’s country of origin is in the midst of a humanitarian or political crisis. Consequently, the opportunities for Afghans to obtain French visas are significantly constrained. The objective of this contribution is not to provide an exhaustive list of theoretically available legal paths for all foreign nationals but to examine those actively utilised by Afghans to reach France. Practical barriers such as linguistic, financial, or administrative reasons largely exclude visa applications related to professional activities or studies due to the stringent conditions they impose. For example, it is practically impossible for a non-French-speaking Afghan engineer to secure a work permit for a French company remotely, a prerequisite for obtaining an ‘employee’ visa.

If you tolerate this, your children will be next! Manic Street Preachers, 1998   Introduction   The issue of immigration and human rights law, or more precisely, the human rights of people on the move, has become one of the most urgent challenges for many Western societies. Syrian refugees walking across Europe in 2015 almost faded away in the collective memory. They were replaced by the images of people clinging on the planes leaving Kabul, a mass exodus from Ukraine, people desperately trying to escape Sudan, and now the catastrophe in Gaza. In 2023, the UN Refugee Agency ( UNHCR) estimated 110 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. Many of them, like 750,000 Rohingyas[1] or 120,000 ethnic Armenians expelled from Nagorno-Karabakh in October 2023,[2] have not been properly registered on the Western news cycle.   Wherever, however, and whenever they arrive, people seeking protection or migrating are often perceived as a threat despite being vulnerable, insignificant in numbers, or needed for the local economy (only 3.6% of the world’s people lived outside their country of birth in 2020).[3]   The UNHCR has warned that the UK immigration legislation passed in 2023 is ‘inconsistent with the country’s obligation under the international human rights and refugee law’.[4]   This is, albeit limited, an attempt to chart some of the trajectories and connections of how hostile environment immigration policy, enforcement, and populist approach to immigration, undermine fundamental human rights and bring into question UK compliance with and membership of international human rights treaties and bodies and the rule of law.   It is also a reflection on the impact on people’s lives from the perspective of a frontline campaigner for migrant and refugee rights and a survivor of the siege of Sarajevo and the UK asylum system.[5]   Despite the alarming state of affairs and the horrifying extent to which governments are willing to sink in their implementation of the hostile environment immigration policy, this is a story of hope—how people build resilience, resist hostility and human rights violations, imagine better future, organise in solidarity, and speak out for dignity and justice for all.   Context   There is widespread populist belief, deeply rooted in the right-wing, nationalistic, and scarcity narrative, that rights cannot be shared or afforded to everyone. To take this logic further, as inalienable as human rights might be, there aren’t enough rights for everyone. Therefore, to paraphrase Hannah Arendt, ‘the right to have rights’ is reserved only for citizens.[6] The not-so-subtle proposition that non-citizens, immigrants, refugees, or foreigners—currently the chief category of the ‘other’, are not to be afforded the same human rights as citizens is nothing new or surprising. At the risk of sounding cynical, it is all too often that we see citizens’ human rights violated, especially if rights are in the way of power interests, political or commercial or both.

This article explores an uncomfortable reality that locates international humanitarian and development organisations as sometimes unwitting, sometimes witting facilitators of the state crime of genocide and in doing so reveals the stark and sometimes lethal contradictions inherent in the overarching organisational goals and principles to which these organisations adhere. Our focus is on the Burmese/Myanmar Rohingya genocide, and the immediate pressures, moral dilemmas, and institutional strictures faced by humanitarian actors in the critical years following the 2012 Sittwe massacres, before the annihilation phase of the genocide in 2016/17.[1]   While the Genocide Convention defines genocide as ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’,[2] we favour a definition which captures both this outcome but also more significantly the processes which lead to destruction. Genocide is a process which begins with dehumanisation and ends with erasure. In between and often concurrent are occasions of litmus-testing violence, structural discrimination, state denial of persecution, forced isolation and ghettoisation, and systematic weakening.[3] The Convention definition was dogged by criticism from the outset, including from Lemkin[4] who was disappointed with the final iteration (including the exclusion of ‘cultural genocide’), the convention definition being the lowest common agreeable denominator.   We write elsewhere about the complicit role of elements of the United Nations (UN) in the Rohingya genocide.[5] Contextually, however, and given its widely proclaimed ‘moral leadership’ in the field of human rights, it is important to understand that the UN systematically failed to challenge the Myanmar government on the genocidal human rights abuses which were to lead to the effective annihilation of Myanmar’s Rohingya in 2017. Rather than demand the closure of the Rohingya detention camps the UN, through its Resident Coordinator and agencies, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the World Food Programme (WFP), actively contributed to their sustainability through the provision of food and limited medical aid. In doing so it worked with the Myanmar regime to support a system of brutal apartheid in which the incarcerated Rohingya were reduced to ‘bare life’.[6] It suppressed its critics and silenced those who advocated against the regime on behalf of the Rohingya. By elevating development at the expense of human rights and by ensuring relations with the regime were conducive to UN access, the UN effectively colluded with the regime’s genocidal project. This is not to suggest that the UN (or indeed the humanitarian organisations we will now consider) in any way shared the genocidal intention of the Myanmar regime but that its actions and organisational goals served quite explicitly to facilitate rather than challenge the genocide.   The humanitarian dilemma   Angela Sherwood writes that:   bureaucratic practices of humanitarian organisations may result in harm to local communities, especially when such practices are embedded in state agendas for security and pro-capitalist development.[7]   Sherwood raises fundamental questions for the practice of humanitarianism generally but even more acutely for humanitarianism operating in the context of unfolding war or genocide. The opportunity to enact the saviour/victim binary, embodied in the practice of western international humanitarianism, crucially relies on the ‘welcome’ extended by offending states. Without access, the practice of direct humanitarianism cannot take place and as we shall see when we examine the practices of international aid organisations, and the UN, in particular, inside Myanmar, securing and maintaining access relies on political arrangements, relationships, and agreements which are disaggregated from, and frequently anathema, to field practice. Access becomes the holy grail — an end in itself — at the expense of those the access is designed to assist. Our observations of the humanitarian response to the unfolding Rohingya genocide suggested that while it was characterised by neo-colonialism it was a form of neo-colonialism utterly dependent on regime paternalism.

Introduction[1]   Why have Palestinian Bedouin youth in the Jerusalem periphery disappeared? This has been a consistent question in the minds of researchers working with Al-Quds University Human Rights Clinic (AQHRC). The AQHRC has been working with Palestinian Bedouin communities in the southeast Jerusalem periphery since 2014. These communities are among the most vulnerable communities to Israeli settler colonialism in all of its components; land expropriation, displacement, and imposition of an apartheid system, as will be demonstrated shortly. Over the past ten years, despite making concerted and consistent engagement with these communities, AQHRC has failed in engaging young men in the vast majority of activities, including research, advocacy, and awareness-raising workshops, to name a few.   This observation was corroborated while interviewing a 37-year-old Bedouin man in a Bedouin community near Jerusalem. The field research team of AQHRC asked him about the whereabouts of young Bedouin men, and his response was: ‘we rarely see them as well…if it is a wedding, or a social event you will see 300 young men but otherwise you will barely see one of them, it is like they have just ‘disappeared’ as if they rode a donkey or a car and went deep into the desert’.[2] This statement on its own gave rise to several other questions. Why would the Bedouin young men appear in weddings or social events and not in political activities? Why are they absent from the public sphere and the political arena of their communities despite the imminent threat of eviction and demolition of their homes by the Israeli authorities? How can this alternating surfacing of young men be explained?   Suppression of resistance, activism, and mobilisation are intrinsic components of settler colonialism. Within this framework, Israeli occupation has constructed a sophisticated system of suppression through the adoption of a series of vital laws and policies. These include Military Order 101 and the British Defence (Emergency) Regulations in Mandatory Palestine, which restricted freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, and political participation. All of these will be explored thoroughly later. Apart from these laws, the risk of revocation of civil status as a concrete part of settler colonialism, coupled with the risk of deprivation of opportunities and access to livelihood, has given rise to self-censorship and refrain from any form of participation in activism and resistance. This is particularly relevant among the most vulnerable Palestinians, whose livelihoods completely depend on the Israeli economy.   Israeli measures intended to instil domination of one racial group over another has over time given rise to the absenteeism of key social groups from political arena and wider Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. This system of hegemony and domination has been the subject of several recent analyses by Israeli and international human rights organisations, who have all concluded that Israel practices a system of apartheid against Palestinians that seeks to perpetuate the domination of one racial group over another.[3]   A key pillar of this system of apartheid is the fragmentation of Palestinians, which classifies Palestinians by civil status and confers a hierarchy of privileges and rights accordingly. This system of classification is designated by area of residency. To demonstrate by way of example, Palestinians inside Israel enjoy the status of citizenship, which differs from nationality, as the former confers individual rights, while the latter confers collective national rights.[4] In contrast, Palestinians in Jerusalem enjoy the status of ‘permanent’ residents, which confers residency, employment, and other social rights. However, this status is fragile, and unlike its connotation can be easily revoked, on grounds including but not limited to the ‘centre of life’ criterion and as a punitive measure.[5] Further down the ladder of privileges are Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, who are stateless and reside under a system of military occupation, and last are refugees whose right of return is unrecognised by Israel.[6]

My Story   Ten years old and wishing I was dead. Sitting on my bed, staring at my hand—wondering whether I was invisible or not. I never want another child to feel invisible, worthless, and so terrorised that they can’t swallow. So filled with fear that their very breath feels choked and smothered. Let me take you on a journey back 50 years, to my childhood.   My mum had run away from her Mafia boyfriend, a Greek man who was already married. Upon hearing my mum was pregnant, he took out a gun and put it to her stomach, saying: ‘Get rid of the baby or I will kill you both’. There was no fairy-tale ending, as my mum had hoped, of him leaving his wife, marriage, and having a baby together. There was only the stark reality of running in fear—homeless, with no money and no work. My mum ended up living in a homeless shelter in the UK, traumatised and addicted to alcohol. I was born two months early. As my mum couldn’t look after me, I went to live with an aunt. In the meantime, my mum met a smooth-talking man in a pub who groomed her, said he loved her and asked her to marry him. She did marry him, and when I was two she took me back and I lived with them.   My stepdad was evil; he was an alcoholic and a psychopath. He had severe mental illness and hated me with every fibre of his being. He was obsessively jealous and saw me as a part of the man who my mum first loved. Life as a child was hell on earth. My stepdad was drunk and aggressive daily and beat my mum most weeks. I saw her kicked, punched, stabbed, screamed at, and constantly verbally and emotionally abused. My stepdad would chase her down our street with a knife and punch her in front of the neighbours; yet not one person stepped in to help. The attitude was to turn a blind eye and not interfere with the business of others.   One night I witnessed my mum being kicked in the stomach and strangled and I watched in fear as an ambulance took her unconscious, battered body to hospital. The neighbours had phoned the police when they heard the screams—the first time the neighbours had actually helped. My stepdad was arrested, but the next morning he got let off and came home. My stepdad told me my mum was dead, and when I started to cry, he took out a knife and said he would cut me in pieces and put me in the freezer. Three days later my mum walked in the door, bruised and with a hoarse voice. I ran to her immediately—all I wanted was to be hugged and comforted. I had just endured three days of hell thinking she was dead. Instead she pushed me away and said, ‘We don’t talk about it’.   My stepdad was in a gang of men, a gang that included both a doctor and a policeman. They would come to the house and buy me with money or sometimes give my stepdad a bottle of whiskey. I cannot look at a bottle of whiskey without being triggered by the trauma of what happened to me. I often had the thought: ‘I am only worth the value of a bottle of whiskey’. The gang would abuse and rape me. Sometimes I would be taken in a car to places where other men and children were located and be abused there, but it is all a blur for me now—they gave me meds to keep me quiet.

On Monday 15 April, a fire broke out in the Notre-Dame de Paris. Believers and tourists were invited to leave the cathedral immediately. A race against time was launched which would last more than fifteen hours, defying all human bravery to save the Notre-Dame. Thousands of people gathered around the cathedral this evening to reflect, pray, and witness this catastrophe which none had thought possible to an eight-century old lady that had accompanied people in their joys and sorrows and had survived wars, plagues, revolutions, and occupations. The emotion was felt worldwide and donations for the reconstruction arrived quickly. The fire destroyed the spire, the timber roof structure, and part of the vault, at the level of the transept crossing. Three years later, the investigation to find the cause of this fire is still ongoing. This article does not claim to be an exhaustive account of the issues associated with the reconstruction of Notre-Dame, nor does it claim definitive answers to an ongoing investigation. It rather seeks to put forward a scientific hypothesis on the causes of this fire, not only for the pure satisfaction of knowledge, but also in the hope to raise awareness about the widespread but relatively unknown phenomenon of pyrolysis during works on monuments.[1] It is crucial that architects and companies working on listed buildings are aware of the phenomenon of pyrolysis so that they can adapt their working protocols, be more vigilant, and request more efficient fire detection instruments to avoid future similar disasters. In recent years, other major French monuments undergoing restoration works had been destroyed without the causes being identified: the seventeenth-century Hôtel Lambert in the centre of Paris in 2013 and the flamboyant gothic townhall of La Rochelle in 2013 are just two examples. In the 1990s, a fire outbreak was discovered just in time at the Beauvais Cathedral the day following some hot-spot work using a blowtorch. It is worth reminding the reader that the vast majority of fires happening during work are caused by hot-spot works.[2] The phenomenon of pyrolysis and, more generally, of slow combustion are still little known to those working on historic monuments, whether they are architects or craftsmen. The case of Notre-Dame de Paris deserves to be studied in greater depth because this hypothesis remains the most likely, given the conditions that existed during the restoration of the spire in the days preceding the fire. The current investigation has only shown that the fire started at the foot of the spire (fig. 1). Samples of charred wood have made it possible to locate the fire’s starting point in the area of ‘the wall plate of the choir at the south-east corner of the transept crossing’ (fig. 2).[3] Fig 1. Flèche centrale de N-D de Paris ©Ville de Paris / Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris (BHVP) The spire, built by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc at the transept crossing, was embellished with sixteen statues, that of the twelve Apostles in the higher parts and the symbols of the four Evangelists at the bottom. Fig 2. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle (1854-1868) The statues rested on wooden posts directly connected to the roof timber structure. At the South-East of the crossing, the lowest post supported the Eagle of St John the Evangelist. It was at its base that the fire broke out on 15 April 2019.